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Beta Patch Notes v1.1.0
There is tremendous potential in the various new settlement mechanics TW have introduced. Prior to the 1.1 update, I had noted that pretty much all the settlements had alleys and backstreets which were blocked off with junk. It seems that some (but not all) of those avenues were opened up with 1.1 and the new gang alley system. My hunch is that most all of these systems are Works in Progress and there are bigger long term plans for all of them.
There are also many doors in settlements which appear graphically very similar to those which have a functioning "F" hit box (such as the tavern, the arena and quest givers doors). There are a lot of other doors which do not look as realistic and distinctive compared to the wall in which they are mounted. This leads me to surmise that there are likely long term plans pertaining to interiors in settlements too?- Anthropoid
- 帖子 #448
- 论坛: The Citadel - General Discussion
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Custom Troops
It has been a good while since you posted this bbaydogdu, and you may not even be active on here any longer. But maybe you are and maybe you can help me to find some answers/resolutions to my current issue (which I suspect is related to MLW).Use My Little Warband and be happy. Don't ask TW about things they don't care. Though it make sense for you to do that since you're the ultimate TW defender of this forum
- Anthropoid
- 帖子 #62
- 论坛: The Citadel - General Discussion
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TaleWorlds Modding Q&A
I am seeking some guidance on trouble shooting an issue with a modded build. I did a search on "My Little Warband" and found a recent mention of it and asked there. But in the interest of increasing my chance of getting guidance I shall quote myself and ask here too:
- Anthropoid
- 帖子 #110
- 论坛: The Smithy - Mod Development
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So many abandoned modifications
Yeah the modders are great, they deserve a lot of praise.
Anyone who makes a mod that proves to be useful is a literal hero among us, and deserves nothing but praise, whether their mod is low quality, broken or abandoned.- Anthropoid
- 帖子 #63
- 论坛: The Citadel - General Discussion
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So many abandoned modifications
I'm using version 1.03 of Bannerlord and installed a mod set inspired by one of Strat Gaming's videos
I also added: Arena Overhaul and Marry Anyone.
Initially, I did not notice any performance issues with this list. I did eventually experience a couple of issues which basically have been addressed: (i) CTDs while in the "My Little Warband" (MLW) troop editor, and (ii) crashes at random times. The latter was corrected by turning off the Realistic Battle Mod Tournament Module (conflicts with Arena Overhaul). The former I avoid by exiting the troop editor, and file saving before going back into the troop editor to continue creating a troop tree. It seems to me that MLW has issues with file writing leading to CTDs.
However, as I've played more hours--and in particular after adding Arena Overhaul and Marry Anyone--I've noticed a new issue for which I have not found any solution: CPU loads go up into the 65 to 75% range in certain scenes: primarily campaign map, settlement menu, and arena. The trade menus, tavern, battle maps (including hideout maps) seem to have more normal CPU loads in the 15 to 25% ballpark.
This is not game breaking, but I really don't like to put that much strain on my machine as a routine. So I'm curious if anyone has any suggestions for resolving the issue?
Should I just experiment with removing mods one by one? Is it possible a change in load order could fix it? is there a particular mod that stands out as the likely cause of the high CPU loads in those particular game renders?
My fear is that MLW is the source, and that bums me out, cause I really like that mod. One hunch is that: it is the troop tree I've built with that mod (the mod basically allows the player to create their own custom troop tree), because, like I said: I didn't notice any heavy CPU activity until I had played for a while. It may be that after I had built out an extensive troop tree that that is what is causing the heavy CPU loads in certain scenes?- Anthropoid
- 帖子 #62
- 论坛: The Citadel - General Discussion
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Beta Patch Notes v1.1.0
Referring to the bolded/italicized part: I have seen similar things happen. Also with the F1 + F4.
In 1.1 there is also some kind of glitch where: when the battle setup starts, either from the very beginning of after the user has reconfigured some formations, part of the user inputs are just not responsive. For example: a battle in which I start the setup with 1 formation of infantry, and one of horse archers. I decide at the outset I want to separate my horse archers into two formations: one with the low tier guys, one with the high tier (let the low tier guys get kills). So I start changing formations around. At some point in this process I realize that the WSAD inputs for the camera are completely unresponsive. The formation selection keys (1, 2,3, etc.) are also completely unresponsive. About the only thing that still works is raise/lower camera from the mouse and spin the camera from the mouse. Generally, the problem seems to "fix itself" eventually, either by simply waiting or by selecting "Reset Deployment" then waiting, but it would be nice if it just didn't happen at all.
Another "glitch" in the battle setups: Lets say I have in Battle 1 nothing but horse archers. However I want to be able to place my character where I want and not grouped in on the rear right flank of the horse archers. So I create a second horse archer formation, drag it to 0/35. Put my character in the captain box, and lock it. Okay cool. Now I fight the battle and everything works okay. But next battle, the game will stick 3 or 4 of the horse archers from formation 1 into formation 2 with me. This should NOT happen. Basically, the game should remember EXACTLY what one's formations were from the previous battle and automatically use the EXACT same ones in the next battle. In the past, it seemed like it did this, even to the point of creating problems that prevented starting the battle (e.g., because troops had upgraded and there were none left to put into a particular formation according to its selection criterion).
One last point about the battle setup: it really should not be necessary to get into a fight to configure this stuff. The player should be able to enter the "Battle Planning" pane at ANY TIME they are on the campaign map and not engaged. Unless your code is just the most incredible garbled spaghetti ever, this should not be a real problem to setup.- Anthropoid
- 帖子 #400
- 论坛: The Citadel - General Discussion
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Beta Patch Notes v1.1.0
Some stuff that is "clunky" in 1.1 . . .
. . . playing vanilla campaign in 1.1. Get a marriage proposal for my older bro: Rustica. Ah yeah, I seem to recall she is one of the more vanilla empire nobles without much skills but quite young so moldable. Still, I'm not so desperate for children that I'll just accept. No option to look her up from the proposal prompt. Type her into the Encyclopedia. Blurred out. Last seen at Phycaon. I drop what I'm doing and head to Phycaon. By the time I get there (from Marunath) the prompt tab is gone and I guess there is no way to respond to the proposal now, so the trip was kind of pointless. There are problems here . . .
My suggestions:
1. ANY proposal from ANY Hero should get saved for a period of time. Maybe it goes into the quest panes? It is absurd that you have to decide RIGHT NOW or the proposal goes defunct.
2. If someone proposes marriage, it should automatically reveal most of the details, or at least the basic ones that are shown from meeting them in person about the proposed spouse.
3. Game in general desperately needs some sort of "messenger" system. Make it cost 1 Denar per kilometer or whatever so it is less abusable. I know there is a mod for that, but it really should be in vanilla.
I'm desperately trying to "beat" the campaign in vanilla at least once, and provide as much feedback as I can, but some of the lack of Quality of Life features makes it seem pretty painful.- Anthropoid
- 帖子 #399
- 论坛: The Citadel - General Discussion
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Beta Patch Notes v1.1.0
In my experience, an "experimental branch" can be extremely beneficial to the development of a game. One title in particular stands out to me: Empyrion Galactic Survival. It took them YEARS to get that game to where it is today, and during that entire time frame, they were engaging to a moderate degree with their community--mostly on their forums. Experimental branches gradually became more and more important as a means for the developers to put out some of the latest features or changes or expansions to the game and let only those highly engaged community members who wanted to be "experimented on" engage with it. Many, MANY times over the years things which were partially or even fully implemented were revealed to be problematic through experimental user feedback and then changed before stable release. There were plenty of other times that problems did not get detected, and even sometimes when it seemed the developers basically just ignored feedback; even the most engaged and responsive developers are people too and everyone "makes mistakes." And for that matter, what looks like a "mistake" to an outsider might well have been a highly intentional and well-thought out act by the other.
All we can as users who want to help the game and its communities grow and thrive is offer our feedback. Sometimes we are just wrong and our views don't align with the majority and that is what any business has to aim for: what will move the most units. TW know who their audience is, they wouldn't still be making games if they didn't
But even highly competent professionals can benefit from gentle reminding that it can be useful to listen to your customers.- Anthropoid
- 帖子 #389
- 论坛: The Citadel - General Discussion
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Beta Patch Notes v1.1.0
I have another suggestion for you TW developers, also based on commentary on the Steam discussion. This pertains to the new "Full NPC Fog of War" mechanics in the 1.1 experimental release.
Me personally, I love it. It doesn't make sense that a character in a medieval setting would have SO MUCH information about every character in the land as was the case in previous versions. There is perhaps a need to tweak what information is and is not available (famous people arguably should have a bit more outlines of their identity available right from the beginning), but to me: the new "Full NPC Fog of War" settings as you have them in the 1.1 experimental release are more appropriate than the previous settings.
However, there are many who will disagree vehemently with me (and with your change), and I've already heard from them extensively in the Steam Discussion (just have a look for yourselves). There are two main gists of their grievances: (a) I played the game hundreds or thousands of hours with the previous settings and I prefer it that way (and I would point out to you that, this is an INHERENTLY VALID PERSPECTIVE: you provided the game to them with the previous settings so it is completely natural that they would get accustomed to it that way and come to PREFER IT that way, no matter what you or I might think about what are "better" settings, this perspective simply cannot be refuted and it deserves to be taken seriously); (b) the old system "makes more sense" from a realism/balance/immersion perspective (I won't attempt to debate this point, and don't regard it as inviolable as point (a) but suffice to say, I disagree).
Now this would seem to be a irreconcilable situation, but it most certainly is not. You have an EXTRAORDINARILY easy solution to this problem readily available, and based on my limited experience working in game development, I'd guess it would cost you less than 50 person hours of development work (esp. given that some of the functionality you'd use in the solution already exists in other features in the game already):
Create an option toggle in the game settings that allows a user to choose the level of "NPC Fog of War:" Total | Partial | None (where Total represents roughly the current settings in 1.1, None represented the settings previously and Partial some intermediate degree).
How you would tie each of these settings to difficulty I would not presume to advise you about, though I would point out that if you assign "Bannerlord" difficulty as REQUIRING "TOTAL" NPC Fog of War else it switches the difficulty to "Custom," you may well meet opposition to that as well. I suspect the opposition would be much weaker and more muted, but it would undoubtedly occur.- Anthropoid
- 帖子 #286
- 论坛: The Citadel - General Discussion
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Beta Patch Notes v1.1.0
I have another suggestion pertaining to workshops which arises from this thread on the Steam Discussion boards:
Do the workshops work? :: Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord [EN] General Discussions
Is there a better guide then the ones I have found? I own the Brewery and Pottery in Phycaon. They most they have made together is 16 coin. There is clay in town and grain. Phycaon has two towns in its control one has clay and the other has grain. So why is my brewery and Pottery shop stagnant?steamcommunity.com
My suggestion:
What TW should do to address the widespread confusion about "whether or not workshops are broken" or else badly balanced, is to include additional information in the information pane that allow the user to see WHY the thing is performing badly or not. Is the raw material not plentiful enough? Is it too expensive? Is the demand for the finished product too low? Is the selling price too low? Just this basic information would allow the player to examine their situation more closely to try to determine what they might do to alleviate it, and improve the performance of their workshop. Pretty simple stuff really.
However, there are additional layers which could be addressed in the game design too. Presently, a player has a few options to assist their workshops to make money.
Probably the least "accessible" is to end wars and/or to restore order to the settlement and nearby villages, but this is more of a mid to late game approach, and by then workshops are probably not that important. Quest-like undertakings, or agreements with notables that could address such issues could help.
One can buy up all the end product from one's workshop in a given settlement and cart if off to sell at a profit. This will increase demand for that product and should in a few days or so assist with the passive income calculations by the workshop itself.
One can sell lots of the raw material into the local market and that should reduce "overhead" (as I put it in that Steam thread).
One can buy competitor workshops in the same or nearby settlements and change what they sell (again more of a late-early or early-middle strategy, so quest-like game mechanics which allow the player to achieve "undercut the competition" types of effect for periods of time would enhance workshops).
There is great potential in the current economic system in the game and the way the workshops can articulate with it. But it is not sufficiently represented in the game UI that players can make good sense of it, and the game play potentials are only partly realized.- Anthropoid
- 帖子 #261
- 论坛: The Citadel - General Discussion
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Beta Patch Notes v1.1.0
After many years of playing no Taleworld's titles, I have come back to purchase and play Bannerlord. Steams says I'm up to 283 hours. After several restarts I've settled into a playthrough which I hope to stick with for the long haul, and perhaps conquer the map from the Campaign start (Bannerlord difficulty, Ironman mode, 1.1 version). I've seen very few "bugs," and overall the game is a fantastic expansion on the M&B series. I've had only two CTDs. I have yet to do much in the way of sieging or large field battles though, so I have not seen the full range of situations the game can offer. There are of course areas which are a bit barebones, but that is not what I'm posting about. What I am going to focus on here are very basic design issues, largely having to do with UI and UX which IMO should be demarcated as vitally important simply because they will please almost everyone, annoy almost no one and extend the play time of many who are "hard-core" players who spend hundreds of hours playing. I have not explored any mods yet, and I hope to finish the game at least once completely vanilla before modding the game. IMO, the features I will note here should be part of the vanilla game, even if they are already available from mods.
1. Capacity to instruct EXACTLY which soldier goes into each formation. Having precise control over soldier types would be nice, but to be honest, just giving us a list of EVERY soldier in a force and the ability to select, multi-select, rubber band, drag-and-drop them into the formation shouldn't be asking that much. This is 2023, and this sort of UI technology was already well established 15 or 20 years ago. The current "coarse" system you have may be fine for NPC forces, but the player needs to have COMPLETE CONTROL.
2. Features in the Smithy pane which allow actions which presently might take 20 or 40 mouse clicks to be completed in only two to four mouse-clicks. Again: 15 to 20 year old standards for UI/UX. It is understandable that this was not put on top priority previously, but at this point, you have players complaining about stuff like this, and effectively eschewing certain aspects of game play or even eschewing playing the game entirely (and even worse, going into communities to derogate the game) simply because of little annoyances like having to click hundreds of times when the app could provide an "All" or an "Until Exhausted" or an "Ctrl + Left Mouse" to do in increments of 10 and a "Shift + Left Mouse" to do in increments of 100 . . .
3. Much more control over parties that are led by NPCs in one's clan. "Defensive/Offensive/Neutral" feels like filler, and there seems to be almost zero benefit to allocating troops to an NPC clan member in a second party. Even calling them to an army seems to be questionable based on some commenters.
-=-=-=-=-=-
Those to me are the things that stick out as "most annoying" after 283 hours of vanilla play. There are quite a few other "Quality of Life" changes, as well as some basic game design changes that I would like to see. But those tend to be less serious, or else more matters of opinion. If the above issues are implemented as "additional options" to current UX (and don't break any existing features or functionalities) then I don't see how you can go wrong to address these issues.
I will however, include a link to a Steam Discussion I started called "Little Things that Annoy" which lists these things among others, and has a few respondents (so you can see, it isn't just me).
Little Things that Annoy . . . :: Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord [EN] General Discussions
Join me in listing the little things about the game that annoy. Lets keep straight up rants about how terrible the game is completely out of this thread please. If you like the game, and think it is overall "good," but have some "little things" that annoy, jump in. 1. If you kill an archer in...
On the whole: great game! Well done TaleWorlds!- Anthropoid
- 帖子 #258
- 论坛: The Citadel - General Discussion
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Ukraine Today
Responding to the first bolded italicized part: no opposition media; no opposition political parties; no organized dissent against the ruling regime; copious examples of dissidents who were either murdered, or forced to flee abroad, or forced to flee abroad and then murdered, or just turned up dead in weird circumstances; a ruler who very likely bombed his own people to create a war drum context to assist with getting (probably, mostly) legitimately elected for his first run at President, and then has progressively used every possible trick to insure his progressive victories as well as recurrent adjustments to laws that would prevent him from holding office recurrently; the same guy has been effectively supreme leader of the Russian Federation for ~20 something years (honestly not that many tinpot African dictators ever managed to last that long, Robert Mugabe aside . . .); a State Media which makes Goebbels Ministry of Truth seem tame--constant ranting and raving about nuking anyone and everyone who opposes them, etc.; 15 years in prison for calling the war a war; homosexuality illegal . . . a system which is corrupt at seemingly every level (a blessing in disguise now that the effects of all that corruption that depleted Russian military capacity is coming into pay) . . . those are just the most basic things which come to mind immediately. I reckon that an actual unbiased Russian scholar would be able to write an entire book about all the ways in which the Putin regime is actually much WORSE than the Soviet Union (Khrushchev was replace by the party because he was deemed to be a loose cannon, but I don't see any "committee" or parliamentary body or ANY force other than a bullet being placed between his eyes by one of his trusted bodyguards holding Putin accountable). Putin has only just got started, as Althix was all to eager to point out: You Ukrainians are not the actual "enemy," it is effectively "the world" or at least that portion of it which eschews Russian supremacy and dominance . . . this is your standard ethno-supremacist, irredentism common to many totalitarian or authoritarian worldviews down through the centuries, with the Nazis being just one of the most egregious examples.Pandora Papers, you mean. He was name-dropped in the report because right before the 2019 election he transferred his stake in an offshore company to one of his aides. But his business before that time was not connected to public finances or administrative power so that's not some kind of state-level corruption. Good enough as far as Eastern European presidents go. When he's caught in corruption while in the office, he's out that's for sure.
I don't know if that's good. This works with authoritarian regimes. You remove the tyrant and that does it.
But have Russia taken the totalitarian turn? Is the majority of the population now beaten into a frenzy and asking for total war? It's actually a possibility, we don't know for sure.
This is what a lot of Russians think. And that is where it might be too late to make any appeasements.
Doesn't it rhyme loud enough for western people to finally get it?
We have a very large European country that was shunned and humiliated by western leaders for a few decades (due to its own previous actions, but still). Resentment is brewing, dreams are dreamt of bringing back the golden age and replaying the recently lost war but winning this time. The established world order, where they are losers, is reviled and they need to bring it down.
They break all the international laws that kept the West at peace. On the pretense of consolidating lands where people who speak the same language live they engulf several European countries before the war is even declared. All the way as they do it they claim that they are actually resisting British and French evil imperialism. Finally, they attack Poland and the big war starts.
It will play out the exact same way this time with Russia. Why does it always have to be Poland?
When someone tells you he's waging war against you, you need to take it seriously or you're caught with your pants down. We've learned it the hard way, but in the West they seem to think they'll be able to sit this one out. Well, guess again. Unless of course, we manage to beat Russia back on our own. But that would be a decade-long slaughter. And if we lose, Russia gets a new foothold and millions of soldiers to bolster its army.
And don't you hope for Russia to be too exhausted to continue. Russians are used to poverty and they will have their rockets and tanks built alright. Look at Iran and they don't even have half the Russia's potential
So there's a simple conclusion: you can't just replace Putin and pretend nothing happened. Many events will have to transpire and many things will have to change yet.
It seems to me that Putin is about where Hitler was on the scale of "threat to humanity" by about 1937 or 1938. Arguably, because Russian Federation has a gigantic nuclear arsenal, Putin is many orders of magnitude worse than Hitler ever managed to be, at least in terms of potential threat to humanity.
I have serious doubts that, even if Putin decided to deploy a nuke, the order would follow through to the NCO or low lever officer(s) who actually flip the switch . . . If he were to attempt such a thing, I suspect there is already a pact among individuals close to him that they WILL take him out, because sane people understand that nuclear weapons are useless for anything except committing suicide, or perhaps at best "playing Russian roulette." This is precisely why the damn things have only been used TWICE in combat since they were first developed in 1945.
Responding to the second bolded-italicized part. The USSR fell apart with very little actual fighting. I realize it was all very complicated, and when the time comes that the Putin regime falls apart it is likely to also be very complicated, probably more messy, and possibly more protracted. Or it may not happen at all. Maybe Putin outlives all of us, and manages to live out his dream: to bring the Russian Empire back to its glory and even beyond that.
There are very few visible Russian leaders who dissent against Putin, but I think there are plenty of Russians who oppose Putin, so the question is: how can we assist them?
- Anthropoid
- 帖子 #8,747
- 论坛: The Anachronist's Guild - Off-Topic Chat
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Ukraine Today
Based on what I know about Russian history, culture and society, there is much of great merit and which deserves great admiration. But these "heroic" features, and the tens of millions of heroic "everyday Russians" seem to have always been subject to institutions of power which thrive on cultures of anti-merit and anti-humanism.
Putin it seems is the zenith of this despicable dominant set of forces which prevent freedom and the realization of Russian societies full potential.
From my standpoint, Putin needs to be removed, not just for the sake of NATO or the EU or even "the West" but for the entirety of humanity, including the vast majority of most Russians (setting aside the small fraction of oligarchs who continue to benefit disproportionately from the Putin regime). Whether his removal is by his death or his incarceration and trial for war crimes seems largely immaterial, he needs to go. I was convinced as much as early as 2008 (after he gave his "NATO is bad . . . fall of the Soviet Union was the greatest catastrophe speech"), much less when he invaded Ukraine and annexed Crimea in 2014. I am definitely firmly in the "Putin must go," camp today, and thankfully it seems that more and more Western leaders are awakening to this reality. None of us can be safe and secure in a world with a nation possessing a massive nuclear arsenal which is led by a monster like Putin. Putin's regime also needs to be dismembered and measures taken to prevent this type of genocidal maniac from ever again gaining control of Russia, its military and its nuclear arsenal. Certainly Russia as a society and as a nation must remain, and should be nurtured into its full potential; Freedom for Russians and all people! But this means necessarily "Death to all Orcs," meaning anyone who heartily supports Putin and his ethnocentric, supremacist, irredentist clap-trap. Putin is not only a modern day Hitler, he is much WORSE than Hitler because he has shown himself much more adept at the long-game, at diversified efforts toward imperialism and he is heavily armed with nukes. Thankfully, like most dictators, he seems to have promulgated so much corruption (a tool to keep underlings vulnerable and himself rich) that he has at least in part come to dwell in an echo chamber. The fact that his plans for this takeover for Ukraine were at the outset so severely detached from reality would be hilarious if not for the massive suffering and destruction he has caused.
There can be no compromise. Putin has to go.- Anthropoid
- 帖子 #8,739
- 论坛: The Anachronist's Guild - Off-Topic Chat
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Ukraine Today
Critical thinking was deemed heresy by certain elements in the social sciences in the 1960s. That argument has reached its zenith and was the dominant notion on American university campuses when I last worked in such places in around 2010.
That is the problem. When you are indoctrinating people to believe, not to think, then it doesn't matter how "free" their speech or anything else is.
Given events of the last 10 to 20 years, I do not think any solution is promising; which means that there are only two paths ahead: (a) descent into New Totalitarian Tribalism; (b) conflict.- Anthropoid
- 帖子 #8,736
- 论坛: The Anachronist's Guild - Off-Topic Chat
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Ukraine Today
This group of old wargamers this buddy and I belong to are the "Maddogs." We've been a pretty solidary bunch of years, but this Ukraine thing has really driven a wedge in our little society. About half the regulars have effectively adopted the Tucker Carlson "Biden Derangement Syndrome" view and argued that anything short of an immediate pullout from NATO, and abandonment of all U.S. overseas military involvement in Europe is the only way to sufficiently atone for having provoked Putin with the expansion of NATO and avoid his righteous reprisal by nuclear hellstorm . . . that is an exaggeration for most of them, but sadly not all of them.
Seems to me we would do well to lure Weaver to join our merry band of psychopaths and slackers . . . but with egregiously vile views about Ukraine being expendable being common, that might not be very kind of us . . . so in the mean time I'll just act as go-between
@Swadius 2.0 do you have a sense for what policies or relations Sweden and Finland had held vis a vis the PKK to which Turkey objected? It has never been really clear in what I've read, and I assumed that what it amounted to was: refugee PKK members were given political asylum in those countries?
@Bjorn The Upset I must confess that my knowledge of the history of the PKK and Turkey is minimal, but I'm probably slightly biased in favor of the Kurds overall. Do you know of a good, non-prejudiced source to get an overall sense for the conflict?- Anthropoid
- 帖子 #8,725
- 论坛: The Anachronist's Guild - Off-Topic Chat
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Ukraine Today
Here is what Finland, Sweden promised to address Türkiye's security concerns
Türkiye, Finland, Sweden sign trilateral memorandum to pave way for Nordic countries' NATO membership - Anadolu Ajansı
www.aa.com.tr
The following are the commitments made by the Nordic countries:
1 - Finland and Sweden will not provide support to YPG/PYD, and the organization described as FETO in Türkiye. Türkiye also extends its full support to Finland and Sweden against threats to their national security. Finland and Sweden reject and condemn terrorism in all its forms and manifestations, in the strongest terms. Finland and Sweden unambiguously condemn all terrorist organizations perpetrating attacks against Türkiye, and express their deepest solidarity with Türkiye and the families of the victims.
2 - Finland and Sweden confirm that the PKK is a proscribed terrorist organization. Finland and Sweden commit to prevent activities of the PKK and all other terrorist organizations and their extensions, as well as activities by individuals in affiliated and inspired groups or networks linked to these terrorist organizations. Türkiye, Finland and Sweden have agreed to step up cooperation to prevent the activities of these terrorist groups. Finland and Sweden reject the goals of these terrorist organizations.
3 - Further to this, Finland refers to several recent amendments of its Criminal Code by which new acts have been enacted as punishable terrorist crimes. The latest amendments entered into force on 1 January 2022, by which the scope of participation in the activity of a terrorist group has been widened. At the same time, public incitement related to terrorist offenses was criminalized as a separate offense. Sweden confirms that a new, tougher, Terrorist Offenses Act enters into force on July 1, and that the government is preparing further tightening of counter-terrorism legislation.
4 - Türkiye, Finland and Sweden confirm that now there are no national arms embargoes in place between them. Sweden is changing its national regulatory framework for arms exports in relation to NATO Allies. In future, defense exports from Finland and Sweden will be conducted in line with Alliance solidarity and in accordance with the letter and spirit of article 3 of the Washington Treaty.
5 - Türkiye, Finland and Sweden committed to the following concrete steps:
- Establish a joint, structured dialogue and cooperation mechanism at all levels of government, including between law enforcement and intelligence agencies, to enhance cooperation on counterterrorism, organized crime, and other common challenges as they so decide.
- Finland and Sweden will conduct the fight against terrorism with determination, resolve, and in accordance with the provisions of the relevant NATO documents and policies, and will take all required steps to tighten further domestic legislation to this end.
- Finland and Sweden will address Türkiye’s pending deportation or extradition requests of terror suspects expeditiously and thoroughly, taking into account information, evidence and intelligence provided by Türkiye, and establish necessary bilateral legal frameworks to security cooperation with Türkiye, in accordance with the European Convention on Extradition.
- Finland and Sweden will investigate and interdict any financing and recruitment activities of the PKK and all other terrorist organizations and their extensions, as well affiliates or inspired groups or networks.
- Türkiye, Finland and Sweden commit to fight disinformation, and prevent their domestic laws from being abused for the benefit or promotion of terrorist organizations, including through activities that incite violence against Türkiye.
- Finland and Sweden will ensure that their respective national regulatory frameworks for arms exports enable new commitments to Allies and reflects their status as NATO members.
6 - For the implementation of these steps, Türkiye, Finland and Sweden will establish a Permanent Joint Mechanism, with the participation of experts from the Ministries of Foreign Affairs, Interior, and Justice, as well as Intelligence Services and Security Institutions. The Permanent Joint Mechanism will be open for others to join.
7 - Türkiye also confirmed its long-standing support for NATO’s Open Door policy, and agrees to support at the 2022 Madrid Summit the invitation of Finland and Sweden to become members of NATO.
From now on, Turkey always reference this agreement when there is a debate about YPG/PYD in NATO. Although NATO recognize PKK as a terrorist group, NATO not recognizing YPG/PYD as a terrorist group is always one of the Turkey's concern.
That is more or less what I suspected Turkey wanted, and to be honest, it seems like a rather piddly concession. I'm sure Kurdish folks might disagree, but it should be pointed out: there is apparently no clause(s) in any of NATO's charter documents which address how a member state can be, or is to be "ejected" from the alliance. This was pointed out to me by some anti-NATO Putin-shill "buddies" on another board, so I cannot say for certain it is true, but doesn't surprise me if it is true. The prospect of being ejectable at a whim of the dominant parties is not something which would have been appealing to smaller member states, and I doubt it would've been on the minds of the folks who drew up the original NATO foundational documents either.
What this means is: once Sweden and Finland are in, they are in for permanent, Turkey can object all it wants, but the only recourse they will have once Sweden and Finland are in are standard back-stabby, passive-aggressive, drama-queen relations, i.e., "diplomacy."
Sweden and Finland are also healthy democracies with a revolving door of ruling regimes. Not hard or inconceivable at all if 4 or 5 years hence, new administrations in either or both decide that the agreements made by the preceding administrations cannot be fully honored.
Turkey probably understood at some level that it was a losing game to attempt to thwart the introduction of Sweden and Finland, and also that it is equally or even more behooved to have NATO grow to include those two nations: Russia and Turkey are fair-weather friends at best.- Anthropoid
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Ukraine Today
Referring to the part I bolded at the end: yes . . . I have been vaguely aware of this impending dynamic in the back of my head for weeks now. A buddy at another bbs I haunt said it like . . . well here let me quote him:
MadDog20/20 说:
I suppose that will make Putin and his Western apologists quite pleased, but a frozen conflict in Ukraine in which Russia occupies 20 or 25% of the country and Ukraine refuses to peace is not really a good thing for anyone.
Better to get it over with quickly and accept the immediate risks that involves than to kick the can down the road I think; and by that I mean: provide Ukraine with AS MUCH weaponry as possible as quickly as possible.
The other thing that I wanted to comment on is the: "Russia is almost out of breath" part. Gulls, Putin-apologists, Russoboos and totalitarian-groupies like to point to "polls" of Putin's high popularity among the Russian population, but I am intensely skeptical about any such evidence. Russia has no opposition media, no opposition politics, and is effectively a police state in which any dissenting opinion about the ruling regime or the "special operation" can be met with harsh penalties.
If Putin is so popular then why is it necessary to repress all dissent at all? If he is so popular then why have so many Russians fled to other countries since the February invasion? If the regime is so popular and solidary and strong, then why have there been so many strange deaths and obvious assassinations of fringe elites? Why so many officials sacked? Why the fires and explosions all over Russia? Last I heard, there had been something like 60 apparent acts of sabotage in Russia since February and many, perhaps most of these are quite remote from the Ukrainian border.
Clearly, there is a segment of the Russian public who are devout believers in the Putin dream to restore the Russian empire to its former glory, along with all of the other ethnocentric, genocidal, irredentist garbage that is packaged along with that "dream." But how large IS that segment really? If it is only 2% that is a big difference than if it is 20% or 50%, and I have a very hard time imagining it is anywhere near 50%.
There is a Youtube channel called "1420 Project" which interviews people in the area of a college campus in a major Russian city about topics that pertain to the Ukraine war (and which honestly strike me as very risky for the creators to be doing), and a consistent pattern there is that only about 1 in 10 Russians who are interviewed on the street espouse views which are distinctly pro-Putin. Many are evasive or decline to comment at all, which is in itself a sign that they do not fully agree with Putin or his fantasy war to de-Nazify Ukraine.
Clearly the Russian state has a dramatic advantage when it comes to suppressing or fighting back against any form or armed insurgency among Russians, but that form of dissent barely got involved in the 1991 collapse at all. My understanding is that the 1991 collapse can be best thought of as a kind of "grinding to a halt" because of accumulated inertia and corrosion at all levels of the society. The Soviet Union rusted into a pile of inert junk and then pieces started breaking off to pursue their own best-interests.
A scenario not unlike that seems like a possibility for the current regime as well. I do not pretend to be a specialist in Russian history or sociology, and have only read a small handful of books and articles that deal with Russian history, but based on what I know the takeaway in the following video are not implausible
- Anthropoid
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Ukraine Today
I was aware of Russia's change in operational mode. Prolonged and intensive bombardment of defensible areas followed by advance eventually managed to achieve something for the Russians in Sievierodonetsk. It also cost them a lot, and it took 49 days. If we take the Ukrainian government at its word (and I don't see why we would not do so, albeit only in so far as those numbers are ballparks, after all, most independent open-source intelligence analyses and most Western "experts" who put in the analytical effort arrive at similar estimates of Russian losses to those distributed by Ukraine . . . I believe there was more disparity early in the war, but the Ukrainians probably realized that their efforts to exaggerate would lead to naught and have revised their methodology to insure that Western leadership can see they are not attempting to be too misleading).
49 Days, thousands of troops, hundreds of vehicles and other machines of war to take one small industrial town that was effectively right on the edge of the area the Russians have had under their control for years (and thus not at the culmination of a deep penetration into Ukrainian territory where their ad hoc supply lines would be stretched). That is the "might" of the Russian war machine . . . well, that and terrorizing civilian centers with periodic bombardments.
I deeply sympathize with the plight you and all Ukrainians face, but what I am trying to convey to you is that: hope is not lost, indeed, Ukraine's prospects should only grow and improve as the summer progresses. Imposing a state of hopelessness is precisely the goal of the Russian method at this stage, to demoralize not only your troops, but your entire society. THAT is why they expend limited and expensive long range missiles to attack blatantly civilian targets deep inside of strictly civilian areas. The small "pay out" of 30 dead and hundreds wounded is not the point; setting aside Russia's capacity to vaporize every city in Ukraine (and in all of Europe and North America, and China and India and pretty much all major cities everywhere on every continent) with its arsenal of medium and long-range nukes, Russia DOES NOT POSSESS THE CAPACITY to "grind down" Ukraine in the way it is so glibly described by various sell-out commentators to Putin's dream. It takes thousands of shells and bombs to "achieve" what they have achieved in a place like Mariupol or Sievierodonetsk, and while their actual stockpiles are probably only vaguely known, they are certainly not limitless. Moreover, their capacity to produce more is limited and every day your military is whittling away at their personnel and machines of war, further reducing the assets they have to carry on with the destruction.
Whether the values in the math I engaged in in the post to which you responded are perfectly accurate or not is not the point; certainly your point that the terrain is not homogeneous is apt. There will be areas of Donbas which the Russians will find easier to occupy, there will be additional areas of Donbas which Russians will find even more difficult to take than was Sievierodonetsk (this is assuming that all the signs we have of the level of professionalism, forethought, expertise, resolve and acumen in the Ukrainian leadership and military are not illusions, and that seems like a reasonable assumption to me). But I must disagree with you that the "math is useless." The model is precisely the sort of model which the Soviet military spent a great deal of effort compiling throughout the Cold War in drawing up estimates of necessary troop levels and armaments and ammunition to storm through Western Europe; all just mental exercises on paper which should not be taken to be precise engineering documentation or source code ready to debug! But precisely the type of fuzzy analytics which Napoleon and many past generals of renown engaged in habitually in countless military campaigns. The model I've used is a simple one I admit that freely, but it isn't like it couldn't be improved, for example by accounting for what fraction of those remaining 7317 square kilometers will have to be fought for at the same level of intensity as Sievierodonetsk, versus those that will not be, and those which will require even higher expenditure . . . For a back of the notepad excel sheet analysis done in 20 minutes before bed time and shared with a bunch of gamer sluts on an old bbs I think my resort was perfectly reasonable and perhaps even somewhat instructive.
The point is: Russia has a long way to go to achieve what they have stated to be their goal: to liberate the Donbas. The fact that it took them FORTY NINE DAYS and thousands of casualties to take one of the urban areas in that region (along with perhaps another 500 square kilometers of farm land and villages) is instructive. Not only this, but they concentrated a large fraction of their total assets committed to the war in Ukraine to this "advance." The whole point of it was symbolic "liberate 100% of Luhansk" as well as to create a "win" that their apologists, and fifth columnists around the world (as well as their raving lunatic State media propagandists) can all crow about as the greatest victory since Kursk.
Assuming there are no exaggerations going on there, I'd say that transitioning from 40,000 of the alliances troops stationed in readiness for a war with Russia to 300,000 is an enormous development. It doesn't really take much pressure off of Ukraine unfortunately because Russia knows NATO cannot declare war, per se (arguably NATOs operations in Afghanistan were not really a 'war" after all, and if it was it was "declared" on one of the member states so NATO didn't start it, etc., etc.. . .). But, it does tell Putin that Western countries are, finally!?, making at least pantomime of becoming serious about deterrence.
Deterrence means that you ready yourself for war with a potential enemy BEFORE there is a real threat. Quite the contrary to how some confused, pacifistic worldviews view building up a military for defensive purposes to be "provocative" or "de-stabilizing," it has often (I nearly said "generally" but that is probably a bit of an exaggeration) led to prolonged periods of peace. In any event, many of our generalizations from history become increasingly questionable in a world where a single vehicle can project enough firepower to destroy an entire neighborhood (or indeed, an entire metropolis if we consider nuclear-armaments).
It brings me some joy to see that common and decent folk in nations throughout the Free World are becoming aware of the axiom in that old Latin adage: Si vis pacem, para bellum.- Anthropoid
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Ukraine Today
I looked up Sievierodonetsk on Google Earth to look at roughly how big it is. Without getting super sophisticated, I think we can say with reasonable accuracy that the Russians at Sievierodonetsk have gained an area that is about 10km x 20km (it is actually longer than that, but it is narrower at one side [the south] than the other so calling it 10x20km just makes it easier (I think I'm probably being generous to the Russians with this number).
So, The Battle of Sievierodonetsk: 1 month, 2 weeks, 5 days. 49 days for the Russians to take 200 km^2 of strategically useless territory which is not a strong position for further advance (though the south of Lyschansk is arguably better) and offers little value other than being able to say "100% of Luhansk Oblast is liberated."
Ukraine claims Russian losses just for this battle (Rob recounts UA claims at about 24:00):
4,930 total casualties, 192 tanks, 403 AFVs, 142 artillery tubes, 10 fixed-wing aircraft, 30 helicopters and 102 recon UAVs.
So if that cost-ratio were to hold constant for the rest of Donbas that would be something like (roughly):
0.245 days (per square km)
25 soldiers (per square km)
0.96 tanks
2.01 AFVs
0.71 arty tubes
0.05 aircraft
0.15 helicopters
0.51 UAVs
That is roughly what Russian paid per square kilometer to take control of that ~200 square kms of Sievierodonetsk (assuming we take Ukrainian government at their word . . .).
How much more to go to get the whole Donbas?
Very roughly I think we can say that the remainder of the Donbas region is an approximately equilateral triangle with sides in the 130km ballpark.
The formula for the area of that shape is SQRT(3) / 4 * A^2 (square root of 3 divided by 4 multiplied by A squared [with A being the length of the sides]). (1.73205080757 / 4) = 0.43301270189 130^2 = 16,900 0.43301270189 * 16,900 = 7,317.9 km^2
The Russians have to conquer an additional 7,317 square kilometers to take the rest of Donbas. If we adopt the most simplistic rubric (which is unlikely to be 100% accurate, but about the best rubric we have at hand) of the rate of cost Russia had to pay to conquer Sievierodonetsk, then we can say that taking the rest of Donbas (assuming both Russia and Ukraine's combat power stays where it has been during the battle of Sievierodonetsk) would incur the following costs:
7317*0.245= 1,792.6 days (4.91 years)
7317*25 = 182,925 soldiers
7317*0.96 = 7,024.3 tanks
7317*2.01 = 14,707.2 AFVs
7317*0.71 = 5,195.1 arty
7317*0.05 = 365.9 aircraft
7317*0.15 = 1,097.6 helicopters
7317*0.51 = 3,731.7 UAVs
Of note here: a) TOTAL Russian military was only in the 900,000 ballpark in Jan 2022, with only about 610k ground [CIA World Factbook says "300,000 ground forces"]; b) total tanks was probably only in the ~6k ballpark, though some estimates indicate up to ~10,000 "in storage" . . . 7000 is a lot in any event . . .
There was this famous Greek king named Pyrrhus of Epirus who is famous for having "victorious battles" that were so costly that he wound up losing the war. It would seem that Putin is well on his way to outdoing King Pyrrhus . . . by an order of magnitude or more . . .- Anthropoid
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