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Adrivan said:

how would that work in practice tho, will you place walls across the map everywhere to prevent access?

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Make army cohesion deteriorate rapidly the farther you are from your own bases. Think of it as a "supply" situation. Then change the AI so that they prefer to siege castles closer to their own territory.

Missile damage just needs to drop very sharply after close range. Armor in general could use a buff. I know some games have a player-base that is allergic to fights that last more than 2 seconds, but I think we have some more mature players on this ride.

hueman337 said:

i feel that i must speak my opinion about the overall "balance" in this mod, because it feels really off

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First off, to be fair, the underlying problem is probably with the relative simplicity of the base game as well as design choices there. I am not an expert on PoP either.

Considering that, however, it sounds like it fits perfectly with typical hollywood (or longbow/english-prejudiced) perception of how armor (speak: "cardboard") and ranged worked. It's one of the most widespread misconceptions in modern times about the medieval era, right up there with 20 pound swords and "knights couldn't get up," despite there being quite a lot of contemporary evidence that was to the contrary. I am thinking, for example, of the saracen chronicler's description of the "terrible" sight of european warriors walking around looking like pincushions because their arrows did nothing to harm them, or the recorded note of purchase from one european king who ordered hundreds of layered gambesons, because they made warriors, according to him, impervious to missile fire.

This is reinforced by gaming developers who intentionally nerf the historical usefulness of armor quite a lot for "balance" reasons, and simply because a generation of twitch gamers wants quick resolutions, which does not lend itself to long duels and battles where men line up and bombard each other before engagement, which is exactly what makes attrition via ranged useful. Look, for example, to the now abandoned game War of the Roses, where initially armor was quite historical, but the developers caved to some minor but vocal complaints that it was "too good" and made combat take too long. (Despite this, armor remained quite good at deflecting light cutting attacks.)

Anyway, rambling aside, my recommendation is to adjust the values yourself, it's not too difficult, I routinely do it with some mods. Off the bat, I would first make sure all ranged weapons do cutting instead of piercing, because from everything I have learned about the topic, that is the best representation in Warband.* I might also tweak armor soak and redux values up a few points, no more than 10. After that I would compare bows and xbows etc to vanilla and bring the values back down if they exceed them by a lot.

The soak and reduction values are super easy to change, they are global and in a single file, I think module.ini. I would first check if PoP reduces these values from vanilla. They should be at least as high as in vanilla, imo, but not too much higher, either. This is assuming PoP doesn't radically change values overall, but I can't think of a good reason that it should. Changing weapon damage types requires checking each one, but will be much easier if you get one of the troop editors for Warband.

*That would not be true if it were possible to make different armor categories have different soak/reduction values per damage type. Then you could have maille that stopped cuts cold but did less for piercing and nothing for blunt attacks, layered gambeson that stops piercing attacks cold, but does less for cutting and blunt, and so on. Naturally this explains why armor was always layered. Warriors would wear a padding with maille armor for just this sort of reason, plus it takes the force out of the attacks on the maille - there's a reason smiths work things against an anvil. The common weakness in all these armors was one thing: system shock and trauma from sheer force and impact. That explains with perfect logic the arms race that favored longer or heavier weapons with serious impact followed by pin-point thrusting accuracy to the less-armored joints that your disorienting attack hopefully exposed... until gunpowder weaponry improved and literally blew it all away, a feat that none of it's ranged predecessors even remotely managed.

As a side note, one thing that reinforces, in my mind, the fact that vanilla Warband is broken in terms of how good archery works, is the need for making the shield skill a virtual force-field against arrows. This starkly contrasts the reality of this period where shields were on the decline, because good armor was common. This fact only makes sense if you assume that common armor was so good against ranged that shields were not needed.

SeánC said:

Ceasar said:

samurai_TOTALWAR said:

Ceaser why do i have a sword logo ?

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Annouce me as your god, and ill change it.

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I see why you call yourself Ceasar now 

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I assumed it was because he can't spell.

Seven of Spades said:

You can use it for making some sort like a Red Weeding.

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Very clever strategy. Need to try this next time I secede.

Someone ought to mod in dual wielding these beauties. (Both pistol-axe hybrids made in Nuremburg, I believe.)

Surprisingly,

Vaegirs
Nords (!)
Rhodoks
Swadia (?)
Sarranids

Source. Process. Kermits not included. Swadians inserted on best guess.

Nice little strategy.

Belisario said:

Coming back to Warband after playing strategy games always frustrates me because I'm not in command of anything.

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I assume you already do, but if not get diplomacy/PBOD, it gives a little more control over some stuff.

It really depends on what you're doing with them. Many factions excel at one thing and suck at another, making this a hard rating to settle on.

Additionally, it's not really hard to make up for a weakness of a faction... in other words, playing as nord, you can get cavalry and archers elsewhere etc, while primarily recruiting your own infantry. You can avoid field battles in terrain that suits cavalry. Make bee-lines for castles and take them with shields and axes. Etc.

Based on that thought, I would consider Rhodoks and Sarranid the worst. Neither of them excel in any one field. (Though they come close enough, and are situated in terrain favorable enough, that I think even that is up to debate.)

In terms of grand strategy, though, Swadians have a really poor starting position, so they're a contender for another reason.

Lastly you could divide the game into arenas: field battles and siege battles. The worst at siege are probably Khergits... but they excel in the field for reasons of speed on the strategic map as well as cavalry use. The worst in the field? This really depends on the use of terrain and troop composition. Nords and Rhodoks have the disadvantage of the slower movement of infantry, which makes it much harder to choose your terrain and battles, but they make up for it by being real beefy in general (and Rhodoks in particular tend to be situated in infantry-friendly terrain) so that's debatable.

pittguy55 said:

I'm kind of a freshman with not much experience. But as far as I've experienced during my gameplay I would say Vaegir are the worst.

Just my personal opinion though.

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Well, Vaegirs have the strength of having (hands down) the best archers... however, foot archers require the most tricks in the field to use effectively, so I can see how you would think that. It is a disadvantage in a way, because they're balanced by not having more easily manageable advantages. (See: Swadian cav, etc.)  Once you've put in many hours in WB, I think your opinion of them will change some, though. Mix in some nord infantry with vaegir archers, and always stick the archers on a hill or just behind a river, with the infantry and a bit of cav blocking access/flanking just before the moment of contact.

I think we agree, mostly. The examples generally seem to suggest that empires languages tend to not replace the native languages, but rather merge into the native tongue and supplement it. English is itself a great example of this in action. (There are 5 different languages involved in the etymological development of that last sentence)

I'm inclined to think that time and distance (or rather, lack of interaction) causes languages to drift apart, and technology (including govt. development etc) brings people together over distance to counteract it specifically. (But perhaps not lack of interaction.)

Since the empire's unifying government has been abandoned, my opinion is that the conditions for language diversity have essentially returned to the tribal days. The lack of communication and unity between and even within cultures is supported by the fact that the factions are constantly at war with any given other nation, and Calradia is rife with banditry and potential rebellion.

But perhaps someone has in mind developments besides the rise and fall of the empire that would influence things?

Ok - now it did get resolved. I just had to go in to the kingdom management and actually change stuff from default settings, apparently? Maybe it had null input until it got set or something, no idea. Thanks for the help, guys.

Certainly they have been influential, but how many native languages did english, german, russian and latin actually replace during the times of empire?

kirkusmaximus said:

See if this helps:

Go to your minister and ask them "I wish to change our culture." Select Rhodok

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I had already tried that, and the castles and cities had the proper Rhodok roster - but your suggestion made me think I should try switching to another culture and then back to Rhodok. Not sure why that worked this time, but it did! Thanks. 

Nevermind, I had just switched on "Show Party members."  Still not working. Villages give nothing but scrubs.

Rhodok nation villages give nothing at all, of course, as I am at war. Swadian villages offer the full roster. Perhaps it's the war I have with Rhodoks?

-no, switching to Nord culture allows the normal roster in castles and towns, but only nordic hunters and bondsmen from villages.

Leifdin said:

Actually, it is very difficult for cultures sharing such a small piece of land to remain distinct for an extended period of time. Ttaking this to consideration, I'd be happy to have all units heavily influenced by culture tied to a certain place, and not just the way it works now. We have planned certain outposts for specific units, but I have no idea how long it will take to implement.

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Small piece of land? I would say the scale is abstract for reasons of playability and the map would realistically have to represent a much larger area than travel time and number of settlements in game seem to indicate. After all, it had to be large enough for the original cultures to develop separate from each other in the first place, or? Language tends to be just as fractured as cultures because they are part of each other and develop for the same reasons. As far as a culture owning a tiny bit of land meaning they'll lose their language, just look at some of the miniscule communities of jews throughout the world that kept a language of their own for over a millenium, gypsies speaking romani, etc.

Note: I'm not saying it's wrong to assume they could speak one language, just discussing for the sake of my interest in the topic.

Yarrum said:

Furthermore, I think one of the big things about Calradia is its homogeneity of language. While the six kingdoms of Calradia all have very distinct cultures, their language is shared.

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Incidentally, I am curious as to what makes you assume this. I mean, of course, everyone speaks "default installation language." And one could assume that since Swadia is a remnant of the old empire, they speak the descendant of what might have once been a common tongue. But is there anything in game lore to suggest the nations all abandoned their original language, have not diverged since the fall of the empire, or that everything isn't just represented in "common" for playing convenience?

kirkusmaximus said:

A screenshot may help. Also maybe a screenshot of your kingdom management screen.

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Sure, here you are:

No other comments - I assume this is a bug then.

As a side-note on the issues you mentioned, Yarrum, I've often thought it would be nice if units had sub-titles under their names with their function. Something like,

Nord Berserker
Light Shock Infantry

I wouldn't even mind if it were added to the name, at the end.

Edit: Perhaps it would be more functional at the beginning, including the tier, and syntax to visibly demarcate the flavor name.

Heavy Skirmisher Cavalry (T4) --- Sarranid Yaya

You could just make every faction have 1 unit. Then naming would be easy and effective. "Nord." "Rhodok." "120 Nords." You would also know exactly which troop you should recruit for which job. Have you considered doing the same for the weapons and armors, too?

But in earnest, having more troop types per se is not a bad thing, it is a good thing, so long as it does not confuse. Therefor, an improved naming convention that makes their roles a bit clearer would be nice.

I personally don't like the "final form" approach as I find it more limiting than one which presents multiple equally viable options, even if they're in the same vein.

Yes, but I can't recruit any troops at all from villages, except for one type. This was not the case before I started my own kingdom.