Innovative 2015 submod "Brytenwalda Reworked" pulling together the best features

[gdwitt]

Here it is: http://www.nexusmods.com/mbwarband/mods/5994/?

This is the most complete version to date.
I ran into an unexpected number of bugs this week, but this build appears to be working with my savegames.

Just copy contents into your Brytenwalda module folder say yes to copy over the existing folder.
Be sure to back up that folder before you do the copy.

This mod is extensive; it actually contains all the work of TML for 1.21 and 1.22.
It contains all (?) the work of Kraggrim (pending his review) in the above-linked download from last week.

Spoiler

FYI: Most of TML 1.22 may not be in Repolished 1.05.
I can't be sure why the text files are so different, but an error was made it appears.
I kept most of my changes from last week.
A few changes by TML that would overbalance the

New skill system that can be turned off by modders via TweakMB
Agility no longer serves as a useful attribute (other than speed).
Prison Management and Horse Archery added back in for experimentation.
Troops (new companions only) adjusted accordingly.
This change may not affect save games.

There are many changes that can be discussed, about 30% from TML and 70% from what I've mentioned above.

Credits: TheMageLord (TML), Foffy123, Kraggrim, Bruj

I would appreciate feedback about error messages you see.

 

[gdwitt]

While one goal of the mod is to make it accessible to newcomers, the submod has many features that experienced players will like.

The item_kinds can be ignored and skills changes can be rolled back with Tweak_MB are completely optional

Spoiler

But they support changes I made in Scripts and Triggers.
However, the item_kinds has a has quite a few features that I believe will improve gameplay and diversify strategies.
More later.
Also, having only three attributes makes specialization slightly easier and quicker.

Features for experienced players (and new):
About 20% of tasks are harder to complete successfully at low skill levels, but easier at higher.
For example, trade penalty with merchants are actually below trade level 4 and gradually disappears up to level  12.
Standard troop wages are higher in this submod, but each leadership point is 15% more powerful at reducing wage.
Because leadership has several powerful effects, I lessened its ability to increase your prisoner party.
There is now a separate prisoner management skill that rises with charisma.

I made changing "Campaign AI" much more useful and critical.
"Hard" AI will activate scripts to make the enemy more coordinated, have more in come from rents and more likely to take enemy centers.
It is even "harder" than hard in an unmodded game.
Normal campaign is the same as normal in an unmodded repolished.
Easy campaign AI makes the AI about 2X less likely to follow their marshall and join a campaign.
I recommend not using Easy unless you really have no time for the game or your kingdom is about over.
The effects last at most 1 game-week, however.

 

[gdwitt]

I won't have much time for the next 10 days to change things, but please test this and report what you find via PM or in this or another thread.
I can return to editing after March 26.
I will drop by occasionally to answer questions.

If you're really interested in answers to all the mechanics, download the source files here.
I made comments explaining the code and why I (or TML) made certain changes.

Source file links to this submod and TML 1.22: http://www.nexusmods.com/mbwarband/mods/edit/?go=go&id=5997

 

[gdwitt]

The New submod is ready!
Download from Nexus here: http://www.nexusmods.com/mbwarband/mods/5994/?
I spent alot of time researching new features, but only 1 of them worked out.

It is a STANDALONE version, meaning all the files for a complete game are there.
New comers: just put the folder under Modules.
Experienced: You need to choose a trigger option.
This mod includes Kraggrim's work, which involves the map icon updates and the new features for bandit merchants.
I mention this because if you use his submods, you're build won't be able to load savegames.
The default files do not use Kraggrim's submod, but the files are in the archive file to include them.

Item_kinds has some great new features: 4 levels of gloves based on historical research and feedback from Redleg.
One glove was created to be studded and cause punch-damage, but I haven't figured out the trigger for that.


Merging two mods is difficult without source access.
I kept all of the graphics-oriented files from Repolished 1.05, but most of the other material comes from my TML compilation.

The changes include all of the Repolished 105, BW 1.41 and TML1.22 features they list in their respective changelogs.
There are a number of new features that I will explain when I have time.
For example, I converted the terrain meshes for all non-forest battles to be plains. It seems to work.
I shrunk the size of forest maps and believe I removed most of the mountainous forests; I have encountered an error one time where both parties spawned at the same spot. I would like to hear if it happens again.

 

[gdwitt]

I will upload a new version next Saturday. However, it won't differ very much from what you can download today.
Below is a partial write-up of my changelog (combined with TML)

Spoiler

SCRIPTS change tracker GDWitt

Skills: Cap raised to 15 in Header_skills and module_skills
14012 Raised default trade penalty but increased ability for trade_skill to decrease tradepenalty
Removed 25% penalty for trading with villages
Lowered buy item penalty 25%
Lowered sell item penalty 25% (I think this affects result of selling multiples)
TML changes raise all effective wages
Leadership skill has a greater impact on reducing wages
Mounted wages are 66% higher instead of prior 120% higher
Mercenary wages 50% markup instead of 100%
Spy wages drop to 60 while mission costs up 120%
Bandit wages drop from 66% markup to 50%
Troop join costs increase with level, but about 20% slower with level increase
14646 Reduced dividers for ransom amounts with brokers. Price should increase about 35%.
Young Warriors yield same ransome values as brokers (please test)
14565 Can lower XP needed for level increase here. No change yet
Left alone for TweakMB customization

15022 Attempted to increase companion limit based on high charisma
initialize_item_info: Morale bonuses of foods adjusted to give rare/expensive item more value
Horse Banners give 1 extra morale
Complex script to calculate value of trade goods based on demand and production.
I lowered the overhead and startup prices of enterprises.
Lowered Intelligence requirements for reference books by 1

party_get_ideal_size Lowered penalties on recruitment for centralized and quality policies

game_get_party_prisoner_limit 11/skill level of PM while reducing default prisoner limit. (Effective ropes and shackles is all it  takes.)

game_get_skill_modifier_for_troop
Bibliovulga now adds 2 persuasion
Penalty for heavy armor athletics reduced from 4 to 3 (remember that only Player gets fatigue penalty
Penalty for light armor goes from 2 to 1 for athletics. Additionally, sub 1 for helm and sub 1 again for shield
Bonus for Noble Tunics increase from 1 to 2. Doubled cost of item
26600 Floris party bonses for caravan masteres(trade), hornmen (tactics), slaver chiefs (looting), shepherd (foraging), canteaberiuventus (tracking), spies (spotting), flagbearers(leadership) priests (first_aid), women (wound treatment)

Can give additional bonus for trader's garment
Give Noble Tunic additional 1 point persuasion. Why? Persuasion-Charisma for companions is pretty much a useless skill and it's not likely you'll cultivate it until you have a kingdom. Plus, emissaries fail 95% of the time anyways. Finally, noble tunics are low armor and very rare/expensive (now merchandise).

game_get_party_speed_multiplier
Loot wagon slows down party 20% more
Caravan Speeds increased 20% (Why are they so slow?)
Speed multiplier= [(3*pathfinding +100)/(totalweightofinventoryofwholeparty/100)] - totalweightofinventoryofwholeparty
I don’t think total weight includes equipped gear

npc_get_troop_wage
NPC Lord parties were allowed to keep having much lower wages. I raised the cost of their mounted troops by 15%.

average_trade_good_prices  Attempt to make distance travel return better value

party_calculate_strength Autocalculation of battle outcomes gives less weight to mounted troops (there aren’t any lances remember)

28789 party_calculate_loot    Increased Player loot share from all encounters by 10-40%. The gold value of winning an encounter should also go up.
Total value of loot now depends more heavily on looting skill. Looting skill originally only accounted for about 10% of the total take of the party. Now it’s about 25%. I do not see code to give you higher quality loot here

 

[Elenmmare]

Looks fun! downloading now.

 

[gdwitt]

If you like playing as bandits, be sure to use Krag's triggers file which is in the download folder as "triggerkrag47".
There might be a few functional features that were disabled with my work.
I've asked Krag to add them back into Scripts, but he said he won't be able to get back to it in a week or more.
His scripting work added in "bandit" merchants to various bandit parties. I think you get access to this vendor with with a low reputation (-10)?
If you don't see this, let us know.

 

[gdwitt]

In Scripts, Get_Quest
I basically tried to make the quests more lucrative in xp OR gold by about 15-20% and shortened the waiting time between a repeat of the request by about 15%.
Specifics of most:
get_quest

Spoiler

31607 increased gold reward for caravan escort distance by 15
31640 15% more gold from delivery of wine according to distance
31672 Increased gold from kidnapped girl quest by distance factor by about 20% (Why is she almost always in Scotland/Ireland?)
Remember to tell them "You will get nothing" or you will lose half of the reward.
31690 15% increase to cattle escort quest according to distance
31732 Decreased time between make peace requests from 120 to 25. However, it costs 20% more to pay off lords
Make Peace quest frequency reduced from 100 days to 25 days.
Reasoning: You can only afford this if your party is well-developed. Once you reach this state, ther are only about 100 days before one is ready for independence.
this is the primary renown quest.
31745 25% more xp reward for looters quest (have to chase down 5 parties)
31799 Rescue Lord Quest is active up to Level 30
31923 5X XP reward for lend surgeon quest Quest from 90 to every 65 days
31952 Meet spy in enemy town 15% more gold
31996 Raid Caravan to start war give 15 more experience
32217 more gold for raising 5-8 troops 22% Max is now 7 troops, not 8
Needs testing should not require you to raise elite troops, only tier 3
32630 Capture enemy troops made less common and 20% more lucrative. Also, don't need to capture more than 5. (Pain in the ass to get 4Gwrdas)
32383 capture enemy lord gives 400 more money if succeed
32426 Quest to follow and capture spy yielts 20% more gold on sucess
32487 Quest to lend random Companion gives 55% more experience

 

[gdwitt]

Simple Triggers has two versions for savegame compatibility.
1) For savegames without Krag's submod, I added these simple_triggers:

Spoiler

Simple_Scripts Change
-TML script changed locations of a number of villages and spawn points.
I believe this is already reflected in Repolished.
-Removed the cap on Prisoner_Management that was set up by 'chief'.
PM management=base amount + PM kill multiplier + multiplier for having large party OR set amount at intervals above partysize 169.
-TML boosted XP gain for Hard campaign AI by 50% and decreased XP gain for easy AI by 50%
-TML change made XP when a Lord in in a center static, irresponsive to training skill
-TML lessened the rrelation damage with liege for having no fief by 50% at unknown interval
-Raised rent from blacksmith
-Raised Rent from castle by hard to decipher amount
-Extensive revision of slave labor and escape rates for salt mines. You earn more but they escape or die more easily
-GDW Increased the time to finish a book by 40%, but books now grant 2 point skill/attribute increase
-Reduced hours needed to train peasants in village train for bandits quest by 20%
-TML reworked Freelancer so it's not a waste of time
-TML reworked constable training in long, complicated script
-GDW Added debug messages to show players if shrines and temples are working
-GDW Town/village additions give 10% greater prosperity and renown
-TML non-change - messing with punctuation and comments
-from BW1.40 A second script to grant morale bonuses to food and flags. Not sure why it is scripted twice.

If you can figure out how to change savegames or will start a new game, I recommend the version that adds Krags' two triggers
My guess: With low reputation, you can access bandit merchant in lairs and in certain parties.
When Krag rejoins us I hope he'll explain how this works.

New subMod post will be by 11:59PM US EST Friday

 

[gdwitt]

New Mod posting.
Changes: ItemKinds more consistent. Blunts are faster but do less damage.
Note: You will earn 40% more for prisoners however.
Scripts: Many changes.
Overall, made earning money slightly harder, primarily by decreasing loot that player can get.
Note that Looting skills now has a major impact on your take.


Skills: Nothing new, but I fixed the Prisoner Management and looting-foraging bug
Troops: A few fixes for new-game companions.
Simple Triggers: minor changes relating to prisoner management bonuses for large parties.

Download from here: http://www.nexusmods.com/mbwarband/mods/5994/?

 

[ZeroNoID]

think you can update freelancer too?

 

[gdwitt]

TML updated freelancer sometime in late 2013.
I added TML 1.22 to the BW141 Module script.
It looks the same but you actually get more experience and gold.
It might or might not have been in Repolished.
It is such a complex script that I can only tinker with the values.
I am focused more now on fixing bugs, but I can take simple requests.

 

[Ragnarr Jarl Jomsborg]

Is it meant to be that I can't loot the corpses after a battle?

 

[gdwitt]

Not at all.
Add at least 2 points of looting or foraging and try again.
I actually increase looting share by about 40%
I noticed that in a new game I couldn't loot theows at all, so this might be a bug.
It seems that instead of looting, you
I went back and fixed a problem with skills...and it works.
I will upload my new version in the next hour.

 

[gdwitt]

I'm testing.
With looting of 0, I get no loot share 70% of the time.
With looting of 1, I get to pick from about 30% of the total loot versus 6% in repolished.
New Submod posting.

I've add features that should increase the default number of ransom_brokers from 14-16 to 19.
Let me know what you find.

Changes to many troops to reflect more closely their skill levels and wages
Most non-faction mercenaries are really poorly equipped.
Shepherds with knives, cavalry with hatchets??
Added blunt weapons to most caravan and merc troops.

This would be a nice project for someone else who is not an experienced modder along with fixing item_kinds.

Slowed down speed of Dena raiders

Increased the return on loot wagon trade. Trade skill is more important by 15%

 

[gdwitt]

Here are the files that are causing problems in the latest submod:
Menus: More ransombrokers
Scripts: More prisoners from PM skills plus 2 other changes
Items: blunts a bit faster, minor changes.
Troops: changes as discussed above. Fixed bug where Utlagi and bandit leaders can't be sold off.
This is a hotfix; just copy over your curren files.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/xk5ydnnq9nix8vs/Hotfix329.rar?dl=0

 

[ZeroNoID]

Thank you for all your work, please don't stop , i love it like that.

 

[gdwitt]

I'm posting two more hotfixes for the the prisoner management bug (thank you kalaharn) and the ransom_broker issue.
I changed the city count value for brokers, but am not sure it works.
There are 21 brokers now. Count how many you see, average them and report back here.
I count 14-18 now with the newest submod release vs 12-15 before. I'd like to see it hit 20.
The newest one is JabbatheHut.

I have upgraded all the mercenary troops now since their wage has been left at 100% normal for their level as it was in Repolished.
They have better armor, weapons and stats.
Most have a secondary blunt weapon as well.

They're important because it's mostly what you can recruit early-game and it was frustrating to get such poorly equipped recruits for the wage.
i recommend not keeping them in your party more than a few weeks if you are worried about saving money.

 

[gdwitt]

I'm finally through testing.
Here is the new Hotfix for the submod: https://www.dropbox.com/s/135uckns8brh0s2/gdw33015.rar?dl=0

Prisoners = 3 + 9*PM skills plus each 25 troops gives you 1 additional PM skill up to 75 when it takes 35 troops for another PM bonus point.
Completely reworked the special weapons routine that's been broken for years.
You must see these guys now to get the best weapons at the most reasonable prices.
The Dux Helm from Ireland has been downgraded.
The 2 best helms in game are available only when you reach 500 renown from one of the 5 special smiths.
I removed the surprise grab bag feature.
The new item: Steel Cavalry flail. It has twice the strength of the normal one, is faster and has a two-hand use option that makes it much more powerful.
The other items have the same names, but are either better quality or cheaper.

Fixed several more bugs.

These changes are savegame compatible.
You will get an error if you use the new conversations.txt with the special smithy and choose flail if you are not using my new item_kinds.
The dialog will work with other item_kinds just fine.

 

[ZeroNoID]

sweet