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  1. SP Viking Conquest Balance Mod 13

    Dhamon said:
    Maybe, is there a way to diminish the speed boost given to routing units? it seems a bit much, also given that they don't drop weapons or armor.
    That's actually my main gripe with the mechanic and the reason why I chose to disable it altogether.

    I fully agree that making every battle last until complete annihilation is not even remotely realistic. But neither is giving routing units infinite superhuman running speed and stamina. In a life-and-death situation your body will release substances like adrenaline that can indeed increase your capabilities for a short while. But those effects often only last for 1-2 minutes. This duration is way too short to reliably escape from a battlefield. Given that everything in M&B battles happens in a greatly condensed timeframe (you wouldn't fight a large battle in 5-10 minutes in real life), the speed boost should probably only last 10 seconds or so. After that the speed should be lowered (because of exhaustion) so that your units have a realistic chance to still catch up. Routing units also don't seem to be affected by stamina anymore, I've seen heavy armor guys sprint across the whole map without slowing down.

    Yes, you could counteract this to an extent by having mounted units in the back for this sole reason, but I hate to employ units that I can't use most of the battle. And if you decide to use them they'll get dismounted way too fast, cause horses go down from 2 slingshot hits or one well-timed melee hit.

    Dhamon said:
    I like it because it feels more historically correct. ancient battles rarely had more than 50% of casualties, and there are examples in which battles were win by tactically routing the other army without any bloodshed. Last man standing battles were a rare exception. 

    The problem is, real life battles are not fought for XP. The only goal is to win and further your cause. In M&B we need to feed our units XP, especially our companions. If the enemy starts to fully retreat at 50% troop strength, chances are that 20-25% will escape you in every single battle. This means you get 20-25% less XP and less proficiency points, that's the core issue. I don't really care for the loot, getting money has never been a problem in this game. If the routed units would still give XP, then I might be fine with it. I'm not a fan of trying to convert M&B into a real-life simulator. The core game is way too "gamey" to ever be able to replicate real life scenarios. It's an action-adventure and always will be, just like EU4 will never be able to simulate real-world power struggles. And while the Reddit crowd is almost always the most vocal group in terms of feedback, in many cases they only represent the "hardcore" (make of that what you will) players and don't necessarily speak for the majority of the playerbase.
  2. SP Viking Conquest Balance Mod 13

    I want to propose a slight adjustment to companions. As suggested by Tingyun, I'm playing with hardcore leveling. I don't mind a slower progression for the player character, but we all know the mind-numbing grind in this mod when it comes to leveling your companions. Many are already Lvl10+ when you get them.

    For example, I got Helgi a short while ago and he is currently Lvl13 at 29000/57000 XP. His strength is 15. His PD skill is 0. Power Draw is a skill that indicates how much force is needed to pull the bowstring. It doesn't relate to finesse or anything of that sort, that's what proficiencies are for. Compare the 21STR Troll Axe to a 7STR Briton/Ulfberth sword.
    Keep in mind that 3PD only equates to 6STR, so someone having more than double of that number not being able to use even the most basic bow is just nonsensical. To get him to a point where I could even think about giving him any bow would require 2 levelups, probably somewhere around 50-60k XP total. This easily translates to 100+ ingame days of pure grind, cause companions are vastly inferior when it comes to aquiring XP. My trainer skill is maxed at 5 and hardly does anything for progression.

    Maybe this was done to make companion squads more diverse, but in reality it achieves the exact opposite. This effectively makes an archery-centric squad impossible early on, forcing you to start with whatever skills the char comes with, every single playthrough. Mind you, this problem is exclusively present with bows. For almost any other weapon/gear there's a workaround, e.g. Timid Pony for 0 Riding skill, throwing weapons start at PT1, crossbow has no skill requirement at all (that's just silly by the way).

    As reducing the PD requirement would also mean giving bows a damage buff I'd instead suggest the following: Free up at least 3 skill points from all the companions, so that the player can shape his/her squad into anything they want and have fun right from the beginning. And those players who are fine with the way it currently is could just reassign the points to their original stats, so noone would lose out. I'm pretty positive that creating an interesting (and maybe OP) band of companions is one of the main driving forces for a lot of players, so this would not only benefit fans of archery but squad creation as a whole.

    Thanks in advance for your consideration


    Edit:
    I got another issue, maybe someone has an idea on how to solve it. I really dislike the routing mechanics, having an army already go into partial disarray at 75% troop strength and full retreat at 50% always bothered me. Not only do battles become less intense but it also facilitates cheese tactics. Your army could be at 60% strength, so only 20% more, but the enemy will still retreat like he's outnumbered 2:1. When he does that, some of your troops will mindlessly run after stray deserters instead of focusing on the ones that are still fighting. As retreating units have an increased running speed your troops will never catch up unless they are mounted, which the vast majority will not be at that point in the battle. The sum of this makes me really want to disable routing altogether or at the very least to heavily tone it down.

    I found this thread in which a Brytenwalda dev links to a particular post: https://forums.taleworlds.com/index.php?topic=146474.0
    Seeing that Brytenwalda is the foundation of VC I thought that particular fix could be applied here as well. But I can't find neither the red nor the blue number in the current scripts.txt, only the purple one. Because that one seems to fiddle around with commands I'm not sure whether or not  it will mess up my current run. Has anyone of you successfully disabled/modified routing in VC so far?

    Edit 2: So I just went ahead and changed the values in the scripts.txt according to the mentioned post. As I wasn't able to locate the blue or red numbers all I had left was the purple one, which supposedly stops routing completely by changing some commands. And what can I say - it works! Not sure what the long-term consequences are as of yet, but not having to chase Usain Bolt's twin brothers around the map in every single battle is well worth the gamble in my opinion. See spoilers for changed values in case you want to replicate it. The number block is considerably longer compared to Vanilla, over there the purple number sequence only appears once and not twice. Maybe someone with enough insight into the game code can clarify whether my adjustements are correct.

    Original:
    decide_run_away_or_not -1
    50 23 2 1224979098644774912 1 23 2 1224979098644774913 2 2133 2 1224979098644774914 0 1770 2 1224979098644774915 1224979098644774912 1773 2 1224979098644774916 1224979098644774912 4 0 2147483678 2 1224979098644774916 9 1785 3 1224979098644774917 1224979098644774915 1224979098644774916 31 2 1224979098644774917 14 2133 2 1224979098644774914 1 3 0 525 3 1224979098644774918 1224979098644774912 15 4 0 31 2 1224979098644774918 0 4 0 31 2 1224979098644774914 1 1735 1 1224979098644774912 1751 1 1224979098644774912 505 3 1224979098644774912 15 1 5 0 30 2 1224979098644774913 45 525 3 1224979098644774919 1224979098644774912 16 1720 2 1224979098644774920 1224979098644774912 2107 2 1224979098644774920 40 2121 3 1224979098644774921 4500 1224979098644774920 2147483678 2 1224979098644774919 1224979098644774921 1718 2 1224979098644774922 1224979098644774912 2147485155 1 1224979098644774922 1735 1 1224979098644774912 1751 1 1224979098644774912 505 3 1224979098644774912 15 1 4 0 30 2 144115188075857384 2 1706 1 1224979098644774912 1106 1 1585267068834416670 5 0 30 2 144115188075857384 2 1106 1 1585267068834416671 3 0 3 0 5 0 2147483679 2 1224979098644774914 1 525 3 1224979098644774919 1224979098644774912 16 1720 2 1224979098644774920 1224979098644774912 2107 2 1224979098644774920 40 2121 3 1224979098644774923 4900 1224979098644774920 30 2 1224979098644774919 1224979098644774923 1752 1 1224979098644774912 505 3 1224979098644774912 15 0 3 0

    Routing disabled:
    decide_run_away_or_not -1
    50 23 2 1224979098644774912 1 23 2 1224979098644774913 2 2133 2 1224979098644774914 0 1770 2 1224979098644774915 1224979098644774912 1773 2 1224979098644774916 1224979098644774912 4 0 2147483678 2 1224979098644774916 9 1785 3 1224979098644774917 1224979098644774915 1224979098644774916 31 2 1224979098644774917 14 2133 2 1224979098644774914 1 3 0 525 3 1224979098644774918 1224979098644774912 15 4 0 31 2 1224979098644774918 0 4 0 31 2 1224979098644774914 1 1735 1 1224979098644774912 1752 1 1224979098644774912 505 3 1224979098644774912 15 0 5 0 30 2 1224979098644774913 45 525 3 1224979098644774919 1224979098644774912 16 1720 2 1224979098644774920 1224979098644774912 2107 2 1224979098644774920 40 2121 3 1224979098644774921 4500 1224979098644774920 2147483678 2 1224979098644774919 1224979098644774921 1718 2 1224979098644774922 1224979098644774912 2147485155 1 1224979098644774922 1735 1 1224979098644774912 1752 1 1224979098644774912 505 3 1224979098644774912 15 0 4 0 30 2 144115188075857384 2 1706 1 1224979098644774912 1106 1 1585267068834416670 5 0 30 2 144115188075857384 2 1106 1 1585267068834416671 3 0 3 0 5 0 2147483679 2 1224979098644774914 1 525 3 1224979098644774919 1224979098644774912 16 1720 2 1224979098644774920 1224979098644774912 2107 2 1224979098644774920 40 2121 3 1224979098644774923 4900 1224979098644774920 30 2 1224979098644774919 1224979098644774923 1752 1 1224979098644774912 505 3 1224979098644774912 15 0 3 0
  3. Ethos is impossible to defend

    And that's the core of the problem. A lengthy process like a siege (hell, some historical ones lasted years) can't be distilled down into a 15 min encounter whithout feeling tacky and gamey at best. Some mods, like VC Reforged tried to convey a minimal sense of realism by giving the player some options to influence the coming battle (build structures/blockade the area/scout for intel). Also you'd take attrition losses ever so often.

    I'm not blaming the PoP team for not implementing features like these, after all it's a fantasy mod and for VC some of the hardcoded stuff probably got some adjustments. Even in mods with a more realistic setting like 1257AD sieges are always a tedious affair, locate the optimal chokepoint and place your troops directly behind it. Works every single time without a hitch. I just wish for Bannerlord to give units some basic level of awareness, so that they will react to nearby threats autonomously (like enemies coming up a second ladder) without having to babysit every single step of theirs.
  4. Ethos is impossible to defend

    That's the sad reality of Warband, sieges are by far the least interesting part of combat. Every single battle turns into the same mindless meatgrinder if you want to be successful, there is hardly any variance to it.

    Let's hope that Bannerlord (...when?) takes bold steps to improve on this, cause all immersion crumbles to dust whenever I have to engage in a siege defense.
  5. SP Medieval [WB] 1257 AD - Enhanced Edition

    I also get the Hash Vector error from time to time, mostly after large-scale battles like sieges. Haven't found any solution so far, changed graphic settings and tried to execute different actions right after loading the faulty save, didn't matter.

    It seems the file is corrupted beyond fixing at that point already, so the only way to continue for me was to delete the save and use the backup file (when using realistic saving). In the worst scenario you'll loose the progress of a full battle, that's something I can live with. When it occurs, close the client with Alt+F4 immediately before doing any other action that would result in a save! Otherwise your backup file will be corrupted as well, cause with the realistic setting the game will save after pretty much any action (like exiting a city screen or camp window).

    I tend to do a backup of the save folder every ingame week or so, that way I don't have to start from the beginning when my original saves get completely screwed up. I know it defeats the purpose of realistic saving a bit, but I try my best not to abuse it  :lol:
  6. SP Medieval [WB] 1257 AD - Enhanced Edition

    First of all, a big thanks to KratosMKII for picking this up and trying to make it all finally come together. I'm especially happy about enabling ranged weapons for besiegers, I had been pointing this issue out for years without any fix - well, up to now. On my current test-run I started as an adventurer and, after circling the entire map numerous times, I decided to finally capture a town on day 230 in hopes to encounter stuff you'll only get to see as a monarch. Whenever possible/applicable I'll add a screenshot to the bug report.

    The 3 top tier bows appear to be Mongol, Hun and Saracen. While the former two have a range from 60-65, the Saracen bow has a mindblowing 160 speed. The projectile speed also seems to be substantialy higher, cause the hit area on long-range shots indicates that there is hardly any spread. I guess it's a typo, cause otherwise all three look fairly similar (3 PD requirement).

    None of the newer weapons like the "European" ones or the new shields can be improved beyond "plain" (no modifier). If this was done for balancing reasons I can live with that, but you'll still find higher quality versions (like Masterwork Saracen Bow) in towns though.  For the sake of consistency it should be either/or, cause in comparison the new armors can be upgraded without any problems.

    The prices to buy an improved version of a weapon seem to not be in line with the cost of upgrading it yourself. I get that buying the finished product should be a little bit more expensive, akin to a service fee. But currently a Masterwork weapon will be about twice as expensive compared to buying the normal version and upgrading it all the way at the weaponsmith. At least it is for me with 0 in Trade, are upgrade costs not affected by the trade skill?

    Do certain items have drop restrictions? I must have killed hundreds of Crusader knights/sergeants by now and so far not a single armor piece dropped, not even boots or gloves. All I get is tons of loot from auxiliary troops like Turkopoles. Edit: Killed a whole bunch more, still not a single knight/sergeant piece, the most you can get seem to be the Padded Armors (33 body armor). At this point I'm fairly certain that anything above that is excluded from the loot tables.

    Did you alter the rate at which you gain proficiencies in any way? So far I only took part in a couple of skirmishes and one siege and my croswsbow skill is already at 218 on day 16 (was starting at around 50 I think). That seems awfully fast, I'm afraid I'll be 300+ in no time, making the character building aspect of the game become obsolete before long. Don't get me wrong, I'm not asking for the tedium of levelling that is Viking Conquest, but gaining levels/skills too fast can take away from the game as well. As an example, when I tested out the Saracen bow a single (long-range) hit gave me +7 archery prof, that's a little too much imo. My char's Weapon Master skill was only 3 at the time.

    When joining sieges you are given complete control over all troops, even when you aren't part of their faction. This makes it very easy to manipulate/sabotage sieges by giving silly commands like only use blunt weapons and such. I know that I'm basically cheating myself with this, but the very existence of such a possibility feels wrong. PoP realized this a few patches back and only lets you issue orders for your own troops for example. I'm aware that it's a double-edged sword, cause manual control in sieges is pretty much the only way to avoid huge losses. Maybe restrict control to situations where you are either the faction leader or marshall?

    It shouldn't be possible to join sieges without (a) being part or a mercenary of either faction or (b) being at negative relations with the defending faction. Right now you can join any siege on either side and gain positive relations with a whole bunch of lords, without incurring any negative relation with the loosing faction. If I actively join a siege, the other side should be angry with me and not just brush it off like it's nothing.

    In town scenes you can attack/kill anyone with ranged weapons, even the merchants. They are still immune to melee attacks though. This makes prison breaks very easy, you just kill all guards beforehand, so that the jailor has no backup. And not even the guards retaliate when being attacked, they just stand around.

    Several battle maps are missing the inventory chest. It doesn't seem to be an issue with wrong z-axis coords, as I checked with the Freeview camera and it couldn't be found at subsurface-level either. Is there a way to check the scene number? I'd take notes on where it's missing, but I don't know how to identify a certain map.

    The "Retreat" command seems to be bugged. At first I thought it had to do with positioning, maybe there are only a fixed number of exit points, where a retreat is possible for your tropps. But no matter where I was relative to the enemy, on issuing the command they would turn right around and charge straight into the enemy lines. This applies to both field battles and sieges. Makes it very hard to get your squishy units out of harms way.

    Crusader crossbowmen seem to not be able to switch to melee once they run out of bolts. They just stand in place twitching occasionally, not even trying to attack when standing right next to them. Archers on the other hand seem to behave properly.


    Siege announcements mention the wrong faction at times. In both cases the Ordo Teutonicus was neither at war with any of those factions, nor anywhere near the towns in question. Edit: The name continues to appear, for targets all over the map. It seems that it's a particular problem with this faction and not a general issue.
    p2nguep9.jpg
     
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    Manors can be unreachable, in this case the one of Famagusta.


    About two dozen bandit parties spawned (and are stuck) on an impassable montain halfway between Iconium and Ankara. Can't say whether it happened all at once or gradually over time, just came across it.


    Since day one my budget lists a wagon train cost without actually having one. I even made one and disbanded it right away, but still no change.


    The helmet merchant seems to have a random assortment of stuff in stock, he even offered me a Practice Bow, those probably should not exist outside the tutorial/training areas. The other merchants seem to be ok, though the sword guy only had one model for sale (that one 30 times though).
     

    In the courtyard of Aleppo the floor has an overlay of the Saracen Bow bumpmap. It's only visible from certain angles, but it's there.
     

    One of the "European" axes seems to be very strong compared to the rest. It got average speed/range but has bonus damage against shields and can crush through blocks. Coupled with a base damage of 48C this seems a little bit too much considering it's one-handed. Another European axe with similar speed/range has only one modifier and 10 less base damage, but the same strength requirements. The power difference in weapons should be reflected in the ability to use them in some way imo, otherwise we have tons of equipment that nobody will ever use. Weapons topping out at 14 strength (Heavy Flanged Mace) seems weird, considering that you can get that much at char creation. Even companions can be leveled up fairly fast to the point where they got 20+ in one skill. A strength requirement of 9 is almost useless, might as well not be there at all. Is there a way to change requirements to two attributes? This way you could assign one-handed swords a hybrid req of strength/agility, while large two-handed weapons would have a (higher) pure strength req. I guess what I'm proposing is a gear progression system, so that you can't be op from day 1.
     

    The Custom Troop Tree lets you create too powerful Tier 0 and Tier 1 units. In the first picture you see my troop tree, the second shows the Tier 0 (base) unit and on the third is the Tier 1. I managed to give my Lvl4 base unit 140 proficiencies, a body with 33 armor and a bow with PD3. That is completely detached from what the AI factions get at that level, it's almost a Tier 1.5 unit. My Tier 1 unit already has 220 proficiencies, also way higher than what your average Lvl10 unit would have. With an army of just those 2 unit types I could probably complete most of the content, while their normal role should be cannon fodder.
    For both of those tiers the budget needs to be cut and the available attribute/skill points lowered. The imbalance is reinforced by the fact that the base cost of several items is too low in relation to comparable gear. You'll find the most extreme example in the fourth picture, that helmet should cost around 6-7k. There are many more items with lesser but still noticable differences, like the Saracen Swords, which makes gearing your low-level troops way too easy. This imbalance starts to diminish from Tier 2 onwards and at top-tier-level there isn't much of a difference between you and the AI anymore, which is good.

    On that note, what are the interdependencies between tiers? It seems that whatever I do, I always end up with one or more units having a negative attribute or skill point balance. If I fix one, another one will change as well. Also sometimes I can't lower attributes, although no gear/skill requirement should prevent it.
         

    Regarding faction balance, the Sultanat al Mamalik seems to be in a really bad spot power-wise atm. I remember them being able to give the Crusader States a run for their money in old 1257AD. Currently, they get absolutely decimated by both Regnum Hierosolymitanum and the Ilkhanate. I joined several battles on either sides and as soon as it gets into a melee brawl the Sultanat's troops drop like flies, I'd estimate a K/D ratio of 1:5 for their side on average. Which was quite surprising to find out, cause the Sultanat actually is the only faction which uses the crazy Saracen bow. Still doesn't seem to compensate for those inferior melee troops. I haven't checked all the gear, maybe it's just a case of lower armor rating, cause the weapons seem to be pretty balanced across the cultures.

    markfamily said:
    Is there a fix for the unable to find material grass_no_shadow?
    Besides from what was already mentioned (deleting rgl_config.txt in Documents or setting use_pixel_shaders to 0 in said file) I found the easiest solution to be this: just enable plant shadows. This will of course cost you a tiny bit of performance, but even on my mid-range system it's hardly noticeable. No more white patches on the ground, you'll still get the error message though.

    konakona said:
    5) Just noticed on my girl rescue mission, bandits reward me with a whopping 980exp a pop? Not that I am complaining :grin:
    This seems to affect all mobs spawned by guildmaster quests. I got a "Troublesome Bandit" one (41 troops total), each bandit gave more xp than a lord would and on completion I got another 15k team xp. The game apparently thinks you're up against some uber elite mobs.

    EDIT: I made the main points bold, hopefully that makes this post a little less like a wall of text. I'll keep ading new points here to avoid spamming this thread with mini-posts.
  7. SP Viking Conquest Balance Mod 13

    Sadly I can't comment on the alliance issue, but I found something else regarding faction interactions.

    I'm at day 200 currently and been mainly running around gathering companions and improving my proficiencies. I tend to do that before making a push towards establishing a kingdom, cause I never make myself a vasall, so I have to be ready when it goes down.

    Earlier (around day 130) I came across a freshly sieged town with a garrison of only 50 men. I took the chance and grabbed it to get the Crown headgear. Strangely enough that didn't make me declare war on the former owner, but merely decreased my relations and gave them a Casus Belli. After 60-70 or so days they finally declared war on me and sieged my town down in no time (it had only 5 troops). Them taking over the town immediately stopped the war (I guess because I had no more holdings?), but again they left the town pretty much unprotected (only around 40 men). So I took it right back and what do you know, the same thing as before happened. No declaration of war and on top I got another crown.

    ubum5njx.jpg
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    mskd5dya.jpg


    It has been years since I played vanilla M&B, so I can't say whether this behaviour is "normal". But it seems weird that I can pretty much shut down all wars by just loosing my fief and getting it back almost immediately without declaring war again. Also the crown should be unique I think, otherwise you could equip every single companion with it (as it gives +1 persuasion/leadership).
    Maybe also raise the initial garrison after a successful siege to 100 troops, at the current level you can pretty much take over these fiefs solo.

    EDIT: I kept going, always with the same town, to see if the pattern changes. After the first 2 sieges the opposing faction declared war on me just a few days after each subsequent siege. This leads to another problem, easy reputation farming. Each siege yields 5 (I think) rep, so doing this over and over will get you to positive triple-digit reputation in no time.

    Considering that towns are a massive income boost, they shouldn't be that easy to take. I'm not sure what the exact formula is, but from observation it seems that the garrison is only about 10% of the attacking army size. Changing this to 15-20% would probably be enough to prevent it. I don't want to ruin anyone's fun here, but this doesn't only affect the player. In my game the town of Tomtun changed hands almost on a weekly basis for months on end. So the AI abuses the same strategy, cause it always goes for the lowest garrison. That stalls game progression, cause two factions might be caught in an eternal loop of sieging the same town/castle.

  8. SP Viking Conquest Balance Mod 13

    Hello Tingyun,

    I took a break from M&B for a bit, last version I had installed was 5.0 I think. I tried out the 10.0 beta right away and I like most of the subtle (and not so subtle) changes.

    One new mechanic I'm really confused about though: the change to horse speeds when taking damage. Does any of the AI factions rely so heavily on mounted troops that this adjustment was necessary? Mounted troops aren't really a staple of most army compositions I think, they were always hard to train and keep alive, cause most of the time they are the first to suicide into the enemy shield wall. Considering that almost every single unit has some sort of ranged attack they got dehorsed pretty quickly on top of that.

    If this was solely done to shut down the players ability to lance 50 troops per battle, then I'm not sure whether this change was for the better. Players who relied on this tactic and had fun with it will be annoyed and players like me, who used horses to serve as a distraction (splitting up troops and so on) got robbed of strategic options. I really don't see anyone winning here, the only effect is that gameplay got even more streamlined towards all-melee combat. Since the change to the Pictish crossbows (should have reduced the damage instead of making it cutting) we have no real way to break a shield wall anymore and with this new addition every battle is just 2 big blobs of melee units slowly advancing towards each other.

    If you go up against Norse armies (with the most broken unit ingame atm, the Norse Warrior Archer), you can just forget about getting up on your horse, cause a single arrow hit will most likely slow you down to 50% already. After that it won't be long before you turn into a sitting duck. Those archers fire at a rate where 10-20 of them will completely shut you down on your horse, no matter your riding skills. Just bring 50 archers along and see how many enemy horses will reach your frontline.

    If we're talking realism then yes, a horse would slow down from getting (seriously) hit. Problem is, the same logic would have to be applied to foot troops then and that would slow every battle down to a crawl, so that one's out. As long as a melee unit at 5% hp can retreat a inhuman speeds (to the point where your damaged horse will not be able to keep up!), we really shouldn't go overboard with adjustments that make the game more "realistic". At the end of the day I'm playing this to have fun and not to pretend I'm a medieval badass. As it stands, I feel that this change took away tactical options and didn't really add anything, cause it's a pseudo-realism which just doesn't match up with the rest of the existing mechanics.
  9. Dev Blog 31/05/18

    Roccoflipside said:
    There's only a couple of problems I see with a true levy system in M&B games, mainly that there's no population measurement system, and battles are fought far too often. Calling a levy from the same tiny village populated by 10-12 people every two weeks would somewhat break immersion for me. In fact, the way that ai lords in WB replenished their units (which a lot of people did not like) could almost be described as a levy, and the reason it didn't work was because there was no consistent pop., and battles are fought so often (with crazy amounts of casualties) that it just doesn't make any sense anymore. With some sort of population system, where if you take 10 men from a village, that village is 10 men short for, say, two/three months, meaning production, taxing, etc. from that village should take a hit.
    There is no way Bannerlord will have anything that is remotely realistic when it comes to this topic cause it retains the same over-the-top hack&slash playstyle of Warband. It was never meant as a simulator, it's basically Diablo with a first person view. Their new method of recruitment ("notables") will do nothing to change that. If anything, it will make it easier for the player to assemble an army of all high-tier troops (which is as removed from historical accuracy as can be). It's an action game at the very core and any attempt to implement actual realism will most likely fail to achieve anything else but take away from the fun.

    Embrace what you have, don't try to make it into something that it just can not be at this point. Don't be No Man's Sky.
  10. Dev Blog 31/05/18

    Baffling to me that people follow these dev blogs after all this time and are still disappointed almost on a weekly basis over and over again. We have long entered the realm of DNF-level expectations, there is not even a miniscule chance this game will be as good as many players hope it to be. Who seriously played Warband (or really any sandbox game) unmodded for longer than a couple of weeks? So all this information about faction banners and stuff means nothing even in the semi-short run. Literally the only thing important is the flexibility and accessibility for modding, everything else will be just a framework to be built upon.

    I have yet to see a single thing that would propel Bannerlord into the "omg I'm actually there" realm of gaming. It will be a moderate overall improvement to the first game, nothing more. If you want to pretend to be a badass of ye olden days, join your regional medieval combat club instead.
  11. SP Viking Conquest Balance Mod 13

    Tingyun said:
    Even stuff “thieving franks” vs “raiding franks” (is that the right adjective? The other land frank bandits) distinguishes two very seperate roaming grounds, Frisia vs Danmark, and each designation of vikings (danish elite, vs plain vikingr, etc) also defines different locations.
    Thanks for the in-depth information, that's interesting and works (if I understand it right) differently from other mods I played. I got the "raiding franks" quest from the mayor of Caer Dyf, so nowhere near Frisia or Danmark. I did expect them to be in the vicinity or at the very least on the same island, especially with the meager rewards (must be the lowest out of all quests). For example in PoP those bandit parties always spawned near my territory and not in a designated area if I recall correctly. Would raiders really travel across the North Sea and all the way to Cardiff, just to harass some trade caravans? I agree with you that in this case clues won't be of much help because of the distance traveled and the effort to change this to a different mechanic would be unreasonable considering it's not a vital part of the game. I guess I'll just skip this quest entirely from now on.

    I got another problem, this time a visual one. Sorry for pestering you so much, but the normal forums are sparsely used at best and you seem to have some deep knowledge of the game.
    I'm playing a skirmisher, meaning I'm trying to go as light as possible without sacrificing too much defense. The berserker's "Wolf Skin" armor seemed perfect for this, but it is near unplayable in first person view with it (which I'm using all the time except when mounted). The problem is that the top part is visible at all times. 1/3 to 1/2 of your screen will be covered up by it and when you look around it appears like you don't tilt your head but rather rotate it inside it with the armor being static. This is inconsistent with all the other heavy helmets, which become invisible. My only explanation is that this problem is caused by the fact that the headgear is part of the body armor. Could this be replaced in first person view or made invisible entirely? You don't see much of it anyway, even when looking straight down, so the tiny immersion loss would be more than made up by an unobstructed view.

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  12. SP Viking Conquest Balance Mod 13

    Many thanks for putting that much effort into this submod Tingyun, you shape VC into the game it should have been in the first place without sacrificing the overall feel of it (unlike Blood Eagle, which messed the troop tree/economy up and made ranged OP again).

    I have two issues I'd like to change/fix in my game, maybe you can help me out here. I'm not requesting these changes to be included in your release.

    Firstly, the quest "Track down bandits" seems to be downright broken to me. I was able to complete this once, all the other times the party got killed off by someone else. I search around and talk to literally anybody without getting any hint regarding their whereabouts. It appears the only way to finish this is to aimlessly wander around for weeks on end. I'd like to change this so that you are guaranteed a clue after talking to X number of parties (lords/traders/whatever). That way you still have to put some effort into it without having to rely entirely on chance to complete it.

    Second, the way retreats are implemented always bothered me. If you are in a situation of life/death, you will likely experience an adrenaline surge. But the effect will only last for about 30 seconds and there is a good chance that you already "spent" all of it in the battle that came before it. Considering that battles ingame last a fraction of the time they'd take in real life, I'd like to make the following changes to the mechanic (if possible): When troops start to retreat, they get a moderate (not the almost-as-fast-as-a-horse nonsense we have now) increase to running speed. This effect will wear off after about 15-20 seconds, after which their speed will be reduced to below normal (simulating bodily exhaustion). That way units close to the border still have a good chance to escape, while the ones that decide to retreat in the middle of the map will get killed off, even without the other party having horses. Adrenaline mainly affects your perception (increased alertness and pain tolerance), it does not turn people into superhumans for prolonged periods of time.
    The fact that the VC devs allowed you to tab out after the enemy retreats and still win as if you beat them completely goes to show that the mechanic is nowhere near realistic at the moment. I don't want to skip 1/4 to 1/3 of the battle, I want to get the chance to fight til the end.
  13. SP Viking Conquest Balance Mod 13

    I'd like to make a case for the removal of throwing weapons from tournaments.

    With the random weapon distribution (for example 2 x shieldless vs. 2 x axe/sword + shield) and wide range of participants (1-4 teams with 1-8 fighters each, which oftentimes leads to one team staying back while the others grind themselves down) tournaments are unbalanced enough already. Adding throwing weapons in the mix, which most of the fighters wield with pinpoint accuracy, makes the whole brawl even less fun. It's very hard to discern between throwing spears and normal ones from a distance and many arenas have obstacles/elevated terrain, so you'll most likely spot them too late.

    Also from a realistic standpoint it makes little sense to include them, cause they would often cause fatal injuries and although I have close to zero knowledge about tournaments during that timeperiod, I'm pretty sure they weren't held just to kill off a good chunk of the participants, seeing that nobles took part in it as well.

    And lastly, tournaments were always a M&B staple for making some money early on. When you advance to mid-late game, the rewards (even with max bet it's only around 4k) are hardly worth your time, an average bandit spawn will most likely exceed the earnings from a tournament. In the early game, you'll probably lack the WP to wield any weapon to full effect and unless you are a veteran of the game you'll have enough on your hands without a surprise throwing spear to the butt.

    I'd much rather see a Prophesy of Pendor approach to tournaments. In that mod, every city has it's own rules. One might be mounted + lance only, another is on foot with everyone (!) having the same weapon (axe or sword). This way skill actually matters and you don't get screwed over just because your char doesn't use polearms. That way you could skip the ones you'll most likely fail anyway and focus on the ones where your WP is high. This is the extended wishlist though, my main point remains the removal of all throwing weapons.
  14. SP Viking Conquest Balance Mod 13

    Nerevar said:
    I thought about it and in fact some contacts are already present :smile:
    1. Such small settlements weren't able to rely on themselves fully
    2. This is further confirmed by the fact that your cook tells you that he will buy stuff in nearby villages when you asks him about preparing a party
    3. Armor and weapon smiths should buy raw materials and sell their wares somehow. Ulfberth is too good smith to have only you as an occasional customer :smile:

    But my idea was mainly about the fact, that medieval logic was like - peasants are paying stuff and money to nobles in exchange of protection, because without peasants nobles will have no stuff and money :smile: And now it seems that some plebs are living in your well-protected(that's the point!) refuge(small village) for free.
    I'm not talking about big sums of money, but for me it's strange that there is some activity in your domain that is not shares the profits with you.
    Yes, I can see that, and that's probably also what bothers me about the refuge in general. When fully upgraded it basically stops being a hideout and becomes a downsized city with all the amenities you could want. At the same time it is completely immune to attacks (it is, right?) and on top reduces your troop wages to a petty amount. You can often get enough loot from a single random viking party to pay for the whole week.

    I established my refuge right between Caer Dyf / Brycheiniog on one side and Cippanhamm / Cirren Ceaster on the other. I could strike in any direction in less than half a day without them being able to retaliate, all they could do is take their original holding back. Couple this with the very efficient training options you have via the hired trainer and you'll probably never run out of tier 3 troops. I don't know, for me a refuge should be something more temporary and it should have a (small) chance to be discovered and subsequently attacked. Also the max capacity seems to be too high, 250 is the average garrison of a castle. Historically those had often vast landholdings around it which supplied it. Your refuge has a few tiny fields, there is no way you could feed 250 people with that.

    I really think the third expansion stage should not exist, being able to securely store away 120 guys is already very generous. At that stage the refuge also visually appears to be more believeable. If we really want to go the other route (bascially making into a semi-heavily fortified, castle-like settlement), then it has to be targetable by the AI, cause a structure like that would not just fall off the radar. Maybe give the attacker a slight penalty, but it pretty much breaks immersion when you can just drop off your whole army into it and the marshalled force, which was chasing you a minute ago, goes like "Where the hell did those 250 men go, anybody saw that?".

    I know that changing the refuge mechanic is probably way beyond the scope of this balance mod, but that has always been one thing that bothered me with VC.
  15. SP Viking Conquest Balance Mod 13

    Nerevar said:
    I have one proposition but not sure about it - what do you think about adding some income to the refuge? Like, 0 for the level 1(it's basically a few tents), about 250-300(random amount in this range) for level 2 and 400-500 for level 3

    Not a big sum, but it can help to make the refuge more self sufficient
    I don't know, the refuge is meant to be a hideout in the first place. While I agree that it looks like a small settlement when fullly upgraded, logically it would make little sense to give it a weekly income. Because that would imply your troops are in regular trade contact with other settlements, something that pretty much would guarantee you to be discovered before long (RP-wise, ingame nothing would happen of course).

    I see the main benefit in reducing troop wages by 3/4, effectively saving you thousands per month when you have it a max capacity with all high-level troops. So in a way you already get a lot of savings out of it (if you use it heavily).

    EDIT: I did not reload the page and didn't see the reply from Tingyun before posting. He pretty much answered it, so disregard my post :smile:
  16. SP Dark Ages [Submod] Blood Eagle-Independent VC mod (released 3.3)

    Tried this sub-mod out after finding Native VC RE lacking in certain areas.

    I must admit that I was shocked when I looked at the new troop tree. The weapon proficiencies of the top tier units of every faction pretty much got halfed, with the best of the bunch barely reaching 200. Maybe the Native numbers were a bit high (Norse Bodyguard had 385 One-Handed), but then again I'm coming from Prophesy of Pendor, where it is not uncommon to see numbers way beyond that. I understand that this mod strifes for a more realistic approach, but if you are a professional fighter trained to the highest degree, you'd be way more proficient at your craft than those guys are.

    200 WP is not nearly enough in my opinion, it makes facing those units way less threatening than it should be. The player can reach those numbers after a very short amount of time, which in turn makes you the most fearsome warrior in all of Britain and Scandinavia. That doesn't feel right at all, I don't want to feel overpowered after just a couple of IG months. Was there a reason to nerf it that hard? I get the low tier troops (peasants and such), but the top tier ones should have been left alone. Also missile damage seems too high, I'm able to one-shot Sworddanes (Tier 4) from day 1 with just any bow.

    While I think there are a lot of things wrong with VC RE, the start of the game there felt like an actual struggle (sandbox, not the huge waste of time that is the story mode), while with Blood Eagle I can just buy a horse for dirt-cheap and yolo into battles. Also you seem to have gotten rid of all the "special" units (standard bearer, hornman), why is that? It added a nice little touch and gave variety, something that the main game was already lacking to begin with. While your troop trees may look bigger at times, they are actually far more condensed because many branches converge into the same units. I'm no history buff, so maybe the ranges of available troops were very limited in those times. But sometimes realism has to take the backseat to fun and rewarding gameplay, cause that's what we're here for after all, right?

    EDIT: Just saw some more weird stuff. On the Pictish troop tree, their top tier infantry unit (Champion) is actually a downgrade from the unit it upgrades from (Swordsman). The Champion has 5 less WP and 2 less Athletics skill, with only a meager 4 HP gained. Why would I ever want to upgrade to that? Granted I'm only looking at the troop tree and not the actual unit, so maybe the tree is outdated or something?  Another thing, the Finnish Archer merc unit has 50 more WP than the best archery unit of any faction, the Irish Marksman. I heard of Irish archers before, supposedly they used bows also at very close range. But I never heard of the Finns having exceptionally potent archers at the time.

    I don't know, I was very eager to play this mod cause people kept referring to it, but at first glance the balance looks off to me. Also, for a mod that's been around for years the feedback seems to be very scarce, this thread has 3 pages and the other one I think had 9. Isn't this one of the most popular mods for VC?

    Honqua said:
    I modify troop tree for every nation( excluding Frisians), also I change some weapons and little parties.
    ...
    What do you think about it?
    Its worth to continue?

    I make it on 3.4 version.
    I'll give it a try Honqua and report back, judging from the screenshots alone there seems to be a better variety. Although maybe there are too many tiers of archery units for the time, not sure.
  17. Viking Conquest Retreat Code

    I'll revive the thread, cause this is still a major problem. If you retreat at the very start of the battle, with the max distance between the two forces, they'll still charge straight into the enemy army and only after suffering some losses will they then turn and run towards the borders of the map. Sometimes you'll get lucky and they very narrowly pass the enemy, but if he has ranged troops you'll loose a good bunch of them nonetheless.

    This makes no sense at all and is the worst implementation of a retreat mechanic in any mod I played so far. For example, in Prophesy of Pendor or 1257AD the second you issue the retreat order, your units turn on the spot and advance towards the nearest border. There's no way it went unnoticed for all this time, so this behaviour must be intended. What's the reasoning behind this?
  18. I can't recruit a captured lord to my faction?

    Brew said:
    The changes to garrison was done to stop people exploiting the AI by using 1 man garrison and letting marshal take the castle/town and then retake town/castle with low casulties.
    I have not seen any huge castle garrisons(596 was the largest and had shadow wolf KO) yet so this does not seem to be a problem. I think the only time you will see a huge castle/town garrison is when there is a failed assault and the attacker had loads of prisoners.
    While there is an increase in garrison size compared to a castle/town that has never been taken its not much.
    The player can attack quickly if you have made the right preparations, most importantly would be a high level archer PC with lots of renown for a large army.

    The player can kill +50% of garrison in castles/towns without much hassle, so garrison size is not a problem...
    I don't know, to me garrison size actually became quite a bit of a problem. See, the average castle garrison might be around 400-450 guys. A freshly conquered castle (by the AI) instantly gets around 300 guys, at least I never saw a number lower than that. I might be wrong, but it seems that this garrison appears out of thin air, I never witnessed a loss of troops in lords parties after that. The player gets none of that, your new fief will be completely defenseless unless you unload a good portion of your troops there. Yes, you can hire a merc company, but you can have only one at a time so you either use it to protect (the average merc band will on it's own do next to nothing against even the smallest marshalled force) or to help with another siege.

    You mention you can take out 50% of a garrison by yourself, do you actually mean by that just with your PC? Cause I see no way to do that with full damage settings. 2 unlucky bolt/spear hits will take you out, and the defenders can pretty much fire nonstop, even with the increased resupply timer. We're talking about taking out 150+ guys yourself while being under constant fire, that's pretty hard to pull off. What's your battle size? When there are 200+ guys on the battlements with many of them having at least some kind of ranged weapon, there is hardly any safe spot down there and the siege scenes are so claustrophobic at times that I can't even back away far enough to not get hit. And what if you're pure melee (I know, nobody is for that very reason)?

    I'm aware that I'm deliberately taking the rough route here, but this particular playstyle just feels less fun than before, cause right now the obvious thing to do would be to get some Noldor and cheese my way through the game. Unlimited reinforcements for the AI was one thing, but magically appearing garrisons at 75% capacity is taking it too far imo and makes it feel more like an endurance race and less like an actual campaign. I see the good intentions behind the change, but this further emphasises the mod's long-running theme of "get OP archers asap - don't ask, just do it!".
  19. Let's Play - Prophesy of Pendor 3.9 - Only ladies allowed! - Now in English!

    Plasquar said:
    I wonder what's the best strategy against cavalry tho. They always seem to circle around my units and therefore sucking up a lot of arrows (=wasted arrows).
    I adopted a (maybe) slightly odd way of handling enemy cavalry. I position my troops on a spot with proper line of sight, so my archers can fire away at my command. If you are superior to the enemy forces or at least evenly matched, they will not come at you on their own. So I alone move towards them instead, circle them to reach their back ranks (where their cav normally chills out) and kill/dehorse one rider. That will prompt their infantry and archers to charge at my front line, but their cavalry will pursue me instead. So effectively I split their forces up. With the help of the mini-map I check the distance between their foot troops and mine and when it seems about right I order them to fire at will, all the while leading their cav in circles around me and dehorsing them one by one. When their forces have suffered enough losses I'll lure the remaining cav back to my front line for my guys to finish them off.

    This can get a little bit difficult depending on the terrain, but I found that my archers in particular are way more efficient that way. If you are a daredevil, you can even loop between the cav and the inf blob, so that the inf is moving towards your firing line all the while facing the other way. That way they'll drop like flies, but this does not work every single time. Really depends on the AI's cav/inf ratio.
  20. Data gathering with polls

    Is the "...or when reaching 200 votes" thing still in effect? I'm not complaining about the votes, the more the better as far as I'm concerned, but we already hit 300 for the currrent one.
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