Historic Thread for Floris Workshop Development.

[Suspicous Pilgrim]

Statue (if possible "Statue of <Player Name>")
Applicable: Towns
Cost: 8,000 denars
Upkeep: 20 denars
Special: This building gives a 50% chance of the player's renown increasing by 10 every month. This can be very euseful when you own multiple cities. This building (if feasible) is destroyed every time your town is captured.

 

[Windyplains]

Statue (if possible "Statue of <Player Name>")
Applicable: Towns
Cost: 8,000 denars
Upkeep: 20 denars
Special: This building gives a 50% chance of the player's renown increasing by 10 every month. This can be very euseful when you own multiple cities. This building (if feasible) is destroyed every time your town is captured.

Accepted.  This is doable, though the kingdom monument described earlier in the thread overlaps with this a bit.

Sorry to quote my own post, but just curious if y'all determined if these were possible and/or desireable.  Would love to see some or all of these to spice up the progression of the game.

I haven't responded to these as I am not yet sure how I want to go about this aspect of improvements.  Your suggestions have a bit more "far reaching impact" to game balance than many of the rest.  I definitely want to introduce recruitment in towns, which isn't difficulty to do, but with a strong improvement flavor to it.  I would like it to be done such that different types of recruits could be requested based upon which improvements have been constructed.  So my answer is...I'm still thinking on it.

I setup a form of your patrols with a twist that appears very effective, but could have some strong game altering consequences.  Namely whenever a hostile party travels too close to a castle (or town) a large percentage of the garrison is turned into a patrol party that will attempt to engage them.  If the hostile party moves too far way the patrol will return to its keep and return to the garrison.  This was amazingly effective in breaking a siege in Sargoth when 700+ garrison troops stormed the campaign lines, scattered the Vaegirs and then joined in when a few stragglers were engaged by Nord parties.  After destroying that group it returned back to Sargoth (which was being sieged again) and proceeded to destroy the invading army.  This also worked well to turn castles into actual choke-points in the mountains.  So what's the downside?  Imagine if that Sargoth garrison didn't return to defend Sargoth in time.  Instead of 1000 defenders holding the city against an invading army it would have only had 250 or so.  A city that should be quite well defended could fall accidentally even though the patrols don't move very far away at all, but they could get engaged in a fight that keeps them busy.

 

[12oz Jesus]

I setup a form of your patrols with a twist that appears very effective, but could have some strong game altering consequences...

I really like that idea.  As you said, it will add greatly to the strategic influence that castles and towns should have on the map.  And if a few castles or towns get taken while the sallied garrisons were distracted, so be it.  Definitely sounds like an acceptable tradeoff for the huge jump in wow-factor that feature would add.

And - as always - if players find a way and choose to exploit the AI garrisons, it is their own game they're ruining and the rest of us will be smart enough not to use silly tricks that exploit the engine/AI's shortcommings.

 

[Muglos]

I setup a form of your patrols with a twist that appears very effective, but could have some strong game altering consequences...

I really like that idea.  As you said, it will add greatly to the strategic influence that castles and towns should have on the map.  And if a few castles or towns get taken while the sallied garrisons were distracted, so be it.  Definitely sounds like an acceptable tradeoff for the huge jump in wow-factor that feature would add.

And - as always - if players find a way and choose to exploit the AI garrisons, it is their own game they're ruining and the rest of us will be smart enough not to use silly tricks that exploit the engine/AI's shortcommings.

Just from reading the idea on the patrols I can see Rhodok castles being very key choke points in defending their lands. Preferably their northern boarders with Swadia. Those castles in the mountains are going to be key in its defense as their is only so much space to maneuver.

This could get interesting...possibly a bit messy lol.

 

[Suspicous Pilgrim]

Curin Castle will be as strategical as hell now, the siege tower takes 4 minutes to reach the wall and makes for an excellent last-stand for the Nords.

 

[Ephafn]

- The quartermaster never sold anything. He (Marnid) was very happy to take the loot, but never to sell it.

Did you have this turned on in the mod options?  Enable quartermaster auto-sell?  I am guessing not as this functionality exists if it is enabled.

That was it. For some reason I didn't spot that option (and I went to that menu 2 or 3 times)... 

- I only have seen the pre-deployment screen once, and only for 1 second or so.

I'm not sure I understand.  Do you have a tactics skill of 2+?  That is one prerequisite to accessing pre-deployment via menu.  If you mean the "deployment phase" in combat then you need to "take the field" as your entry option into battle.  The other options bypass this phase.

My main character doesn't have tactics, but a companion does (at level 4). But from what I understand from another thread, the actual character you control in the battle is the only who matters here.

- I have seen unarmed lords (no weapon, no horse, no improved armor) in a tournament twice.

That's indication of a minor save-game break.  Version 0.05 should come with an automatic fix for this.  TPE will reset the weapon profiles now if they haven't already been initialized or if improper weapons are found.

Good that it is fixed, but that wasn't the cause, as I started my game in version 0.04.

Small suggestions:
- There was a discussion (I think it was in the thread) about the renown cost of hiring deserters versus replacing it by a honor cost. Why not making recruiting deserters reduce your relation with all lords of the deserters original faction? (Or only those with the right traits.)

Please elaborate on which traits you had in mind and I will consider it.

I meant the traits you see in the "Known Lords" menu. They are marked as "He is reputed to be X."
Traits that could make lords from your faction dislike you from recruiting deserters: martial, upstanding ("Our army doesn't employ traitors.")
Traits that could make lords from the deserters faction dislike you from recruiting them: bad-tempered, sadistic ("Hey, those are my whipping boys you just hired!")
Traits of those lords that couldn't care less: good-natured ("They were deserters? They deserve a second chance."), cunning ("I was going to recruit them myself.")

- Companions take forever to level up (although the one in charge of the food kept levelling in my game). I remember seeing a setting in one file that allowed increased companion EXP. But wouldn't it fit reasonably well as an in-game option?

As Caba suggested this can be improved in the module.ini file as well.  The storekeeper is gaining extra experience whenever food is consumed which is a constant process.

This is what I plan on doing on my next non-testing game.

Caravanserai (Cities)
Price: 8000 denars
Upkeep: 200 denars / week
Effect: Every caravan visiting this cities get 20 extra troops, up to a maximum of 80.

Needs refinement.  The upkeep on that is staggering, though it may make sense.  The upper cap of 80 seems a bit high though and would make caravans nearly invulnerable to bandits.  I doubt many caravans could afford such great protection.

200 denars/week doesn't seem to high considering the amount of money tariffs bring. As making the caravans invulnerable to bandits, that would more or less be the point of such a building. But you are right in that 80 troops is likely overkill and should probably be set to (# of troops in a standard caravan) + 20.

Mandatory Militia Training (Cities)
Price: 8000 denars
Requirement: <30 honor
Effect: -5 relation with the city when built. Spawn a large but unskilled (~100 tier 1 to 3 mercenary troops) stack in the city that will never move from it. If it gets annihilated, you get -5 relation and it respawned. Losses are replaced over time, at a cost of -1 relation with the city for every 20 soldiers.

Shelved.  It isn't that I am against it, but I have a different line of thought on how to handle recruitment via improvements.  It is very similar in design to what you have described though.

Well, the point of such an improvement wouldn't be to allow recruitment for the player, but instead to increase the defence of the city in a way that works both in auto-calc and normal battles. And for the flavor of forcing burgers to fight for their city too. The militia party would be like the patrol parties, except they would permanently stay in their city.

Gladiator Arena (Cities)
Price: 12000 denars
Upkeep: 300 denars/week
Requirement: <-30 honor
Effect: The arena master now buy prisoners for 100 denars each (twice as much as the slaver). The arena master now offer gladiator matches, which are similar to the melee fights, but with much higher rewards, but use lethal weapons (you keep your wounds after the matches).

Accepted, but shelved.  This would require considerable groundwork to create the "gladiator arena" which I have already said I am amiable towards building, but it isn't high enough on the project list yet.

We must be interpreting the idea slightly differently, as I don't see what would be necessary groundwork. I was envisaging the gladiator matches to take place in the current arena, just with slightly different rules than the melee fight.
[/quote]

Sorry to quote my own post, but just curious if y'all determined if these were possible and/or desireable.  Would love to see some or all of these to spice up the progression of the game.

I haven't responded to these as I am not yet sure how I want to go about this aspect of improvements.  Your suggestions have a bit more "far reaching impact" to game balance than many of the rest.  I definitely want to introduce recruitment in towns, which isn't difficulty to do, but with a strong improvement flavor to it.  I would like it to be done such that different types of recruits could be requested based upon which improvements have been constructed.  So my answer is...I'm still thinking on it.

I setup a form of your patrols with a twist that appears very effective, but could have some strong game altering consequences.  Namely whenever a hostile party travels too close to a castle (or town) a large percentage of the garrison is turned into a patrol party that will attempt to engage them.  If the hostile party moves too far way the patrol will return to its keep and return to the garrison.  This was amazingly effective in breaking a siege in Sargoth when 700+ garrison troops stormed the campaign lines, scattered the Vaegirs and then joined in when a few stragglers were engaged by Nord parties.  After destroying that group it returned back to Sargoth (which was being sieged again) and proceeded to destroy the invading army.  This also worked well to turn castles into actual choke-points in the mountains.  So what's the downside?  Imagine if that Sargoth garrison didn't return to defend Sargoth in time.  Instead of 1000 defenders holding the city against an invading army it would have only had 250 or so.  A city that should be quite well defended could fall accidentally even though the patrols don't move very far away at all, but they could get engaged in a fight that keeps them busy.

That sounds like a great idea. I'm not too concerned about the downside, as firstly testing interesting idea is what a Workshop mod is for, and secondly it would only happens if the auto-calc battle lasted more time than it takes to build ladders.

And on a final note for those who've made it this far in the post, thanks for such a long, detailed and thought out post.  I value the bug reports, suggestions or refinements folks think would be beneficial.  The feedback I get is often what motivates me to keep tinkering away.

I understand the feeling. I worked for a while on a mod, and I must say that the lack of feedback is probably the most demotivating thing that can happen.

 

[Windyplains]

- I have seen unarmed lords (no weapon, no horse, no improved armor) in a tournament twice.

That's indication of a minor save-game break.  Version 0.05 should come with an automatic fix for this.  TPE will reset the weapon profiles now if they haven't already been initialized or if improper weapons are found.

Good that it is fixed, but that wasn't the cause, as I started my game in version 0.04.

Interesting.  Did you by chance edit anything in the mod's item list?  This is usually what causes such to happen.  The tournament design system effectively saves the item #'s for each of the defined weapons.  When those numbers get shifted it isn't sure what to do with them anymore and folks go weaponless.  That is until a reboot is done.  I am trying to fix that so that TPE will "reset" itself upon entering a tournament without changing any of the settings I want folks to be able to keep between tournaments.  That and moving the tournament items into the main item list vs. having modmerger insert them should prevent this from happening.  We'll see.

Small suggestions:
- There was a discussion (I think it was in the thread) about the renown cost of hiring deserters versus replacing it by a honor cost. Why not making recruiting deserters reduce your relation with all lords of the deserters original faction? (Or only those with the right traits.)

Please elaborate on which traits you had in mind and I will consider it.

I meant the traits you see in the "Known Lords" menu. They are marked as "He is reputed to be X."
Traits that could make lords from your faction dislike you from recruiting deserters: martial, upstanding ("Our army doesn't employ traitors.")
Traits that could make lords from the deserters faction dislike you from recruiting them: bad-tempered, sadistic ("Hey, those are my whipping boys you just hired!")
Traits of those lords that couldn't care less: good-natured ("They were deserters? They deserve a second chance."), cunning ("I was going to recruit them myself.")

I figured that was what you meant, but saying which should respond and in what way was what I was looking for.

Caravanserai (Cities)
Price: 8000 denars
Upkeep: 200 denars / week
Effect: Every caravan visiting this cities get 20 extra troops, up to a maximum of 80.

Needs refinement.  The upkeep on that is staggering, though it may make sense.  The upper cap of 80 seems a bit high though and would make caravans nearly invulnerable to bandits.  I doubt many caravans could afford such great protection.

200 denars/week doesn't seem to high considering the amount of money tariffs bring. As making the caravans invulnerable to bandits, that would more or less be the point of such a building. But you are right in that 80 troops is likely overkill and should probably be set to (# of troops in a standard caravan) + 20.

Accepted.

Gladiator Arena (Cities)
Price: 12000 denars
Upkeep: 300 denars/week
Requirement: <-30 honor
Effect: The arena master now buy prisoners for 100 denars each (twice as much as the slaver). The arena master now offer gladiator matches, which are similar to the melee fights, but with much higher rewards, but use lethal weapons (you keep your wounds after the matches).

Accepted, but shelved.  This would require considerable groundwork to create the "gladiator arena" which I have already said I am amiable towards building, but it isn't high enough on the project list yet.

We must be interpreting the idea slightly differently, as I don't see what would be necessary groundwork. I was envisaging the gladiator matches to take place in the current arena, just with slightly different rules than the melee fight.

Well changing how the current arena works may not be that minor a change depending on what we want done.  My understanding though is that folks want something more like Spartacus: Blood & Sand in the arena vs. simply tossing in some random attackers or unequipped troops as it does now.  This is what I meant by a fair amount of groundwork.  I wouldn't go into making it something as large as the tournament system has become, but I'd definitely like to make it something folks would want to play in or sit in the arena master's booth and bet on.

Speaking of betting....I did make an attempt at including the "watch & bet" option into the tournament system with the rest of the 1.6 changes, but it isn't going to happen.  It just takes too much conditional code to divorce the player from the rest of participants when combined with the conditional code added in to allow for two different modes of tournament play already.  Had the system been built with this in mind initially it probably would not have been as much of a headache, but this was not the case.  A gladiator arena would most likely have this incorporated into the initial design process.

 

[Jackalb]

I setup a form of your patrols with a twist that appears very effective, but could have some strong game altering consequences.  Namely whenever a hostile party travels too close to a castle (or town) a large percentage of the garrison is turned into a patrol party that will attempt to engage them.  If the hostile party moves too far way the patrol will return to its keep and return to the garrison.  This was amazingly effective in breaking a siege in Sargoth when 700+ garrison troops stormed the campaign lines, scattered the Vaegirs and then joined in when a few stragglers were engaged by Nord parties.  After destroying that group it returned back to Sargoth (which was being sieged again) and proceeded to destroy the invading army.  This also worked well to turn castles into actual choke-points in the mountains.  So what's the downside?  Imagine if that Sargoth garrison didn't return to defend Sargoth in time.  Instead of 1000 defenders holding the city against an invading army it would have only had 250 or so.  A city that should be quite well defended could fall accidentally even though the patrols don't move very far away at all, but they could get engaged in a fight that keeps them busy.

This sounds like a great ground-breaking concept but does it ultimately eliminate the chances of breaking into a prison to rescue prisoners? As you'd have to lead the patrol party away from you and the castle and hope you have enough speed to beat them back to the castle, which admittedly does sound kind of fun come to think of it.

 

[Windyplains]

The patrol parties were 75% of the garrison.  Thus a relatively slow moving juggernaut you'd do best to avoid unless you have a lot of friends.  A castle garrison can often be handled with a large enough party, but a town garrison would be deadly to encounter.  That they are slower than you isn't as much of an issue since they'll start approaching you as you approach the center.  So if you try to pass too closely you're likely to get caught (without some quick maneuvering), such as in mountain passes.  If you just pass nearby then you should easily be able to out pace them and they'll return  home.  I figured that was the closest I could come to making castles be able to hold a strategic choke-point.  This will be included in v0.05 of the Workshop for testing it out.

 

[Muglos]

The patrol parties were 75% of the garrison.  Thus a relatively slow moving juggernaut you'd do best to avoid unless you have a lot of friends.  A castle garrison can often be handled with a large enough party, but a town garrison would be deadly to encounter.  That they are slower than you isn't as much of an issue since they'll start approaching you as you approach the center.  So if you try to pass too closely you're likely to get caught (without some quick maneuvering), such as in mountain passes.  If you just pass nearby then you should easily be able to out pace them and they'll return  home.  I figured that was the closest I could come to making castles be able to hold a strategic choke-point.  This will be included in v0.05 of the Workshop for testing it out.

Sounds promising. I got a few questions regarding if the player owns a castle or town:

Will it be possible to talk to your constable (If you choose to have one) and decide specifically which types of units leave the garrison to go out and protect if an enemy is nearby? Or will it just be a randomized 75% of the castle's garrison?

Another question: Will it be possible to decide how far they chase an enemy?

An example would be like something like this:

Constable: Yes my lord?

Player: Let's talk about patrols and troops movements.

Constable: Of course.

Player:Set distance that garrison persues hostiles.
1Short distance
2medium distance
3Far distance

I'm not exactly how the coding would work on this or if its even possible. Just some thoughts.

 

[Windyplains]

Will it be possible to talk to your constable (If you choose to have one) and decide specifically which types of units leave the garrison to go out and protect if an enemy is nearby? Or will it just be a randomized 75% of the castle's garrison?

Pass.  It takes 75% of each stack, not counting wounded troops.  So if the garrison is heavily wounded it would be a smaller party then 75%.  While it -can- be done to give the player options on who to be sent, the AI won't have that option so I'm going to say no.

Another question: Will it be possible to decide how far they chase an enemy?

Accepted.  This would be easy to change and since raising the distance only increases your risk of not getting that patrol back I feel the choice is acceptable.  The AI will stick with a medium range setting.

I will also add on to that the option to prevent patrols from leaving the castle at all.  Some centers it may not be worth this occurring as there isn't a choke-point to defend.  This will also be incorporated for the AI to use (by simply manually setting up the values).

 

[Windyplains]

Version 0.05 Released

• Save Game Compatibility: Mostly Intact!  Any non-native quests in progress are canceled out of necessity, but everything else for a save game should remain intact.
• Compatible Warband Version: 1.143 (Still awaiting WSE update for 1.153)
• WSE Minimum Required Version: 2.7.1 (included)

Tournament Upgrade to 1.6:

• A new "Elimination Mode" has been added to the system.  This closely resembles the native tournament design.
  • You will not be able to select how many teams or their size in a match.
  • Participants picked to continue on to the next round go in order of: survivors, the remaining members of the surviving team, the members of the highest scoring team and then the rest of the slots go to the highest scoring participants not currently selected.
  • AI troops in elimination mode are a fair bit weaker than those found in "performance mode".
  • This new mode option can be selected in the main mod options page.
• A new "Hall of Record" can be accessed from the tournament menu that shows your past performance in all tournaments for this game.
• Renown gains from winning a tournament is now capped at 20 during feasts.
• Total wins in a town that contribute to relation gains are now based on consecutive wins.  Losing resets this value to 0.

New Improvements:

Castle Library
Applicable: Castles, Towns
Cost: 4,000 denars
Effects:

• Improves relation upon completion by 1.
• Doubles the rate of reading progress while waiting within the castle.
• Gives a 40% chance that a book merchant will spawn in your town whenever they are moved around.

Diplomatic Changes:

• Rejecting a ransom offer does not incur an honor penalty while at war.
• Giving troops to one of your vassals will improve your relation with them.
• The starting factional disputes have been altered to even the conflicts out a little.  This won't be noticeable without a new save game.
• Diplomatic Role: "Castle Steward" added that companions can be assigned to.  This is in an early stage of development, but allows access to fief management, serves as the quest giver of that center (instead of the generic steward) and provides advice on the needs of that castle.  This role is appointed by use of your chief minister at your main court.  Only companions may be assigned to this role and can be unassigned at any time.
• You can now change your culture by speaking to your chief minister.  There is a basic troop tree in place for the player's culture (so you can edit it via morphs if desired) for now.  Eventually I aim to make it customizable.

Appearance & Graphics:

• Included: "Custom Clan Banner Pack" by MadocComadrin.  I like the look of these banners far beyond the native ones.  One issue to note is that not all banners have matched background colors to the back of your outfit yet.  They still are an improvement on the native banners.
• Several new heraldic armors have been added to the game and infused into some of the troop trees at appropriate tiers.
• Additional minor coloration changes of displayed text have been made.  Specifically to morale changes or quest log updates.
• Faction colors may now be altered once you are a king via the camp menu.

Reports Menu:

• Revamped the reports menu similar to the way it appeared in Floris 2.5 to consolidate it into a smaller list of report groups.
• Included: "Estates of the Realm" 1.0.4 presentation.
• Included: "Show All Items" presentation from Custom Commander by rubik.
• The new tournament log can be viewed via the personal reports menu.

Party Morale:
These changes should make morale much harder on a small company if they are not being successful, but far less painful on a mid to large sized army.

• Party size gives a benefit for every 15 men vs. a negative equal to your current size.
• Base party morale has been reduced from 50 to 0.
• Leadership contributes roughly 1/3rd the benefit it previously did.
• New mechanic: "Days on the March".  The longer you spend away from your home centers on the march the more of a morale penalty your army will receive.  This is slowly reduced as you spent more time in your own territories.

Reading Books:

• Books that grant permanent increase should now be readable at any time and still allow you to raise a skill as high as your attributes would have allowed without it.  So if you read a +1 leadership book when your leadership skill is only 3 then you'll still be able to get leadership rank 4 with 12 charisma and then reapply the +1 bonus for a total of leadership rank 5.

Bug Fixes & Minor Tweaks:

• Bugfix to allow the "Field of Grain" improvement to be built repeatedly.  If you've already built one the game will fix itself.
• Bugfix to prevent the "cancel work" menu from showing if no building is in progress.
• The "Gaoler" companion role will now sell things at the ransom broker rate vs. the flat 50 denars.

Developer's Notes:

Spoiler

• The diplomatic roles are very much a work in progress and I would love to hear what folks think should go in as options.
• Expect a war advisor role to be created for handling training & recruitment of troops as well as managing of patrols.
• The tournament quest "Score to Settle" has been held off from this version and should be expected with v0.06.  It simply wasn't ready, but since it is mostly input I went ahead and caused the necessary save game break to insert it into the list.  I added some extra spaces so adding new quests to the tournaments or quest pack 3 should not cause future save game issues.

 

[winrehs007]

This is just great man....Can't wait for WSE for 1.153....

 

[Windyplains]

New feedback polls posted for v0.05.

 

[winrehs007]

New feedback polls posted for v0.05.

Voted. 

 

[Windyplains]

More quest menus coming with v0.06:

Spoiler

 

[Muglos]

I'm liking the new quest menu layout. It will make things much more fluid.

 

[12oz Jesus]

I tried search but got so many threads in results as to be useless.

Where can I download M&B:W 1.143 to try out the sub-mod?  Thanks.

 

[Caba`drin]

I tried search but got so many threads in results as to be useless.

Where can I download M&B:W 1.143 to try out the sub-mod?  Thanks.

You can get any version of Warband legitimately directly from Taleworlds.com

Either explore the FTP directory ftp://anonymous:[email protected] to see a number of versions to download, or can simply change the url link on the mirror download server to any version number (going back at the very least to 1.113) by changing the XXs to the proper version number: http://download2.taleworlds.com/mb_warband_setup_11XX.exe  (the main download--without the 2--doesn't seem to have as many old versions).

 

[Ephafn]

Interesting.  Did you by chance edit anything in the mod's item list?  This is usually what causes such to happen.  The tournament design system effectively saves the item #'s for each of the defined weapons.  When those numbers get shifted it isn't sure what to do with them anymore and folks go weaponless.  That is until a reboot is done.  I am trying to fix that so that TPE will "reset" itself upon entering a tournament without changing any of the settings I want folks to be able to keep between tournaments.  That and moving the tournament items into the main item list vs. having modmerger insert them should prevent this from happening.  We'll see.

Nope, I was playing a Floris Workshop v0.04 vanilla.

Anyway, I played a little version 0.05 (starting from scratch), and I get the feeling I installed it incorrectly, as there are a bunch of text errors all over the place. For example, when using the new deploy mode, I get told to press 'G' to start the battle (this make me drop my weapon), while the correct button is 'F'. When using the F* buttons in battle, the extra options are labelled A,B,C,D,... instead of F5,F6,F7,F8,... Oh, and when I died in a tournament, the message about the camera mention dousing out fires or something...

As for the new feature, the only can comment on is the new morale system. While I really like the idea, especially as it promises to allow decent morale with the large late-game armies, it is not very fun when you start out with small armies. I had desertions happen when I was at around 30 troops, too poor to afford better food, and too low level to have good charisma/leadership morale bonus. The only way I could see to make the early game more playable, but without sacrificing the late game improvement, would be to add some kind of bonus that would only be relevant for small (<50) armies. Maybe a "plenty of food" bonus of +1 morale for every day of food you have in your inventory?