SP Native Cultured Start - Character Creation Enhancer

[barhidious]

Cultured Start 1.1 improves the character creation process by adding new options and new stories.

New Menus

Game Options - Customize Quests

• Default Start - Skips tutorial but leaves the rest of the quests unchanged
• Nerezet's Folly Skip - First Non-Quest Noble you talk to will complete the quest
• Sandbox *No Kingdom* - Just Rebuild you clan no other quests, can't make a kingdom
• Just Let Me Play - Thanks to Manulg's mod if you have both installed you can have a more proper Sandbox with Kingdom Creation. With both installed you start in the default start game.

Custom Starts - Extra Starting Scenarios

• Default Start -Start with load out and party as per normal in base game.
• Merchant Start - basic start that gives you a few mules and some basic mercenaries.
• Exiled Noble - Start exiled from your home faction, starting with a companion bodyguard and decent renown. Your reputations with your home culture are negatively affected, and seen as a criminal if you return.
• Mercenary Start - Start as a newly appointed leader of a failing mercenary company. Start with a decent number of troops and a mercenary, but little food and bad morale. Will quickly lose your army if you don't solve it fast
• Looter Start - You're a looter, with your looter buddies. Good Luck... This is incredibly hard to not just lose, I may change it too not be at war with everyone because it's a tad brutal.
• Vassal Start - Start as a vassal in your selected culture with a few troops
• Kingdom Start - Start as new kingdom with no holdings, troops to pay, and not much funds to sustain it. You start with your army and 2 companion armies with troops, roughly 200 troops of different tiers in total. The options name is based on your culture. Note this start does create you a kingdom regardless of you game option. The base game quests kinda work, but I would probably recommend Sandbox No kingdom as your game option for this one to be safe.

Start Location - Select your start location

• Home Town - Original Cultured Start puts you a town specific for you Culture
• Random City - Random city anywhere on map
• Specific cities - Select from a list of factions cities

Planned:

• Make the rest of the original games character creation more dynamic to choices, as the stat assigning choices from the base game remain and don't make much sense for most of the choices.
• More Scenarios - You can give your suggestions

Download:
Nexus Mods
Github

 

[Dhargo]

Current Features:

• New options simplify Nerezot's Folly quest by making the first noble you talk to complete the quest.
• New Location Selection Screen to choose where you want to start

Planned:

• More story options to allow for more varied starts.
  • Exiled Start - Start with companion and renown but exiled by main culture
  • Trader Caravan - Start with mules

Github

Oh my god, skipping that tedious quest and starting where you want is so damn good. This is the start this game should have, thank you good sir.
Also I cant wait to start with some mules already after choosing basically every background-option of being a trader and playing Aserai it felt really weird to have good Trade skill but nothing to really get started without doing the usual killing Looters bit at the start

 

[mr_mouflon]

Hey thanks for this mod, it works great. I would say it definitely needs another pass on the text though, there are a few typos and some strange formatting. Although the native text is kinda janky too, so maybe it fits

Found one minor bug - if you use the back arrow and change your decision to take the family or go alone, the backstory text on the next screen stays the same, it's set by the first time you make the decision. So if you take the family, then go back and choose to go alone, the text will still be about your family being killed by raiders.

Also, some suggestions for varied starts:

• Mercenary Remnant - start with ~30 decent troops and a handful of levels, but very little food or gold. Ideally tuned so that it's hard to avoid at least a few troops deserting before you can stabilize
• Looter - start with looter equipment, 6 looter troops and nothing else. No horse, no gold, no food, nothing. OK maybe one grain. But that's it. You'll have to have rock-fights with other looters to survive.
• Prisoner - start as a prisoner in a random lord's army, with a big negative relation to that lord and a criminal rating in their kingdom

 

[Lemondude]

Would it be possible for you to give the option to start with companion(s) or family member(s) in your party?

What would be even better is if the user could also choose the companions appearance too.

That would be an awesome mod.

 

[barhidious]

Hey thanks for this mod, it works great. I would say it definitely needs another pass on the text though, there are a few typos and some strange formatting. Although the native text is kinda janky too, so maybe it fits

Yeah my next version is changing that stuff a bit more and I'll try to go back and fix text. It's all written in the code and clearly spell check as ruined me.

Thanks for the suggestions, a mercenary start I definitely want to do. I was going to see if i could make it interact with the games mercenary companies already in game. but i haven't looked at it much yet. The looter suggestion is fun, probably not too hard to add either.

Would it be possible for you to give the option to start with companion(s) or family member(s) in your party?

Starting with story companions I'm doing and next version will at least have it with the exiled start . I don't know about customizing them, but if i run out of other things to do I'll look into it. Since I know there is a mod that will allow you to do it once in game already.

 

[Lemondude]

Awesome, we appreciate your efforts!

 

[barhidious]

Updated to 1.1 Mr Mouflon I got a few of your suggestions in. Lemondude, the Exiled Start gives you one companion, I'm looking at a family start but it's amazing the number of things that break or get funky when family is involved.

 

[jake_102]

Is the clan thing just hard coded? Do I HAVE to start as a noble with a banner and a name? I hate that so much.

 

[barhidious]

Pretty much yes, I mean I can not pop up the screens, but that doesn't make it exist any less. Then you're just stuck with the defaults until you manually change it.

 

[jake_102]

Pretty much yes, I mean I can not pop up the screens, but that doesn't make it exist any less. Then you're just stuck with the defaults until you manually change it.

Unfortunate, I just wanna be a gutter rat... why you do me so dirty taleworlds?

 

[Count du Bonfim]

Is it possible to make a version where you actually start off as already a vassal/noble from a faction, without being in exile? There's only possibilities to start off as either a criminal or a commoner.

 

[barhidious]

Is it possible to make a version where you actually start off as already a vassal/noble from a faction, without being in exile? There's only possibilities to start off as either a criminal or a commoner.

It probably is, I haven't looked to much at that code, but i imagine I could tap into it in some way. My starts are mostly with starting basically nothing in mind so you can build yourself up. But I'll look into it when i get a chance. Impoverished noble/vassal start could fit.

 

[mr_mouflon]

Updated to 1.1 Mr Mouflon I got a few of your suggestions in. Lemondude, the Exiled Start gives you one companion, I'm looking at a family start but it's amazing the number of things that break or get funky when family is involved.

Good stuff! I had a go as the mercenaries, the balance felt pretty good. I didn't get any desertions but it did make me race around looking for any way to make money for a while, that was fun. And when I stabilized after a few quests and bandit packs, the bonus renown means you can go straight into a mercenary contract, with my core of surviving high-tier troops and a bunch of new recruits. Troop balance felt about right, altho can't say much after only one test.

Looters hah, yeah that's tricky. But I did get exactly what I wanted, which was to be a part of a looter vs looter rock-flinging fight. I won the first few, but after buying some food and a horse I didn't have enough money to upgrade anyone. Eventually a bigger gang of looters wiped me out and took me prisoner. Then I realized why there are so many looters around all the time, they're trapped in the looter cycle, endlessly taking each other prisoner and escaping then resorting to being looters because they have nothing. The dark underbelly of the calradia ecosystem.

Really tho, being at war with everyone is a bit extreme, kinda makes it a joke mode rather than a challenge. Maybe if you were just at war with the place where you started, so you get the fun of fleeing from every lord pack you come across for a while, until you can get to the next kingdom over and hopefully turn it into a proper campaign?

Also I've been looking through your code, thanks for providing the source. There's loads of work in here! Very useful, thanks for that. I was hoping you'd give me permission to use it to spin off my own little project if that's alright, an 'instant start campaign' just for mod testing, to skip all questions and preset skills and clan and banner etc and put you on the map straightaway. You'll get the credit! And it will save many hundreds of mouseclicks.

 

[barhidious]

Actually for the latest version I swapped Looters to being a criminal with everyone rather than at war with everyone. Because yeah the start was kind of a joke. Now you are just unable to enter the cities without bribing/sneaking in, but lord stacks wont come over and thwack you right away. I actually find that start quite fun so I may try to expand on the experience in a different mod. Trying to avoid saving anything new to file with this mod which makes expanded functionality hard.

Feel free to use the code for that. You may want to look at the Storymode cheats code, iirc there was something in there to skip character creation. Would at least be a good starting place

 

[barhidious]

Is it possible to make a version where you actually start off as already a vassal/noble from a faction, without being in exile? There's only possibilities to start off as either a criminal or a commoner.

This is added in 1.1.4, you can start as a vassal of your selected culture, or even as a new kingdom.

 

[King Yngvar]

• More Scenarios - You can give your suggestions

Suggestion: The option to pick an NPC clan leader and start as him.