Band of Warriors (Expanded) Constructive Criticism

[Zathan]

While I appreciate you views, consider this:

1.BoW has several more heroes that can't be killed.
2. Leadership has be upped to give you 10 troops per point.

Both of those facts should ensure your security if you're wounded. Let them do upfront combat.

Thirdly, most players will have noticed that native becomes boring after you reach a certain level.
BoW avoids this. Get wounded and be a little more careful...

If you can't cope with these facts, choose 'save without quitting' or play native.

Lastly, BoW isn't just designed to be native with more gear. Even if you don't think so, features have thoughtfully been incorporated. Player wounding was added to counter the benefits BoW provides.

Zathan

 

[Ranik]

I'm sorry to keep commenting but I don't think we see eye to eye on this. If your goal is to avoid the game becoming boring then how is it that wounding them and forcing them to sit in the rear is any improvement? I think maybe the bigger concern for me  is the permanent attribute damage. One or two unlucky headshots and a long developed character could be crippled permanently. This can happen even if you sit in the rear and let others fight its just a matter of bad luck. I understand that its meant to counter a lot of the new benefits but perhaps its a tad much.

 

[fisheye]

Is there a separate startup option for NPC hero wounding and player wounding?

 

[Panpiper]

Ranik, you have the opton of turning off hero wounding when you start a new game. BOW lets you recruit 32 unkillable, imortal heros. The worst that can happen is loosing a battle and being captured, which sets you back for cash resources, which for most of us is not that big a deal. However with wounding, there is at least consequence and danger, which for most of us adds to the thrill.

Again, if you don't like it, turn it off. Or if you don't want to start over, export your main character, mod the file and reimport having given yourself 10 in each of  first_aid, surgery & wound_treatment. That will pretty much ensure you are never bothered by wounding again. It does have some other imbalancing effects however.

 

[G36E]

Ranik, you have the opton of turning off hero wounding when you start a new game. BOW lets you recruit 32 unkillable, imortal heros. The worst that can happen is loosing a battle and being captured, which sets you back for cash resources, which for most of us is not that big a deal. However with wounding, there is at least consequence and danger, which for most of us adds to the thrill.

Again, if you don't like it, turn it off. Or if you don't want to start over, export your main character, mod the file and reimport having given yourself 10 in each of  first_aid, surgery & wound_treatment. That will pretty much ensure you are never bothered by wounding again. It does have some other imbalancing effects however.

There is NO turn off wounding feature for the PC.

I like wounding, I like EGＩＩ and EatRC, but I don't like having a cut to the torso turn my broken leg/arm into permanent injuries.

 

[fisheye]

There is NO turn off wounding feature for the PC.

That's the real problem right there. You guys need to have separate options toggles for PC wounding and NPC wounding. They're completely separate gameplay issues.

 

[juderiverman]

If your goal is to avoid the game becoming boring then how is it that wounding them and forcing them to sit in the rear is any improvement?

Better let the NPC heroes sit in the rear than let the player sit in the rear.

In TLD when the player is knocked out, the player didn't suffer any "wound", rather the NPC heroes suffer or even die.

It is not realistic in some sense, but it is more playable.

Or you may imagine, when the player is knocked out, he/she just passed out, not wounded.
The NPC heroes try their best to carry the player out of the batter field.
The wounds come at that carrying-away period because defending an unconscious man is harder than defending yourself.

 

[G36E]

There is NO turn off wounding feature for the PC.

That's the real problem right there. You guys need to have separate options toggles for PC wounding and NPC wounding. They're completely separate gameplay issues.

I was hoping more for an EG II like system, where the second serious wound to the same area turns your previous wound permanent, that's more realistic.

If your goal is to avoid the game becoming boring then how is it that wounding them and forcing them to sit in the rear is any improvement?

Better let the NPC heroes sit in the rear than let the player sit in the rear.

In TLD when the player is knocked out, the player didn't suffer any "wound", rather the NPC heroes suffer or even die.

It is not realistic in some sense, but it is more playable.

Or you may imagine, when the player is knocked out, he/she just passed out, not wounded.
The NPC heroes try their best to carry the player out of the batter field.
The wounds come at that carrying-away period because defending an unconscious man is harder than defending yourself.

Erh, I'd say that's bad. That'd result in the following:
Player: "Everyone stay back! *I* shall kill them all!"
Borcha: "All 700 Vaegirs boss?"
Player: "Of course you dimwit, I don't want you guys to get injured!"
*Arrow from Master Archer connects with player's head, player is knocked out*
Borcha: "Ahh, boss'll be fine, got a skull like a rock, he has."

 

[Panpiper]

First let me say thank you for this utterly marvelous mod/expansion of an otherwise itself magnificent game. The work that has been put in is stupendous and the results very worth the while. I am simply not interested in playing native with BoW around. I would rather play .903 in BoW than .960 in native. The critique that follows truly is meant as constructive. These problems are trivial when compared to the overall outstanding achievement BoW represents.

The stats of the legendary weapons need a looking over vis-a-vis how they compare to normal weapons. They should at the least be a step up from a balanced counterpart, else there is no reason for them to be legendary. Example:
Kushana: 36C 20P Speed 85, Reach 152 (Supposedly a legendary weapon!)
Balanced Glaive: 36C 20P Speed 93, Reach 156 (Superior to Kushana and findable in shops!)
Dragon Guard Yari: 30C 32P Speed 88, Reach 158 (A loss of only 6C for a gain of 12P, plus better reach and speed and a one hand weapon!)

Now in this example, admittedly the Dragon Guard Yari is probably itself out of whack, though toning that down would also significantly tone down the awesomeness of the Eastern Invaders. Kushana should be slightly better than a Balanced Dragon Guard Yari: 31C 33P Speed 92, Reach 158. That or the Dragon Guard Yari needs to be toned down to be perhaps slightly better than a Balanced Glaive and Kushana be a tad better than that. I am harping on Kushana here, but all of the legendary weapons need to be looked at more carefully. I am right now stripping all of the legendary weapons from my heroes and replacing them with Dragon Guard Yari.

(I would handle this by making the Dragon Guard Yari: 28C 30P Speed 88, Reach 158 and a two hand weapon. Increase the polearms skill level of the Eastern Invader Cavalry by 10. Kushana I would make 32C 28P Speed 92, Reach 160 and leave it as a two hander. Kushana is a naginata which is more of a cutter and less of a chopper than a glaive, plus naginata are definately better thrusters than are glaives.)

I was pleased to see that there is a legendary suit of armor in the game. However I was not pleased to see that it's stats were inferior to the armor I was already wearing (though by only one point). I figured, oh well, maybe just having a unique look was worth the sacrifice. Unfortunately the look of the armor is not so great. It might be improved if the pauldrons weren't on backwards (or maybe the whole torso is backwards?). But please, do increase the stats on the armor to be one point 'higher' than that of Reinforced Ornate Plate armor rather than one point lower.

Plus, costs are completely out of whack. Autolooting seems to be determined solely by the monetary value of the item. My guys will always chuck superior gear that just happens to have a lower price tag to something inferior that for some reason, just happens to cost more. The end result is that I virtually never use auto loot, which is a big loss to the game, as that autoloot feature is a big part of BoW. Either autolooting priority needs to be based on some other hidden value, or all the cash values of all the various weapon categories need to be standard progressions based on the relative usefulness in the autoloot.

Having a next and back button when looking at your hero's equipment display would be a HUGE boon.  I don't know if there is any way to code this but I cannot tell you how many times I have had to go through the whole of my heroes listing, repeatedly opening and closing all their windows just to check on some trivial detail like which of them was riding which horses, or whatever. Please, please! <Grovel, grovel...>

Firearms result in some rather buggy behavior. I trained up my heroes in firearms to get them to skill 200+, so they could use firearms when taking castle and city walls. I initially also thought that it would be cool for them to be firearm equipped lancers, true later era cavalry. However I have now got all my guys carrying an Infantry Musket and a Large Bag of Lead Bullets (in addition to their Dragon Guard Yari and Steel Shield) with orders to NOT use ranged weapons. While I was training them up, I had them all carrying a Cavalry Musketoon with orders to use ranged weapons. They would charge into battle with their lances and do some initial melee and in short order, as soon as things got a little looser, they would pull out their Musketoons... And never put them away! There might have been a handful of situations in which one of them did take out their melee weapon again in a special circumstance, but it was extremely rare.

This perhaps would not be so much the problem except that in practice, my heroes were terrible shots (despite maxing out their horse archery). A battle could go on at quite some length without them killing anything. This was all the more apparent when there was one enemy left and my heroes would be running around the fellow in circles taking pot shots interminably. I would sometimes get bored of this and just kill the fellow myself. (Usually I let my heroes do the killing so they rack up the XP and skill. I've been exporting/importing my character every time I've started a new game from way back.) This is all just funny except that their desire to run in circles is so extreme that if they happen to be near a map edge, they will all pile up on the map edge and get stuck there, I guess because their desired circle would take them beyond the map edge. This could often result in a single remaining swordsman standing at the edge of the pileup, slowly hacking his way through one of my heroes. My heroes would would just stand there.

Running out of ammo also creates problems. The heroes do not know at that point to put away the firearm and take out their melee weapons. Instead they just run around with their empty firearm. Perhaps it would be possible to script in a command (maybe using the backspace feature) that flags 'use ranged weapons', 'don't use ranged weapons'. This would at least allow us some additional flexibility as well as be an effective workaround with this AI problem (as I assume all these aberrant behaviors would stop the instant the heroes are commanded to go melee).

I'm sure I could think of more but this is already long. Again, thank you all for all your effort. You've made my life better.

 

[Corvus]

Really nice to read this, and thank you for the complements, and of course the criticisms.
I can't say much more than that, as I have very little idea about the whole shebang of coding, but I will point NCrawler and the gang in this direction.

Cheers

Corvus

 

[juderiverman]

New Skill 1: Diplomat or NPC Management.
(Idea originates from Heroes III.)

Level 1: The player can hire up to 2 NPC heroes, and the level of NPC heroes must be lower than the player's at the time of hiring.

Level 2: The player can hire up to 4 NPC heroes, and the level of NPC heroes be no greater than the player's at the time of hiring.

Level 3:....................................6...................... .........................no greater than player's level +2...............

Level 4:...................................8....................... .........................no greater than player's level +4...............

^^^^

Level 10: ...................................24...................... .......................no greater than player's level +N...........


New Skill 2: Endurance.

Level 1: The player can endure up to 0 point of damage.
(when taking 0 point of damage, the player's action would not be stopped. i.e. when enemies' arrows hit at your shield on back.)

Level 2: The player can endure up to 1 point of damage. (HP is reduced still.)

^^^^

Level 10: The player can endure up to 10 point of damage. (HP is reduced still.)

PS: would be extremely useful for the unmounted character.

 

[juderiverman]

1, Call for beautiful dresses for the ladies.

The first attracting feature of BOW for .808 is the logo, the beautiful Anna (my new name is Anna...) in the beautiful court dress.

The court dress is still in BOWX for .903, but it is a bit out-dated.

New era calls for new dresses and possibly make the new and beautiful dress come with some acceptable armor value.

Court dresses in the movie "The Other Boleyn Girl" looks pretty good.

2, Change in Renown value assessment.

Right now a shortcut to accumulate the renown value is to make the battle size smaller.

If set the battle size to the minimum 2 using mod: battle size changer, finish a 1.vs.100 will present the player over 1000 renown.

that is the extreme case. the general case would be to set the battle size the minimum as suggested in the game option, 24, and annihilate anything in your way.

this approach makes each skirmish smaller comparing what is in .808, which supposedly is not in accordance with the much larger battle field in .903.

suggest that the renown value assessment should be correlated with the battle size.

3, Change in Party Skill effectiveness calculation.

Right now for each specific party skill, only the one possessed the highest level contributes.
It translates as, only the best healer works and other healers just rests elsewhere.

suggest the party skill be calculated as:
ｔｈｅ　ｈｉｇｈｅｓｔ／１＋ｔｈｅ　ｓｅｃｏｎｄ　ｈｉｇｈｅｓｔ／２＋ｔｈｅ　ｔｈｉｒｄ　ｈｉｇｈｅｓｔ／３＋……

for example, the player, Borcha, Marnid and Yamira all have skill points invested in Wound treatment and the respective levels are 5, 5, 3, 2.
the effective Wound treatment for the party would be = ５／１＋５／２＋３／３＋２／４＝５＋２＋１＋０＝８

4, Scale down the troop size.

It takes too too long to fight a over 300 persons troop. With current troops accompanying setting, sometimes the player may even face a battle against 1000 enemies. It is no longer fun.

5, Grant the NPC heroes nicknames.

Say, Nallin "the Lancer", Anna "the beauty", Yamira "the healer", Marta "the nun", etc.

So that the player can easily recall who is who.

6, set up the bank in every city, not just Zendar.

actually months ago I had suggested in TLD sub-forum for a bank or a credit union. It is really good to find out BOW developers share a same sight.

 

[Panpiper]

4, Scale down the troop size.

It takes too too long to fight a over 300 persons troop. With current troops accompanying setting, sometimes the player may even face a battle against 1000 enemies. It is no longer fun.

I'm not so sure this would be a good idea. About the only thing that keeps me from using nothing but my 32 heroes is the fact that when I get jumped by an army of 400 or more, the relative battle advantage sees me show up on the field with myself and two heroes. (Those are interesting fights, let me tell you, especially when it happens on day two of a new game!) What really is needed is an autoresolve function that isn't completely broken. Sure make autoresolve a little more dangerous for your guys, but when you've hand fought the first few rounds of a huge fight and dealt with the lions share of the enemy's best troops, autoresolve the rest and take a few extra casualties.

I expect however that the autoresolve function is something hard coded and not touchable by modders.

 

[juderiverman]

7, faster the book reading process.

just notice that it is day 44 now and the first book just been read 60%... ...don't remember when the book was purchased, should not be recent.

book reading is kind of too slow in my opinion.

8, zero strength for level 1 NPCs and then specialize the NPCs into two categories: generals and staff officers.

generals' attribute points at level 1 allocate as (S=0, A=18, I=0, C=0); the total attribute points scale down by 6 to account for level 10 weapon mastery bonus;

staff officers' attribute points at level 1 allocate as (S=0, A=0, I=18, C=0); the total attribute points scale down by 6 to account for level 10 weapon mastery bonus;

PS: weapon mastery=10 for every NPC is a great setting.

why zero strength? because the armors have strength requirement.

starting at zero strength makes the NPCs upgrade their armors progressively.

right now, some NPCs start with 10 strength. 10 strength allows NPCs to equip any armor, with the emporium, equipping such NPCs becomes too simple.

^^^^

e.x. Level 1 Anna "the court lady": (S=0, A=18, I=0, C=0); (weapon mastery=10, inventory management=3, power draw=1, riding=1, horse archery=1);
e.x. Level 1 Yamira "the healer": (S=0, A=0, I=18, C=0); (weapon mastery=10, inventory management=3, first aid=3);
e.x. Level 1 Marta "the nun": (S=0, A=0, I=18, C=0); (weapon mastery=10, inventory management=3, wound treatment=3);
e.x. Level 1 ....... "the doctor" (S=0, A=0, I=18, C=0); (weapon mastery=10, inventory management=3, surgery=3);
e.x. Level 1 Marnid "five denars": (S=0, A=0, I=18, C=0); (weapon mastery=10, inventory management=3, path finding=3);


^^^^

there should be some NPCs experting in firearms at level 1. they had been a river pirate, or a sea raider. Imagine Keira Knightley in "Pirates of the Caribbean".

9, No bargaining in Zendar Emporium.

the Emporium is a big shop, where bargaining is prohibited.

that is, Skill Trade has no effect in the Emporium.

It makes the other shops in other cities competitive.

10, higher level, higher bonus.

after level 15, each leveling up grants two attribute points, two skill points, 20 weapon mastery points.

In short, the bonus from leveling up doubles after level 15.

the bonus from leveling up will triple after level 30.

can't imagine someone may level up to level 45...

11, bring an ending to the game.

could be like the pop-up window message in TLD, stating "You are victory now".

if possible, bring an ending to each fraction, like in TLD, a sound effect and a line of message do the job.

 

[Panpiper]

4, Scale down the troop size.

Ok, Juderiverman was right, I was wrong.

I wanted to see what the new fief management features were in .960 and so actually played out a fair bit of native (the first time in a long time). I immediately missed a lot of BoW features and was extremely frustrated by a number of things in native, especially how 'slow' combat was. I felt like my horses were running through molasses. Then I found a simple mod by Hardcode; https://www.mbrepository.com/file.php?cid=10&id=778 that pretty much fixed the worst of it. I started a new game and played till I had a village, castle and town, just to see what the upgrade options were (obviously I have no life).

I found that while it was nice to have the few fief management extras for castles add towns, they were still very minimal and quite the disappointment. I keep holding out for 20+ incremental improvements so one can have the impression they are constantly building up. Is this moddable? I am half way tempted to invest the time in learning to mod myself if this were.

I then went back to an older BoW Expanded campaign and picked up where I had left off, having just gotten to the point where I was no longer training up my heroes on Eastern Invaders and was embarking upon the conquest of the Nords. I then ran into an interminable grind. Yes, my guys can handle Nords, however my computer cannot handle vast numbers of units on the field, nor is massive battles with regular troops the most expedient way to beef up one's heroes. I would repeatedly meet up with armies of 300 and 400 Nords, sometimes ganging up into armies of 700 and would fight them in battles of 40 at a time, over and over and over and over and... It is not fun. There is no challenge to it, it is simply a grind.

So Juderiverman's call for a reduction in troop size makes sense. I hadn't noticed the problem while playing against the Eastern invaders I guess because their armies are in the 70-120 range, not ~400's. Also the Eastern Invaders are a challenge. It can be rather heart pumping trying to get those lancer cavalry before they take out too many of my guys.

With the Nord grind, I found myself using the backspace feature and just sitting there watching my little green dots chase and kill all the little Nord red dots while I watched TV. The autocombat feature is absurdly broken, where if you tell the game to just let your soldiers handle a battle while you sit it out, the resuts are entirely out of sinc with what would happen if you actually fought the battle. If I enter a battle and hit the backspace key to watch the dots fight it out, my heroes will clear the field in a matter of minutes, usually without a single casualty. Rinse and repeat. If I tell the game to autoresolve, I will loose the battle and have half my forces wiped out.

It occurred to me that a possible mechanism for dealing with this problem would be to enable the backspace / "watch the dots" but disable the actual battlefield animations. Without our computers having to actually resolve and animate a battle in 'real time', the "watch the dots"could be resolved as fast as the computer could calculate. Fighting a battle against 400 Nords would not take half an hour of watching TV, but two minutes of watching the dots. Very likely this is beyond what any modding can deal with, but I toss it out on the off chance that I am wrong.

If I were the calling the shots, writing the design document, I would have just such an option available, but likely enable it only after the first manual battle. Force the player to actually fight the first round, then let the the heroes mop up the rest.

 

[juderiverman]

4, Scale down the troop size.

Ok, Juderiverman was right.

Thanks.

(continued...)

12, get rid of the NPCs' names at the left side of "Party" window, when those NPCs don't contribute to any party skill.

generally the Intelligence type NPCs are left at the bottom of the party. they will be "hidden" when there are over 20 NPCs in the party.

 

[fisheye]

Instead of plumping up the opponent in sheer numbers (which was a quick balancing hack I did way back when)... a good alternative is to have super-elite faction troops that can't be recruited. Basically the equivalent of your personal NPC heroes, but for the kingdom lords.

Maybe a "Personal Guard" troop type... could even be different for each lord, e.g. "Ryis' Personal Guard", "Harlaus Royal Guard". They would have the best equipment and really good stats, comparable with a high level combat-oriented player faction NPC hero. And they cannot be recruited.

Then we can reduce the army sizes back to same as Native.

4, Scale down the troop size.

Ok, Juderiverman was right.

Thanks.

(continued...)

12, get rid of the NPCs' names at the left side of "Party" window, when those NPCs don't contribute to any party skill.
It's
generally the Intelligence type NPCs are left at the bottom of the party. they will be "hidden" when there are over 20 NPCs in the party.

Can't be modded. I hate this too. You could try posting it in the suggestions forum (again). It's a valid complaint now that you can have 20+ NPCs in native.

 

[Panpiper]

Instead of plumping up the opponent in sheer numbers (which was a quick balancing hack I did way back when)... a good alternative is to have super-elite faction troops that can't be recruited. Basically the equivalent of your personal NPC heroes, but for the kingdom lords.

Eek! This idea scares me. For that reason it is probably a wonderful idea. Imagine actually going into a battle with the Nords and being 'worried' about the outcome! One caveat however, make the presence of bodyguard elites on a field affect the loot chances for really good equipment. At least give us some honey to go with the medicine.

I'd never sit out a battle again. I'd be riding with my troops with the express intention of identifying and engaging the elites before they harm too many of my heroes, just the way I fight Eastern Invaders, which are fun. (By the way, half the reason Eastern Invaders are fun for me is that they occassionally drop highly desirable loot not otherwise aquirable in the game, specifically yari lances and their horses. Please do not remove those from the game, and please do add something similar that one might aquire from bodyguard elites.)

 

[juderiverman]

13, castle trade and town trade.

the player may trade castles/towns with other lords in the same faction, given that the player befriend with the lord.

and maybe some extra denars paid to the lord for the relocating inconvenience.

castle trades for castle (including the nearby village, buy one get one)...town trades for town.

only the first and individual village which was offered by the king when the player gave oath can't be traded.

some player wants the castles spread out and some wants to be cluster. this trading approach suits the need.

besides, it provides another incentive for the player to befriend with other lords.

 

[cadaverescu]

14. troop numbers. The EI have 100 troops wich is nice. the heroes have 200 wich is not nice compared to the Ei as i saw some of the heroes actualy chasing EI. DK are weak, awali weaker. The awaly should not run from me if i have nadifa in my party as they should do their best to kill her.
there should be a way for us to pillage the base of the dk or EI since their base is off limit. Of course those bases should be like a wooden fort with 500+ troops inside that should make you want to get the other way. But there should be a chest full of everything nice inside.
same for the cities.
15 Every city in the world had some sort of city stash gathered in the basement of the churck/ mayour house. Being able to loot that after conquering the castle should be nice, but give you a -10 in relations if you do it to a city.
16. the castles should have chests in a room in the lord`s hall. it only makes sence. and there should be stuff in them when you take a castle.