Recent content by Sithrain

I have to wonder why slashing polearms are even useable on horseback, I'm pretty sure trying a sidelong halberd swipe from the back of a charging horse would be foolish and dangerous. Maybe I'm wrong and cavalry the world over just used sabers and lances for centuries because that's what the cool kids were doing.

I think most people want verisimilitude from the game, not veracity. For instance there are no romans in the game, thus it is fine for the Calradian empire to be somewhat different from the Roman or the Byzantine because you didn't put those in the game. You did put armour in the game though, and swords and bows and spears and horses and so long as those things feel like the real life equivalents we are familiar with it all works out.

If we suddenly decide that Calradian swords have an accurate throwing range of 100 meters you can't very well say that they don't because none of us have ever thrown a Calradian sword, but I think most people would agree that would detract from the setting unless you set up a specific reason why it should be so. Similarly it may be that armour in Calradia is only minimally protective, but you should probably present a reason for that within your game world before players find out that a hundred-thousand denar suit of steel has the protective qualities of wet cardboard or some of them are likely to be annoyed.

This whole dynamic of vassals demanding wars is just completely backwards to me. I can't recall reading about too many instances where unrest and rebellion (amongst the nobility) was caused by a king letting all his nobles get fat and rich off their lands, while there are plenty of examples of kings getting themselves mired in crisis because they kept the men out of the fields too long, or just got too many of them killed for some piece of real estate they were probably going to give out to their cousin anyway.

To my mind when discontent vassals decide they want a fight it should be a rebellion against their king not a war of aggression against a (usually) much stronger neighbour, and it should be determined by how prosperous the king keeps his realm, not by the fact that they have now hit clan tier 6 and obviously deserve more lands than there are in the kingdom. Then a good ruler would want to have periods of peace and would want to keep the enemy from burning every village in the realm fifteen times when wars do happen. I don't think the ai has any awareness that economic growth is actually a thing though, which would explain a lot.

Honved said:

A workable solution has already been offered. By limiting the AI to ONLY taking castles or towns ADJACENT to their territory (or on the same coastline as their own territory), the AI can only raid behind enemy lines, not conquer. The nonsensical taking of distant castles that can't be protected, and the roaming around of multiple enemy armies deep in hostile territory, would be eliminated or at least minimized.

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This is pretty clearly the next baby step. When we see working proof that the ai knows what a border is, then I will start to believe it can maybe handle zones of control. It's not that I don't like the idea, I'm just not sure that its 'actually very easy to implement'.

Really? What exactly? I have never seen it.

I didn't mind waiting for the modding tools originally but at this point I'm probably not playing again until they are out. I can't fault TW for the pace of their updates, but often as not they are taking things in completely the wrong direction for me.

mr_nifty said:

Make units able to instantly know the reach of each allies weapon that is in use within a proximity of say 2 meters, and keep out of that range automatically, to not block friendly attacks. Make them aware of close by enemies weapon range (especially its target) and make the AI stay out of that reach. Make ranged (if they aren't already) able to distinguish friend and foe while aiming and avoid shooting allies. I think they kind of do it but I am not sure.

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I'm no expert on programming but that sounds very cpu intensive. Remember it has to be done for each of 500 or 1000 men, and done repeatedly to keep up with all of them moving around. Total war has units move in relation to each other by picking a central point for each unit and then having units interact based on where that is. This becomes pretty transparent when units get split up routing and you're trying to chase them down. It works for Total War because there's a maximum of 80 units in play at any given time, they are just represented by many more figures. M&B requires each unit on the field to be capable of fighting individually, so it's a much different beast.

In Warband at least diplomacy worked and the ai did things other than war forever, I expected the sequel to have at least matching functionality. Now I'm not mad about it and I don't want a refund or anything, but I DO want everyone and his brother giving as much feedback as possible until we get that matching functionality. If we don't, in the absence of a roadmap from TW we have no reason to expect that the things we care about will be in the final release. In fact if we shut up about all our concerns there is a very good chance they will be left by the wayside in favour of whatever someone else shouts about. Look at autoblock. This is clearly the way most singleplayer Warband fans expected to play the game, and I have seen more refunds over that issue than anything else by far, but because there was only an MP beta before EA the fact that this was a core mechanic for so many seems to have completely blindsided the devs. Getting mad is not useful, being rude is never helpful, but giving feedback is actually vital at this stage if we all want the final product to be any good.

ShotgunJed said:

Did everyone just forget about how Battanians have the same racial trait but in the forest?

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Battanians can't field effective cav-only armies. No one can except the Khuzaits really, if they could the Khuzait armies wouldn't be outrunning everyone and causing this problem in the first place.

Content is king, especially when you are lacking elements you need to balance. Take the snowballing issue, until the diplomatic elements are in the game we can't really know how to balance the factions ideally because they are presumably not behaving as they will once they use diplomacy. It doesn't help that they have been doing a terrible job with balance to date anyway, apparently just nerfing anything players actually use.

abc123456 said:

Passive income that cannot go negative is a problem. It's just maths. If you have a workshop or caravan that gives +50 gold and you get 5 of them and wait, eventually you will get a lot of money.

The problem is that there is no threat to reduce passive income, so it is just an additive income forever.

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That's simply not true, caravans can be attacked and workshops can be destroyed. Even if it were so the amount of income you get is far from game breaking when you consider how rapidly you can make money by selling off gear. M&B has always had forms of passive income for people who don't want to play warmongers and that should remain an option. I mean I could easily argue that because enemies respawn endlessly, they present an infinite potential pool of money and therefore are broken and should be removed. It's just maths.

I don't think it makes any sense that you need higher skill to use a better weapon or armour. In reality it is quite the opposite, you need to be more skilled to use an inferior weapon effectively.

Personally I don't feel passive income is the problem, quite the opposite. Even if I can make a few thousand per day, it's peanuts compared to what you rake in by constantly fighting and looting because equipment prices are absurd.

Trading them isn't profitable, but if you somehow manage to max out your smithing skill the weapons you can make sell for absurd amounts of coin.

I really really hope we don't get the game messed up by this mmo-inspired gear progression nonsense. There IS no mystical awesome endgame armour, there's just paying hundreds of thousands for the same stuff that a hundred of your high tier troops are already wearing. If they add mystical quality unobtanium armour then fine, it can cost more than a castle, but a player should never be wondering a week into their playthrough if they can restart as one of their hirelings who happens to have better gear and better skills than they do after 20 hours. M&B has always been a setting where that kickass endgame weapon is an army, not a sword.