Hello Gentlemen and Adolescents;
Just bought M&B a couple weeks ago. Been playing the **** out of it.
But there are a few simples changes could be made that'd increase the gaminess of this peculiar beast. Simple value changes, but I haven't been able to find most in the text files.
These alterations are as follows:
-Decrease in base party size (for player). No 30 man armies from the start. Figure something like 5. To compensate...
-Increase in affect of leadership of party size. Say it adds 8 men to your party limit. Makes leadership skill a must if player wants to lead.
-Increase troop wages. Soldiers are dirt cheap. Maintaining a standing army for a week should cost more than a bastard sword. If the player wants to roll with a posse, he has to pay the price. This'll make the later game more challenging, too.
-Increase recruit cost. Double or triple the initial cost of recruiting peasants. As it is, a recruit dies, you say 'who gives a ****' and just recruit another one next village you pass.
-Decrease base moral. So the player must really rely of good food, leadership, or success in battle or face desertions and lackluster troops.
-Decrease base inventory max. The inventory management skill is pretty useless. Make the player invest in this if he wants to carry the aforementioned food to feed the aforementioned army. Say the inventory base is 4 or 6. Each skill point in inv. management should add 4 slots, so you need 3 or for levels of it if you want to be a merchant or be able to feed an army.
-Decrease horse health. 30 points should do it. So when you hack open an unbarded horse with a sword as he stampedes by, the animal dies. May be nice to see the rider take a little more damage in the fall.
-Rain more often; only seen it drizzle once or twice. Cool feature though. It supposedly affects crossbows.
So yeah, it looks intimidating, but it's pretty much a punch list requiring a couple minutes per item (I imagine, in python. Not having used it, you tell me). There's a few things I can do, such change weapon and armor values and costs to distinguish them more and add 'tiers' of equipment to game.
But if any magnanimous python modder out there has a little time for a handful of tweaks, well, I think this simple stuff would add immensely to the value (and challenge) of the game. What's anyone else think?
