Recent content by Maan

litdum said:

You can point out specifically which animations you dont like writing or with picture like READHED did.

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Of course, I'll be more specific.

- Crossbow: I agree with READHED; also, in first person view the crossbow blocks your sight by being in front of your eyes while moving!

- One handed polearm: one of the "standing still" poses (the one with the weapon pointed up, vertically) also look very stiff; and it's unrealistic in that the soldier is holding the weapon without the end resting on the ground, that would be pretty exausting.

- Two handed weapon: the one with the weapon resting on the shoulder looks really good when the character is resting; but I don't think it looks natural when they are running.

As for the rest, you already said you are removing them, so...

litdum said:

I have already re-edited a few of the arena scenes especially for riding horse free of obstructions. And the better is, I will add tournament play enhancement, which give you also a chose to select the arena scene from among Native arenas and the arenas right now so you will be able to choose in game in which arena you will fight.

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Sir, I love you.

READHED said:

I like most of the new animations but sometimes they are a little goofy:

Spoiler

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I, too, have mixed feelings on the new animations...
Some are really good, a few others not so much. Some of them just look like they would be better suited for a military parade than when actually fighting...

After playing a bit, I wonder if the arenas couldn't use some improvement.
Generally I like them a lot, they are a lot less bland than before; I think there are a few issues though:

- Vegetation. Probably too much of it: gameplay wise, it makes difficult to see (but for archers, who keep sniping you through while you can't see them). And it just feels silly that someone made an arena to entertain a public on the stands, and THEN obscured the view of most of the arena planting trees.

- Obstacles in general. When too large or too long (low walls, fences, etc.) it seems that the poor pathifinding skills of the bots lead them to get stuck against them, like they do on the arena borders.

- The kind of fights staged in the city should matter. I'll take Uxkhal as an example: fights in this city are always between fully mounted teams, but the arena is covered in thick vegetation for about 1/3 and half of it is flooded. This only leaves a tiny strip where horses can actually manouver (and there are 4 destructable mannequins on it, further blocking movement). The arena per se is nice, but it makes little sense to have such an arena host mounted fights.

In general:
I would tweak the arenas a bit, thinking about how the layout is going to influence the fights in it... and the poor AI of pc-controlled fighters.
I think the best bet is to avoid the excess of obstacles (especially when clustered together), making them few and far from each other; and reduce the trees/bushes to give a better view.

I think you can find most of the issues in that same thread.

Personally I've experienced, in 2-3 frustrating playthroughs:
- Defeated Lords spawning back in a castle/town and staying there forever. This seems not to happen if you keep behaviour changes to "low" or "native";
- Lords changing faction too much for my tastes. I think this should be toned down a bit;
- When you have a business in a town that has changed ownership but is not yet assigned to a Lord, you won't get any profit from it: when the weekly budget screen pops up it will be considered "under sequestration" (even when the faction owning it is friendly) and you'll get a debug error warning;
- Changing your residence when you hold more than one town is impossible: your wife will tell you something about needing tools and wool cloth, but even when you have them (or put them in the household inventory or anywhere else, I tried *everything*) it just won't work;
- Changing faction color when you create your own kingdom doesn't seem to work.

That's just what I can think of on the spot, maybe there's something else but I think these are the major issues I've found.

EDIT:
Another one: at some point (economic changes were set to "native") ALL of my 4 towns stopped producing any income at all.
I modified the economic changes to "low" and income came back.

litdum said:

Thank you for your good reviews and suggestions. I may redesign that outlaws and woman fighters and their troop trees but about mercenaries, their thing is to be expesive because they dont need to be upgraded generally, you can recruit them as hired blade or mercenary cavalry. Factions troops are cheap but they need to be upgraded so that things are advantages and disadvantages for faction troops and mercenary troops. But I will thing about those. Thanks again.

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Well, in my opinion the whole setup of mercenaries as they are in Native is flawed to the point of being useless.
I'm not talking of a few things in their equipment that look like obvious oversights: like Mercenary Cavalry having Nomad Boots (which, btw, look ugly! ) or Hired Blade using the smaller shield meant for horsemen (probably that's because once upon a time Hired Blades were mounted).

I think that the whole idea behind mercenaries as they are doesn't really work, gameplay wise.
Watchmen are possibly the one unit that can be moderately useful: they are cheap even with the extra cost factored in and are handy as garrison troops, where you need some low tier troops; they may spawn with crossbows, which makes them capable of actually scoring a few kills in a attack.

But the rest?
They are definitely worse than same level faction troops, either because of their skills or because of their lack of equipment.
The idea that they may be a stopgap when you need troops in a hurry hardly finds a real application in game: when you are in that situation, it's highly unlikely that half a dozen Hired Blades will make any difference. It could be different if one were able to recruit them in tens at a time... but then again, the hiring cost would be ridiculous.

So, what use may they have?
In my games, I modify mercenaries so that they cost 25% more. They are slightly less powerful and well equipped than similar faction troops: say, 5th tier troops have power stats at 4 instead of 5, their armour is somewhat less strong, cavalry gets Hunters and Warhorses instead of the Warhorses and Chargers of Swadian Knights, etc.
This way, mercenaries can actually be worth it: you may use them to supplement your faction troops in a field were they are lacking (Nords and Rhodoks are a prime example); they cost more, but you don't get morale penalties.

Just to clarify what I meant.

Well, this is a pretty well done mod.
I love how you made faction troops easy to tell apart, using both item styles and color patterns: it makes the battlefield much more immersive!
Also, I thank you from the bottom of my heart for not giving all the troops overpowered stats... looks like that's fashionable, in most mods. 

A few suggestions:
You may want to look into the non-faction troops to revamp them a bit. If you are interested, here are a few of the things I usually do:
- Make the Outlaw trees more reasonable: it's just stupid to see a Sea Raider "upgrade" to a Nord Recruit; same goes for the other Outlaws. If one wants to keep Outlaws upgrading into faction troops, they should upgrade to a troop that actually has a higher level then their present level!
- Look into the mercenary troop tree to make them actually useful: when compared to their higher upkeep and recruiting cost, their skills are hardly worth it, even when you are in a rush for troops.
- Manhunters and Sword Sisters: being so rare to recruit, they could use some restyling. Both tend to be useless until you upgrade them to the highter tier (especially Sword Sisters).

AvionSpirited said:

Maan said:

As much as I find this mod very well done and very interesting, I count myself in the number of those who find the various "real world references"... odd.
About troops in particular, I'd rather have them named in some descriptive way (like in Native) rather than some unintelligible (for me, at least) language.

How about an option to remove those from dialogue and rename troops/items?

Or can someone point me to some submod that does that?

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Its actually quite easy to tell them apart.If you are talking only about the names,then yes,it will be difficult to know who's who.But I found it very interesting.You might already know the 'codenames' of every unit.This codename contains what type of unit it is.As far as I know from experience,they are:
*C1 -1st tier of Cavalry
*I7-7th tier of Infantry
*H5-5th tier of Horse archers,etc....

It might not be the exact definitions,but after observation,its really easy to understand.Of course the names will be hard to get used to.But to think how much historical accuracy there is!I recommend you familiarize with the codenames(unless you haven't),and just try to associate them with it.As for any submods or anything, I don't know of any that could help you.

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That's helpful, thank you!

But about "historical accuracy"... that's precisely my issue: I expect real-world references in a total conversion, but I find them out of place in good-ole Calradia.
Oh, well...

As much as I find this mod very well done and very interesting, I count myself in the number of those who find the various "real world references"... odd.
About troops in particular, I'd rather have them named in some descriptive way (like in Native) rather than some unintelligible (for me, at least) language.

How about an option to remove those from dialogue and rename troops/items?

Or can someone point me to some submod that does that?

Tocan said:

http://www.nexusmods.com/mbwarband/mods/2329/?

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Thanks!

Idibil said:

http://forums.taleworlds.com/index.php/topic,154472.0.html 

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Yup.
Don't know if it's just a issue of mine, but when I click to the link for the "women faces" in the main download page (http://mountandblade.nexusmods.com/mods/2329) I just end up with a "page not available" error.

The link for that download seems to be down, though. 

Tocan said:

Crille said:

I really dislike the floris mod because of all their ''graphical enhancements'' (discussable) and billion items etc. etc.
Native mod compilation is the perfect mod imo.

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entirely my opinion 

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Same here.

Most mods of that kind have nice ideas, but always end up overdoing it. Not this one, and that's why I'm eager for a new release.

I'm playing with Diplomacy 4.3 these days and haven't met even a single crash.

I'm using the "ready to play" download, since I'm not a modder.

Under_the_Storm said:

DanAngleland said:

Interesting ideas, but the Khergits, however they lived outside Calradia, invaded and took over the Calradian towns that they now possess, so it makes sense that they control them. Many (maybe all) major nomadic invasions in history result in the nomads running cities, including of course the Mongols. In fact sedentary civilisations were sometimes the descendants, or ruled by the descendants, of nomadic invaders (I think Persia is a good example of this, if I remember rightly nomads invaded, supplanted the previous rulers and were eventually replaced themselves by later nomadic invasions). That said, a purely nomadic faction would be a cool addition to the series. If they wanted the devs could move the timeline forwards or back and have the Kherigts be a faction without cities (maybe with decisions to be made on how they govern cities once they do capture them during gameplay).

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Good point! As the devs said something about giving us "more of Calradia" it wouldn't be too farfetched to actually include the nomadic khergits; or maybe even another culture that is nomadic. Baheshtur talks about the khergits coming over the mountains, "growing soft" in their cities and eventually succumb to a new generation of khergits that come from over the mountains. In this instance he only names them as khergits but the nomads that live past the mountain could in theory be many different tribes and/or cultures. (Compare to the "barbarian" hordes that brought upon the fall of west rome). So I think the inclusion of a nomadic faction is plausible, even without changing the timeframe that much.

However; if they do change the timeframe say forward, could mean they somehow try to include the idea that Calradia actually was united again (as if by the player). Maybe we'll actually see a new bigger map, with a united Calradia, the land or islands the Nords came from, this "mystical" Geroia and several other countries around. Interesting.
But I certainly hope they think of making other differences between the cultures than just the appearence of towns and soldiers, no matter how big and different the new map will be!

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Nevertheless, the basic suggestion is very valid: M&B needs more depth in its world.
Right now, all the factions actually play and feel the same. Only things changing are troops and clothes worn by city/village workers. You have the same (somewhat shallow) politics, same improvements, etc.

Since someone mentioned X3: that game has a lot M&B could use as thought-fodder.

Immagine a less static world, where you can actually build lots of things on the map: build a lumberjack camp near the forests, a farm in the plains, a mine in the mountain... maybe even road with inns, fords/bridges that charge tolls, and the like.
Now, you have caravans moving goods from and to this places. Armed patrols protecting the caravans/routes.
Over time, you can improve them. A farm could first be fortified against raids, then grow into a full sized village. A ford could become a bridge, then a fortified bridge. You could build a mountain fort/castle and charge tolls from whoever cross it.
Now, think all of this... with the AI doing it. The world evolving while you play. How many possibilities would that open?
Also, that would accomodate for different styles of play. You could build a road to help caravan move faster, because you are a merchant prince; or you could build them for military reasons.

Sure, building the AI to manage things *this* complex is a pain in the ass, I know. Still, that would add a *lot* more gameplay value to the game. Right now, things are so static...

orome said:

i remembered one option I would like to see. I would like to be a vassal who has suverenity over some area, and some sort of my own swear lords. it is known thing in middle age, if some lord is powerfull enough, he will spread his influence over near lords and become some kind of higher lord of realm. it is well known each big empire has high level lords, and minor lords. maybe, I can give them troops, persuade them to follow me, persuade new lord to join my brotherhood. this idea is like affiliation option from Diplomacy, only with much more options and meaning. it can be started when character get married with some lord daughter.

my opinion is that this can be only lord who has big renown, honour, wealth and military power, strong House of realm.

what do you think guys?

sorry about english...

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That would be good. A more articulated system of nobility, with nobles forming more or less cohesive groups, like factions into factions. So that they would act like N nobles together instead of the single "lord X" changing faction or whatever.
More political complexity would be a boon... for me, at least.