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More bugs:

With v1.37 I learned how to read at a monastery. Cannot read in v1.38.

Cannot find monasteries to learn at in v1.38, loading a v1.37 savegame.

Units sometimes "fly" away. They play the walking animation, but are hovering .5m off the ground. They then fly very rapidly. Usually it's the last enemy on the map. He tends to move to the end of the map, then zoom up and down along the map edge. Only seems to happen once the enemy is fleeing. Once that last enemy decides to turn and fight to the last (he can't flee for whatever reason), the animations return to normal and his feet are on the ground. Killing him ends the battle.

Several bugs.

v1.37 Savegames are not compatible with v1.38; while the former ran perfectly the new version has numerous issues loading the v1.37 savegames.

1) Border incidents on the average of four per day.
2) I am a Mercian lord. I was given control of the Salinae salt mines upon loading my savegame.
3) I lost members of my party upon loading v1.38 with my savegame, specially five Duguth Engle.
5) Commander's Options at the beginning of a battle. Selected duel enemy commander. Apparently killed myself (I had control of my character with all of his equipment but was told that the enemy I had killed had my name.
6) "Blue Shirt" item is not a blue shirt, it is a grey shirt with a rope belt.

I will see what further instabilities there may be using a new, v1.38 game.

Looking forward to Canada Day for a whole 'nother reason now. I get the full day off (Federal holiday booyeah) to drink homebrewed mead and play the **** out of v1.34; it'll be good times.

Building on cpkuntz's idea, the lord may reward you with command of troops or fiefs of your own (in this case more like a house) if you perform well enough. If you have enough renown the King may insist that you be promoted up to the point of being a peer with your former lord. I would assume that you'd end up having very positive relations with that lord, though the act of being promoted up might serve to decrease relations with the lord if he is the jealous type.

Depends on the overall situation; if hard pressed I'll hire mercenaries on - haven't had to do this in Brytenwalda yet - to bolster my ranks a bit. Otherwise I just use faction troops or go overseas to hire on some specific faction troops to my warband, like Irish cavalrymen. As a South Saxon or a East Anglian I rarely find myself at war with the Irish so it's an alright system for me; they gain experience quickly enough in "policing actions" or "security operations" where I routinely sweep out groups of Dena pirates or Frankish raiders or Insert Your Bandit Type Here so that my economy can grow as they're not constantly picking off my peasants coming to market. If a few die in the process, no big deal: they're easily replaced, especially because when the area is mostly-clear of pirates or other bandits the population tends to grow and I never have problems recruiting villagers from nearby hamlets.

I don't understand why the speeds were reduced from the stock (vanilla) Warband speeds; which nobody seems to have a problem with.

Hotghar: If I remember rightly there was some discussion about the King's aides and the King's Champion and so on earlier. I think what you said here was pretty similar to what was said then; might already be implemented. I wouldn't know, but that would be good.

The continental shoreline and channel islands give new weight to naval warfare and amphibious raiding actions. That would be a good addition that keeps the focus on the existing UK map, just plusses it up with a few smaller elements.

Great ideas here! I'd like to emphasize the greater variety when customizing your character, and actually having to work to loot things.

Perhaps a modification of an in-game mechanic could be made. Recall having to hack down doors in MP sieges? Perhaps this can relate to bashing in doors to peasant huts before looting their stuff, or be applied to bashing open boxes to steal their contents and so on. Your looting skill could affect how much effort it takes to do so, although rationally speaking your ability to break in a door is clearly governed by your strength. Having to fight the peasant inhabitants and any garrison of that area (e.g. if there's a manor there) before being able to loot sounds like a great idea. The ability to use blunt weapons to knock out and capture farmers etc to be sold later as slaves is a logical expansion to this.

Implementation of the Saxon "fyrd" would be good. That's the armed militia that defends major cities. Especially combined with smaller warband sizes that would be an excellent addition to gameplay. If you're worried about balance, although we don't seem to have a historical precedent for this, "Levies" could be used in a similar fashion for non-Saxon lands.

Better implementation of religion. You should be able to, in addition to the existing conversion dynamic in Brytenwalda already, be able to defile Christian/Pagan shrines, build/restore Christian/Pagan shrines, loot and pillage churches, nunneries and monasteries, which traditionally are places of some wealth and thus worth attacking, and all of these actions should have an effect on the population's (entire island's) views towards you: making a name for yourself plundering churches means that the pagans who remain are probably going to like you, while the Christians will almost universally hate you.

Consequently, when going to Christian towns at night you should expect to be ambushed by the muggers/assassins, and so on.

Some good comments here. I happen to have the fortune to own all of these Whyte and Cornwell books so I'll weigh in with a hopefully unbiased review:

I've read "The Dream of Eagles" series that Dowdpride recommends. The basic premise is that Camulod is in fact a Romano-British survivalist settlement founded by some powerful Romans whose loyalties have shifted to their own identity as Britons rather than to the Roman Emperor. The "Dream of Eagles" series continues into "The Sorcerer", has a rounding-out work titled Uther, and even incorporates the Lancelot bits with two follow on books.

I wouldn't call them realistic. It's hard to characterize because they simultaneously are and are not realistic: within their universe, they're realistic and well thought out. But Whyte takes the historical events of that era and changes them quite considerably to accommodate his Camulod, complete with combined-arms Roman-type armies and so on. Had something like Whyte's Camulod existed, I can only think that Britain would be radically different today, which causes - like all Arthurian legends - a lamentable loss and "if only, what if" moments at the end, as we saw with Cornwell's Warlord trilogy. In terms of 'authentic feel,' I put Cornwell ahead of Whyte, but that's not to say Whyte's works are poorly done. Just not as enmeshed with what we know of the history of that era as Cornwell's works are.

With Whyte, he has a very verbose, precise style. He will, no ****, take two pages to describe someone's clothing. I didn't find that to be a bother, but I'm very flexible in my likes when I read something. I have friends who can't get past the first ten pages of Whyte's "A Dream of Eagles" series because of his writing style, so as with everything, your mileage may vary.

Cornwell's Sharpe series is very good. I view it as my 'guilty pleasure.' My girlfriend has trashy romance novels and I have the Sharpe series, heh. They're good, mostly historically accurate, and interesting. Despite their length they are varied, and this variety and the greater tactical-technological flexibility of the era means that you "burn out" on the content a lot less quickly than you do with the Uhtred Ragnarson/Warlord series, because as good as Cornwell is at describing the shield wall fight and the preludes to it etc, it doesn't always come down to the shield wall fight.

Whyte also has a very good medieval series about the Knights Templar, or as he calls them, "The Poor Fellow Soldiers of Jesus Christ." Interesting stuff; as with the Pelagian debates in The Dream of Eagles he comes in and lends his views to Christianity again. I myself am not a Christian and generally dislike the Church because of its historical actions that clearly contrast poorly with being the "moral arbiters of mankind", so for me this sort of playing around with theology isn't offensive or unbelievable. It's well done. My aunt who is a fervent Christian however also really likes Jack Whyte's works, so once again, mileage will vary.

Cornwall's "Constant Church Bashing" looks like a reactionary move to fill out the pagan side of the Arthurian legends and to make a pagan narrative of the Dark Ages. When we look at the more traditional stories, many of them are heavily Christianized and have anachronisms like plate-mail armour and **** like that. It doesn't bother me, but once again, mileage may vary - it's already been mentioned once in the thread.

The entire Uhtred Ragnarson saga could put some colour into a possible "Viking Invasion" expansion of Brytenwalda.

Release it when it is done. If it is done, release it and enjoy the accolades... and inevitable stream of bug reports.

Spotting is very important for a soldier of any era. In Warband the "spotting" skill abstracts military techniques such as advance, flank, and rear guards travelling with the main body of troops. The spotting skill I don't perceive as being an individual skill so much as a representation of the discipline used to deploy such security and their ability to detect and report back enemy groups. We know that historically these techniques have been used by almost every organized group of warriors; generally in a very Darwinian process, those who don't employ movement security end up being destroyed by those who do. It was one of the key functions of light infantry (scouts/slingers etc) and light cavalry (mounted scouts), for instance. For any character background that supposedly involves military training, it should be represented - or some adequate compensation for its loss made in some way.

dutch81 said:

As far as the equipment is concerned maybe if the word in front could be given more relevance for example a chipped sword would do less damage and be slower ... a balanced sword would give you a substantial boost in terms of speed over a regular sword ... a tempered sword would be less prone to breakage ... a crude sword slower and less damaging ... etc etc

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+1.

Chipped swords should be prone to breakage or becoming blunt (perhaps by the same mechanism, if available in the game code, that causes a "spirited" horse to become lame after being maimed in battle) faster than other swords. Because iron is much softer than steel, weapons should become blunt fairly quickly. We should have some means of re-sharpening them, perhaps for cost at a weaponsmith, who would certainly have a honing wheel and other sharpening equipment.

I don't know if this has been suggested before. Lost track of what had and hadn't been in the forty-five pages that this thread is.

Is it possible to add looted items from villages to NPC lords parties? The utility of this is that when intercepting an enemy raiding your fief or having just raided your fief, you can fight him and hopefully recover some of the looted items. Combined with a feature to "return to villagers" it would be pretty awesome. Effect would be to lessen the damage done by that raid, speeding recovery from "looted" state.

Austupaio said:

There's no photographs I've seen of troops in WWI or WWII with customized Enfields in Her Majesty's military,

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That's because there were no modifications to make, at this time period the only real modifications you could make to a weapon would be to add a scope. This would be expensive and, for the average foot-slogger, purposeless. There were no fore-grips, extended magazines, lengthened barrels or red-dot sights like you can so easily add to more modern weapons.

Pre-WWI/I firearms were simple and unique so variations would, by nature, exist and are easily made. Post-WWII weapons are basically designed to be modified and small-scale modification technology (with guns becoming more interchangable, bells and whistles are more easily attached to any weapon due to inventions like the Picatiny) has advanced.

During WWII the guns were too complex to just modify with the ol' tools and craftsman knowledge and there was no technology (short of expensive scopes) to add to the gun.

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So how the **** is it that apparently troops are carrying around custom weapons when the technology to modify them is much less prevalent, in the 18/19th centuries? And by "customizations," you're aware we don't mean 'just' COTS modifications like the modern selection of RIS rails, vertical foregrips, stocks, and optics, right? It goes so far as to include handcarving stocks to be more comfortable, which we've seen on some period (19th c) hunting - but interestingly, not issued Baker - rifles; reshaping the stock with a knife to give it the typical Bavarian profile, for instance. Or tacking on a cheekpiece. Etc.

The WWI and WWII illustratives I used were for the purposes of:
i) Large military incorporating a wide segment of the population, all armed
ii) There's no demonstrable proof that there's a "tradition of modifying one's weapon"
iii) Therefore it can be concluded that it (as italicized above) didn't happen.

It has nothing to do with the technology of the time. Your thinking that WWI weapons are somehow mechanically simpler than WWII weapons is nothing less than fundamentally wrong: infantry weapons did not change greatly between the two wars. The fundamental weapon of all major combatants save the US was the bolt-action rifle, of a pattern very similar to those used by their fathers in WWI. And for the record, submachineguns, particularly certain automatic-only examples like STEN, PPS-43, and the like, are mechanically simpler than bolt action rifles. It's counter-intuitive but true, and has to do with the trigger sear arrangements, the most complicated part of almost any firearm.

Xenoargh:
Funny, the BAR is also referred to as being beloved in many memoirs. Obviously opinions on the BAR varied. Interestingly I have never seen nor heard of a sawn off shotgun being carried around in Vietnam as a "back up," though numerous shotguns were issued on a limited scale for use in Vietnam. You may be amused to hear of a Canadian volunteer in Vietnam, serving with a LRRP company who had his father ship him a bow (as in archery, yes) which he carried on patrol and used in combat. Sourced in Gary A. Linderer's "Phantom Warrior" series, book two, I believe. They're good books, I recommend both of them in any case.

COTS parts are not "field improvisations." Field improvisations are things like attaching a cut-down C-ration can to the feed tray of the M60 GPMG to keep the belt from snagging on the ****ty-by-design feed tray edge. "Masterkey" underbarrel shotguns are either limited issue items or COTS parts approved for use by the formation commander.

Soldiers are often allowed to **** with things that don't really matter on their weapons but only in some militaries, namely the American, Canadian, British and Australian crowds. They can commonly - certainly not always, especially for Brits and Australians - fit different sights, as those don't affect the mechanics of the rifle. New stocks and vertical foregrips attaching to various rails are fine provided they (in the case of new stocks on the AR15 [M16] action) use the same buffer spring assembly as the issue rifle. This is to "fit" the rifle to the soldier as you've mentioned. This is a very modern trend, begun only circa 2004-2005 in Line (Regular Force, non-special operations) units.

There is no "tradition" of modifying one's personal weapon. Aside from limited historical abberations like the American Civil War, where commanders apparently didn't care about personally-acquired firearms being used according to some posts here, one did not just go out and get their own musket as officers could often do with their sword. If they did it's interesting that there is no historical record of this happening, at least not that has been cited so far or that I've found looking for myself, so that I can improve my knowledge on this era and thus do my job (defence analysis, military history, et al) better.

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I don't think any of you have an understanding of how militaries work. One does not, in the modern era, show up with your own weapon. You can cherrypick examples of this happening, but the trend is that every soldier carries the issued M4 (if American) or C7A2 (if Canadian) or AK-74M (if Russian) or QBZ-95 (if Chinese) for a reason: that is the issue arm. It is the regulation that he be armed with that weapon, unless he is a specialist armed with another weapon, in which case he carries *that* weapon. He does not have the opportunity to modify or purchase modifications for the weapon if the force-in-question's regulations do not allow modification of that weapon, and then only within certain limits. This was true in 1941, it is true in 2011. It has nothing to do with the mechanical limitations or strategic-technical limitations imposed by the era's technology or total war.

These limits may be set force-wide, or may be up to individual units. I am aware of units that have commander-imposed limitations (for instance, the only approved COTS reflex optic is the T3 Aimpoint; the only approved COTS magnifying optic is the Trijicon ACOG, etc) such as several Marine battalions and a few US Army brigades. He cannot drop in a 6.8mm SPC upper receiver or an HK416 upper because that would be against regulations, not because it isn't available commercially off the shelf (COTS).

I've given some of you the benefit of doubt, which was clearly misplaced. I'm done here.

Xenoargh: Exactly. The taught technique in almost all Western militaries - I cannot vouch for all, because I don't know what all of them do, but I know what the US, Canadian, British, French, German and Dutch militaries teach at least - is to stab into the neck and rip the blade forward. This effectively "slits" the throat. But it involves stabbing, and people don't like to do that. This has led to veterans, when interviewed about what they actually did under stress compared to what they'd been trained to do, reverting to "I tried to cut his throat and accidentally cut my hand twice before I got his neck." And these are guys who received similar by-rote training as to what we teach nowadays. The psychological aversion to killing is absolutely enormous and very difficult to overcome.

Night Ninja: Yeah, absolutely. It looks like, now that I've done some more reading here, that once swords stop being "general issue" equipment only officers carry them and because all militaries propagate the nobility through the officer corps, those officers learn privately or in civilian-operated schools, not as part of military training. Swords are only general issue for Infantry for a relatively short period of time, the Cavalry carry them much longer, and eventually (late nineteenth) everybody's got rifles as a primary weapon which sucks up the brunt of instruction time. Especially with regards to officers carrying swords - as they'll be the guys who can afford to buy their own - this might explain the wide variety there, and a commensurate variety of techniques in use.

As to cuts, I'm not arguing that a cut upper arm across the shoulder doesn't have a chance of getting infected and killing him after the battle. That's entirely possible, battlefield medicine gives me the shivers until something like 1939 when it becomes "barely acceptable" and moves into "reasonably good" by 1941. But as you go on to say, the emphasis has to be on killing or immediately disabling your opponent so he doesn't kill you with a riposte. Stabs into the abdomen have been shown to really **** with people's minds, they generally stop fighting. Mileage will of course vary; if you get someone's adrenaline up enough they'll keep trying to kill you like the Black Knight from Monty Python's Holy Grail. "It's only a flesh wound!" he says, missing both legs and one arm.

Stefan Coeur de Lion, two points.
1) *****ing username. Awesome.
2) Absolutely correct, yes. Some ring and 'slot' (I don't recall the correct term; bayonets that lock onto a bayonet lug, otherwise identical to ring bayonets) bayonets have broader blades despite still being of the "spike" type and these have been seen with sharpened edges, not unlike the Russian/North Korean/Chinese spike bayonets I referenced in museum exhibitions earlier.

Archonsod: I haven't been able to find that reference we alluded to earlier in Urban's work Rifles. I don't have time to re-read the book in detail, sorry. We'll have to leave it.

Flintlock had a number of field-replaceable parts. Anything you break down for cleaning can be field-replaced; the mainspring, and the entire action except the pan can be replaced; the pan can't be because on most it's permanently attached to the mainplate which is not always removable. My point regarding logistics involving more than merely ammunition and ration supply still stands.

Metal cartridges are hardier than paper cartridges. Early rimfire cartridges had problems with the rim being made too thin, thus not having enough strength to withstand the impact of the firing pin and trip the firing compound (primer) in the rim. Early rimmed cartridges had problems with ejection when the casings were made of inferior metal, as the extractor would often damage the rim and cause a mechanical stoppage. But these are not relevant to repeating muskets because metal cartridges aren't used for repeating muskets, or for any musket for that matter.

Ferguson rifle is not a repeater; it is merely a breechloader. The distinction between a breechloading firearm and a repeating one is important.

Breechloading/repeating musket designs are less durable mechanically; even the Wikipedia (usually a ****ty reference) article on the Ferguson notes that there are no examples of a Ferguson that exist without the reinforcing plate affixed to the receiver. All the less reason for them to be used.

Please explain to me your logic here:
while accuracy per shot is much lower, which would make them virtually useless on the battlefield; I'd go as far to say that they would be even worse than a smoothbore.
Really their most likely use would be hunting, where the ability to shoot off three or four rounds without reloading would be useful while reloading time or sustained fire capabilities are more or less unimportant.
How is it that it's too inaccurate for use on a battlefield but somehow sufficient for hunting? I would posit that you've never been hunting, or you go hunting with a machinegun, because when hunting all you need is one accurate round to drop the game you've found. You don't need volume of fire unless you're doing it wrong. This is a nonsensical statement.

Xenoargh said:

That isn't even true today.  Most soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan have bought some custom kit for their M4s and M16s- better rails and sights, assault handles and the like; military tradition has always allowed some customization of personal weapons, and soldiers often have and carry personal arms that aren't issue, such as higher-power replacements for the Beretta or Glock.  And these aren't JSOC people or anything fancy.

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Regulations have changed dramatically between the 18th and 19th centuries and today's military, as I hope you'd realize. Not all militaries or even units within militaries that do allow private purchase equipment to be used either; for instance the British Army 2001-2004 did not allow private purchase equipment to be fitted to service arms, while the Canadian military 2003-present does, but not in all regiments. The Princess Patricia's often use private purchase equipment, the Royal Canadian Regiment do not, though if there has recently been a change of policy in the RCR I could be wrong; this would be rather recent however.

What tradition allows customization of personal weapons? There's no photographs I've seen of troops in WWI or WWII with customized Enfields in Her Majesty's military, and were it a tradition, as you state, why would it be revoked for WWI/WWII when you have huge masses of personnel expected to use individual initiative (1917 on, not so much prior to that) under less strict supervision than their 17th/18th/19th century counterparts? I just don't see it, nor have I heard of it.

As to your concerns about chain-firing with black powder repeaters, consider that it's a risk with smoothbore muzzleloading muskets and an identified risk at that, hence being instructed not to put one's head over the muzzle while loading. Yet somehow this risk wasn't sufficient to cause the average British squaddie of the time to not fire less than two rounds per minute - their famed and well publicized training standard - and often more.

It's definitely a greater risk with repeating black powder firearms, but we know that these designs did exist, so evidently not an insurmountable problem. It would contribute to them not being issued to specialist units (e.g. Ferguson's Experimental Rifles) or seeing any sort of market success that would lead to them having a deeper historical footprint than they seem to have now.

Morcant, you badass. What don't you do? I'm working on learning how to throw an axe remotely accurately. I can't trajectorize knives very well yet either - think I'll buy some proper throwing knives for the sake of not beating up my proper knives, as many of those have wood handles that might not respond well to hitting something obliquely at force. Spears are easy enough, all about the follow-through.

lukeymoe1315 said:

I enjoy seeing brains and gizzards in games, allows me to experience BLOOD AND GORE in the comfort of my own home, instead of going out side in the cold and doing it for real. AMEN FOR GAMES

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Man, totally. It is such a pain in the ass to get the blood out of my balaclava and gloves. I mean, ****, if I'd known it was going to stain that badly I would have just gone with the extra-thick latex gloves paramedics wear.

Wait, what?