Balanced Native Mod...

[kuwhar]

I've played a ton of mods and while some are great, don't get me wrong, I always end up back in native because I love the feel of the game and I make small tweaks to make things a little more difficult.



With that said i'm looking to build a new, light rebalancing mod that addresses some key issues that Native has that won't break the feel of Native and try to work out some of the issues.

I want your ideas as well.

What this mod aims for: A light rebalancing of native, using ONLY 2 Tools, Morgh's Editor and TweakMB. I'm not and have no desire to be proficient in coding. Aside from the time investments I feel that it always introduces bugs/unintended consequences so I will not be using any form of coding changes. Agree or disagree this is how I am approaching the mod.

What this mod won't do: This mod won't stray from the native feel or make wholesale changes to a form of gameplay. I want to keep as close to native as possible while making it as balanced as possible.

Before posting:Please keep comments constructive and respectful, even towards the most outrageous ideas.

Also: I want this to be a community effort. This isn't about me and my ideas, it's about collaboration and work arounds. Life has taught me that no matter how smart you are (or think you are) having others there to help and discuss things will always lead to better solutions.


The thing's i'll be looking at:

1. Faction desertion/indictments towards the late game where lords hop from faction to faction like mad.

2. Horse archers. They can be good but I feel they need a little boost to be more balanced.

3. Mamlukes and Swadian knights, and mounted troops in general. They can be very OP and need balancing, whether it's through increased wages or reworking their equipment.

4. Lances. I personally enjoy using them but the problem is NPC's tend to use them even in close quarters, especially when mounted. So they are trying to jab an enemy with a lance while at a standstill. This not only breaks immersion but can lead to some units being decimated because they refuse to switch to a sword.

5. Archers. I think archers need more ammo all around. Having a troop that is proficient in archery or Xbox carry only 30ish units of ammo is way to small and makes them useful for only a small part of battle, and even less so during sieges.

I will add more as time permits, and share your ideas please, i'll add them to the list and keep it updated as often as possible.

Thanks

 

[Northcott]

Did you ever see the original 1257 AD mod for Mount & Blade (not the Warband version)? Spanky did something very similar. He dialled all factions back to the same tech level, tweaked the units a little, added a couple (gave the Rhodoks and Nords cavalry, for example), and the end effect was a very balanced, enjoyable version of M&B.

Tweaking the armour so that it's more consistent in protection values, and the weapons so that they're more consistent in speed, damage, and reach, tends to do much of the job. Alter some equipment and troop stats, and you're flying.

As for some of the problems you mention, I don't know that you can get around those without coding. 1257 AD (Warband version) has breakable lances, and the result is that the issue of NPCs favouring the polearms stops being a problem after the first charge. But I've noticed that they also tend to switch to proper melee weapons more readily, so there's obviously some deeper coding that's gone on there. Perhaps if you dig around the mod forum, you can find open source code that's usable for your needs. Otherwise, I think  you may be up the creek when it comes to some of these issues.

 

[RalliX]

http://forums.taleworlds.com/index.php/topic,328162.0.html

I've been developing this little thing.
It has more to do specifically with troops and some of the problems you mentioned like low ammo count, horse archers being inaccurate and heavy cavalry being OP/unbeatable.

 

[Kentucky 『 ＨＥＩＧＵＩ 』 James]

Northcott's right, most of those issues are unsolvable without coding. Here are my general thoughts on each of your points:

1. This has been a long standing issue with warband. The very talented Zsar attempted to solve this, but nothing can prevent the weird and unpredictable stuff that happens after several hundred days of gameplay. Warband is prone to bugs the longer you play it, some of which are unpreventable because it's impossible to guess which part of the code is causing them -- "meeting yourself" is one of these.
There's no easy way of going about this, as the AI decision code can get complex.

2. Horse archers don't work well in large numbers in this game. If you fight a battle with 200 vs 200 horse archers, the kill rate will be very slow because they'll all ride around in a random mess, blocking each other's line of sight and distracting each other constantly so that they keep switching weapons and targets, and never kill anything. In smaller battles however, they're unmatched and can manoeuvre very well on open ground. That's a hardcoded combat mechanic that can't be effectively changed.

3. I agree wholeheartedly. The main issue is the huge discrepancy between heavy cavalry and lower tier troops and how easy it is for the player to spam them. They have heavy armour, heavy horses, silly stats AND a huge charge bonus. Couple that with the weird charge mechanics and nothing the game can counter them effectively.
The most glaring issue is their horses which frequently recieve 0 damage from most infantry. The hitboxes also confuse the AI, who walk right up to horses and get their attacks interrupted. With more squishy horses like coursers or hunters, swadian knights and mamluks suddenly become a lot less steamrolly.
Increasing their XP requirement could also help.

4. The problem is mainly due to the long, heavy and weak lances knights sometimes get. With lighter lances, cavalry can be really dangerous to other cavalry and most infantry, but the "great lance" is impossible for the AI to use correctly and it regularly does zero damage (I did a test where i gave cavalry a great lance and nothing else. They could barely kill peasants).
Might be an idea to add a dedicated lancer troop and a dedicated smounted swordsman troop. The game doesn't handle both at the same time very well, and the annoying random item spawning mechanic screws them over.

5. Defending archers in sieges get infinite ammo, so it might be an idea to test what it plays like when the attackers get it too.
For battles, I think it might be better to slow the rate of fire, but changing the length of the animation is the only non-cumbersome way I can envision doing this, and archery is slow enough as it is.

Good luck with this. It's always interesting to see native get rebalanced.

 

[Goker]

Since this thread seems to be focused on sharing ideas about tweaking Native, it can stay here. But I would recommend starting the actual mod thread over at The Pioneer's Guild which is the place where mods under construction are kept.

 

[kuwhar]

Thanks for the responses, i'll be posting some proposed tweaks later today and perhaps some new issues i think could be addressed.

The only coding I may implement may be Pre-Battle orders (an older version with no deployment phase) because that may help address some issues, but thats only because the code is relatively light and  doesn't really alter native's feel; it just gives you more control over troops.

And thank-you Goker.

 

[kuwhar]

Ok so here are the proposed work-arounds i'm considering for the aforementioned issues:

1. Faction desertion/indictments towards the late game where lords hop from faction to faction like mad.
Lowering the relation loss to 0 for fiefs assigned to rivals and raising the relation gain to +10, this may make lords harder to persuade out of a kingdom but not necessarily impossible, but keep a nice "core" of lords within a kingdom for a long time.

2. Horse archers. They can be good but I feel they need a little boost to be more balanced.
I'm considering taking away their shields and having them with 2x arrows,  a bow and a one-hand sword. If i do implement Pre-battle orders it would work with telling them to avoid melee, but without that i'm almost considering the extreme of giving them only bow and arrows as melee should be an absolute last resort for them anyways. I'm worried this may make them too weak, but at the flipside they may just avoid melee combat all together, which could be problematic when defending sieges.

3. Mamlukes and Swadian knights, and mounted troops in general. They can be very OP and need balancing, whether it's through increased wages or reworking their equipment.
This one I struggle with, but i'm leaning towards one or some of the following: lowering armored horses speed and health and raising mounted wages to 250% of normal troops (default is 166%). I currently use the wage increase which is a good balancer but it leaves khergits a little overpriced and harder to manage.

4. Lances. I personally enjoy using them but the problem is NPC's tend to use them even in close quarters, especially when mounted. So they are trying to jab an enemy with a lance while at a standstill. This not only breaks immersion but can lead to some units being decimated because they refuse to switch to a sword.
Unfortunately i'm leaning towards removing them from mounted troops. While this may be a bit drastic, if the AI doesn't permit them to use them correctly after an initial charge it's much more immersion breaking watching them poke infantry for 1-2 damage while they get slaughtered than it is nobody using lances. Or perhaps making lances much more rare

5. Archers. I think archers need more ammo all around. Having a troop that is proficient in archery or Xbox carry only 30ish units of ammo is way to small and makes them useful for only a small part of battle, and even less so during sieges.
I Think most would agree that 30 arrows is not enough for a devoted archer, so upping the count to 60ish is what i'll do here. Crossbowmen i'm not positive because of their slow rate of fire ammo isn't generally an issue and them having shields adds a nice touch.

@jacob, are you positive about defenders getting unlimited? I've notice when defending my own towns etc that my own archers will run out of arrows, or is it for the AI only? I'll have to take another peek to verify but i'm 99% sure my own troops have run out of arrows while defending.

Any other thoughts or issues that i'm missing please share, i'm always open to suggestions.

 

[Kentucky 『 ＨＥＩＧＵＩ 』 James]

It's not strictly unlimited; every 90 seconds (or something), all archers get their arrows replenished. If they're constantly firing I guess they could run out.

Your solutions to the other issues seem sound. Might I also suggest that you make nord shields "narrower" (i.e. the item value). They're way wider than khergit shields despite their models being considerably smaller, which allows the AI to get away with the weird "force field" mechanic they seem to pull off (i.e. blocking weapons from behind because the hitbox is too wide).

 

[RalliX]

Ok so here are the proposed work-arounds i'm considering for the aforementioned issues:

1. Faction desertion/indictments towards the late game where lords hop from faction to faction like mad.
Lowering the relation loss to 0 for fiefs assigned to rivals and raising the relation gain to +10, this may make lords harder to persuade out of a kingdom but not necessarily impossible, but keep a nice "core" of lords within a kingdom for a long time.

This may be a good method. In general the vassals of a kingdom need to be more likely to stick together if they want to be perceived as strong by the player.

2. Horse archers. They can be good but I feel they need a little boost to be more balanced.
I'm considering taking away their shields and having them with 2x arrows,  a bow and a one-hand sword. If i do implement Pre-battle orders it would work with telling them to avoid melee, but without that i'm almost considering the extreme of giving them only bow and arrows as melee should be an absolute last resort for them anyways. I'm worried this may make them too weak, but at the flipside they may just avoid melee combat all together, which could be problematic when defending sieges.

I have tried taking away their melee weapons. They simply bring their fists out when they get into melee, instead of using their bows. You can guess how that turns out for them.
I have also gone with the 1h sword and double arrow bag method, as well as ensuring that their weapon proficiency, PowerDraw, and horse archery skills are high enough to enable them to hit targets and do damage.

3. Mamlukes and Swadian knights, and mounted troops in general. They can be very OP and need balancing, whether it's through increased wages or reworking their equipment.
This one I struggle with, but i'm leaning towards one or some of the following: lowering armored horses speed and health and raising mounted wages to 250% of normal troops (default is 166%). I currently use the wage increase which is a good balancer but it leaves khergits a little overpriced and harder to manage.

4. Lances. I personally enjoy using them but the problem is NPC's tend to use them even in close quarters, especially when mounted. So they are trying to jab an enemy with a lance while at a standstill. This not only breaks immersion but can lead to some units being decimated because they refuse to switch to a sword.
Unfortunately i'm leaning towards removing them from mounted troops. While this may be a bit drastic, if the AI doesn't permit them to use them correctly after an initial charge it's much more immersion breaking watching them poke infantry for 1-2 damage while they get slaughtered than it is nobody using lances. Or perhaps making lances much more rare

I've found that increasing the minimum damage and speed stats on lances helps quite a bit with decreasing the amount of bounces which occur, while still allowing cavalry to have lances. In effect they become somewhat longer 1h spears, which is exactly what they are. I find that increasing the difficulty with which one can acquire elite cavalry is the first thing, and as such I've made sure that the cavalry in my own modded native have a longer level progression than for infantry or archers.
I decreased armour for heavier horses, and increased the armour of lighter hroses, while decreasing health for most horses.

With these modifications, as well as a general increase in the usefulness of infantry and their weapons, I ensure that cavalry can be killed, and that there is a particularly hard counter to any kind of heavy cavalry, and that is Rhodok infantry. If you bring your heavy cavalry into rough terrain against Rhodoks in my mod, you will take heavy casualties.

5. Archers. I think archers need more ammo all around. Having a troop that is proficient in archery or Xbox carry only 30ish units of ammo is way to small and makes them useful for only a small part of battle, and even less so during sieges.
I Think most would agree that 30 arrows is not enough for a devoted archer, so upping the count to 60ish is what i'll do here. Crossbowmen i'm not positive because of their slow rate of fire ammo isn't generally an issue and them having shields adds a nice touch.

In my mod I have ensured that any ranged troop that has no shield will have two sets of arrows/bolts.
I made Rhodok and Swadian Crossbowmen different, by allowing Swadian crossbows to sometimes have shields, but not usually, which meant that they would usually have two sets of bolts.
Rhodok crossbowmen always have shields, which means less bolts. But Rhodoks do more damage per shot at higher levels.

This allows troops/factions to be different and give different advantages.
Nord archers I have guaranteed shields, to make them more effective in an infantry swarm, and to make them different from Vaegir or Sarranid archers.

My mod is very much concerned with combat, troop and items stats, as well as the aesthetics/uniqueness of the factions. It doesn't deal at all with political changes.

 

[Northcott]

I gave my Nord archers helmets and ensured that they had 2-handed axes. I also made the longbow suck a little less. All of a sudden they were competent. Not great, mind you -- the Vaegir and Khergit still out-performed as archers, and those damned Rhodok crossbowmen are always irritating, but they were a threat at least. And God help you if you underestimate them in melee.