Recent content by Walker

Looting:

For .951 did the loot tables just change for the 'Looters' group? 
In .950 there was almost nothing to be got from killing them, with or without the looting skill.  In .951 they are walking piles of yummy, yummy loot beef, furs etc.  Essentially cash cows, even when my looting skill is 0.  Is this intentional?

Definitely not harder or easier.

Has anyone seen the all foot tournament that was in .950?  I ran into it in Sargoth and figured it was a 'unique' tournament for sargoth.  The teams had slightly different colors and it was all infantry with either shield and sword or two handed sword.  It was neat, but the team combats were brutal because if your teammates suck you get overrun in a short minute.

I have to say tournaments are probably my favorite feature in .95x  Tons of fun, a really good showcase for some of the things that make this game very good.

Merentha said:

SnoeiSchaaR said:

Markus II said:

Well, I was going to add Whores to 867 A.D., but I couldn't find a game-related reason to do it...

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Troops morale 

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This is actually quite true.  Hiring prostitutes for your men (or giving them cash to do so) should increase morale. 

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And I thought that was why you killed the farmers and only  knocked out the peasant women in the traveling party... prisoners, and if they join you you can upgrade them to camp followers... Never got a morale bonus from it though, maybe you should, but I try to keep some around at all times. although with the BoW mod they can become rangers, and they sort of rock.

There is also some kind of timer on those quests.  They can only be given at certain intervals.  Someone more knowledgable than me would have to tell you exactly what those intervals are and how they apply to individual villages.

To join a faction you only need to improve the relations with the King.  Doing missions for the King will do that.  If you have negative relations you may have to start coming to the aid of their caravans and/or troops when they are fighting opposing forces - which raises your relation with the kingdom as a whole.

Also to join a faction you need a renown over 160.

I believe the formula for joining from scratch is 160 - (Relations with the King * multiplier) 
It's around here somewhere.  Do a search.

There was a thread around somewhere... don't recall where, that basically concluded that the optimal # of horses for max speed was 9.  Any more and you get no benefit from anything over 9.  That info may of course be outdated.  Morale, force composition, etc. also affect your movement.

Sorry for being late to the party, but I woke up in the middle of the night after having had fun trying to solo deserter parties (BoW mod) yesterday evening and realized a couple of things about this post that bugged me... in particular the stamina bar suggestion.  So no waking me up at three am with stamina bars again, ok?  Anyways, here are my comments.

Oh, and when I get bored, I just play solo for as long as I can handle it.  Soloing BoW is difficult because the party sizes are much higher.

GormanConall said:

But as is now if you want to win you just need a huge calvary only army. Anything else is a waste, Course i don't play that way because i actually want it to be fun and challenging.

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Yepp, huge cavalry only army is great for sieges... not.  Also great for mountain fights or fighting Rhodoks... not.
/sarcasm
As many other people have said: Cavalry is strong, but not the end-all, be-all you make it out to be.  That being said, more of an economic balancer for mounted troops would make sense.  Unless they are mounted on Steppe horse which don't need fancy-schmancy food to survive.

GormanConall said:

I love the combat in this game but of course it needs improvement. I can name a ton of stuff of the top of my head. I thought about making a thread in suggestions but i feared i may be lynched  .

A stamina: bar for some actions

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Why?  The stamina bar is one place - in your head.  One lapse of attention or misjudgment of an angle and you are toast.  HPs and armor are a crutch that make up for your stamina when it lapses.  This was the one thing that made me post here... I find that 'stamina' for your character should be your own (mental) stamina.  Which is the way it works out now. 
Now obviously as a mechanics balancer if you want a bunch of special moves and stuff... fine.  But it would be a mechanic to balance a bunch of powerful functions that you want to include, not something that the combat engine inherently needs because just adding a stamina bar adds nothing to the game whatsoever as far as I can tell.

GormanConall said:

Sprint: run fast for short period of time could also do a running attack.
Dive: mostly to get the hell out of the way of cavalry.
Power attack for two handed weapons: Could drain stamina and leave your self open but do more damage and maybe knock down somebody blocking with a one handed weapon.
Duck/crouch Evasive move for avoiding side way attacks and crouching down with a shield to guard against arrows better.
Side step and back step: For avoiding the over head and stab attacks.
Forward step: To close the distance between you and an enemy.

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See other posters. 

GormanConall said:

Spears should have some kind of move to stop horses

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Already in the game.  Stab it in the chest.  Timing is essential, just as it is in real life... also works great with two-handed sword thrusts.

GormanConall said:

I think arrows should have some kind of effect depending on where it hits. That might not work though so its not a big deal. But somebody who survives a javling should have some kind of effect on their movement.

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Yepp, movement impairment would be nifty, but probably too difficult to model properly without nasty effects on CPU performance.

GormanConall said:

Out of all those however i think the side stepping forwarding stepping and back stepping is a must.

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Presses the W button... hmm... and the S button... hmm... *blink* Yepp, forward and back.
On a less sarcastic note - I think the Athletics skill covers increased speed - so raising it will let you use that kind of maneuvers more effectively.

GormanConall said:

I could easily name about 100 more. Regardless i still love the combat though.

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I like the combat system a lot because it is simple, relies on your attention and skill and not simple button mashing.  You actually have to be aware of time and space, and use them effectively.  This is something not too many games these days manage to do well.  Mostly time and space are trumped by mashing buttons and 'special' skills/abilities etc.

GormanConall said:

But i would love the ability to make groups. Like say put my Nord recruits in a group and my watch men in another group. And command them those groups seperatly rather then commanding all infantry at once.

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Yepp, send if off to the suggestions forum... I'd love that.  Especially being able to designate which groups troops belong to...

I suspect that one of the reasons that the FAQs have not been updated recently is the, fairly, accurate release date for the full version as well as the suspicions (as mentioned by Slyer) that some features will probably be returning quite soon.  Hard to be motivated to sit down and write a FAQ for something that is clearly an intermediate version where a lot of things have been pulled just to, most likely, be put back in.

I don't presume to speak for others, but these things certainly crossed my mind after feeling an urge to update some FAQs to help other people out of the outdated FAQ morass that bugged me when I started.

This recommendation isn't on Medieval warfare per se, but is definitely related to the field:

Grossman, Dave "On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society" http://www.amazon.com/Killing-Psychological-Cost-Learning-Society/dp/0316330116  Although it's focus and research is all based on modern warfare I think it's highly applicable to any study of warfare in general.

I'd be curious if anyone can recommend articles that are available in the major academic journals and would be accessible through JSTOR etc.  Finding good articles or even knowing what to search for is tricky and since I have access through my old uni it's a pretty good source considering the absence of a good library around here.

This may be a misspelling, or a short form of a different term.

Obudshær

Opp buds hær              - Litteral trans. Call-up army.
Up - message/call - army (very rough trans.

Now I'm using Norwegian to interpret here, not Danish, but it should be close in this case.

Now a quick google search only turned up this:  http://www.federatio.org/mi_bibl/VinceSulyok_UngarnsHistorie.pdf - which is a history of Hungary translated into Norwegian.
In that document it  would seem to refer to a call up or levy force consisting of nobles. 
My suspicion would be that the TW people used a generic type word to give the appropriately balanced troop a 'unique' name.  If the troop type is based on reality it'll be some kind of feudal levy, that can be called on short notice.  But that is just an educated guess based on the Hungarian references and not anything I've found about Danish troops.

In any case I would need access to historical journals to figure out if there is anything else around.  Obviously searching the original term gives you all the TW sites, and being completely unfamiliar with that game I can't get any wheat out of that chaff.

Training an army:

1. Training skill - it stacks across heroes.  Two L3 trainers give L3x2 (not L6) xp as far as I can tell.  It is a very good idea to have training on your character as you level the fastest and eventually will be able to train troops to the end of their tree.

2. Missions - Doing static missions (Caravan escort, Village Bandits, Kidnapped Daughter, etc.) - These usually give xp + cash, and are good good for training low level troops out of their infancy.

3. Bandits - In particular medium size (10-15) groups with captives - Don't run with maxed out troop numbers if you can avoid it, and hire the captives.  Big bands and mounted bandits are good for xp, but can hurt you more than it's worth.  Sea Raiders are ideal if you're training mounted troops (Caravan Guards/Mercs/Knights)

Specific unit types:

1. Cavalry - Sea Raiders/Nords - or any infantry only group are great.
2. Archers - Match them with cavalry and watch your terrain.  Not a good idea to take on mounted opponents if your archers are low level and/or the terrain is flat or without obstacles.
3. Infantry - If you have the terrain with you: cavalry opponents. If not, mixed units - try to avoid Nords/Sea raiders as they are good infantry.  Mountain bandits and bandits in villages are great.  Village defense is a good place to blood medium level infantry.

You should avoid taking really low level units - farmers, peasants, recruits and similar into real battles.  Your training skills and missions should handle those levels.  If not your attrition rates will be very high.

Other good ideas:

- High surgery skill - keeps your units from dying and therefore will let them keep the experience they get.
- First Aid - Returns your units to battle faster.

Bad ideas:

- Unsupported archers - They will die.
- Taking on cavalry units with little/no cavalry of your own, bad terrain (for you), no polearm/spear units.

Hope that helps.

Others, please correct me if I'm off in space about this.

Wow, thanks Darian.  The summary was much appreciated.  Also your troop tables were very interesting, some cool themes you can use there.  Definitely will have a long look at different recruiting strategies for fun stuff next play. 

EasyCo and Riptokus, thank you for your replies.  You answered most helpfully. 

As for 7.  Starting analysis:  I meant in the sense that the FAQs usually cover some sort of 'class' system that was implemented in previous versions, while now the choices you make for starting background have no analysis I've seen in terms of starting skills, weapon proficiency and attribute placement.  I haven't had the time to go through and do the analysis myself, so I was hoping someone else had 

And thanks for the heads-up on the runaway workaround.  That is very sweet.  I feel that often the running away is very counter intuitive unless they are bandits or solid enemies.  Just as the hiring of captured prisoners is counter intuitive when they are enemies.  That's of course awfully simplified, as there are always conflicting loyalties, but unless loyalty data is tracked for troops it's not particularly relevant.

The only thing missing was a link to the 'future feature' list... would help clear up a lot of questions in terms of whether something is a bug/feature or unimplemented.  I think I'm going to try out the mod world that had all the 'old' features that are taken out.  Slave caravans sound cool, as do dark knights.

Again thank you for taking the time to answer my questions, most appreciated.