I am a casual player and I play Mount and Blade for enjoyment and casual gaming. My personal favorite mod I like is Mrcmod13_Diplomacy_4_3 as I prefer more of the vanilla gameplay with some added variety. I do comeback to PoP for the epicness created by the music and new items, but there are many things for me personally that holds it back from being my favorite mod. When comparing it to the mod I listed, there are a couple things the other mod did better.
First, the bandits have been upgraded from native as each bandit group now has upgrades for calvary, archer, and infantry troops alongside the standard bandit. This makes the bandit groups harder than native, but I never felt like the bandits were too difficult to the point of frustration. If you had a fast enough horse, you could still kite the bandit groups and possibly win as a solo soldier against the group, but the additional unit trees made doing so far more difficult. Still, I could have fun fighting these bandit groups on my own and eventually upgrade my companions during various bandit raids. In PoP, there's no way this is happening at my skill level. At most, I can maybe take down a small group of weaker bandits if I have a fast horse, but the higher proficiencies and better weapons really make the fight frustrating. There's no way I can farm loot or xp off these bandit groups on my own at the game's start, and for me that limits a lot of gameplay and story potential. The only way I can do this is if I edit values of armor or proficiencies in Morgh which is obviously cheating. I do give praise to PoP for creating a variety of minor factions and bandit groups (I probably enjoy fighting the Snake Cult and Heretics the most), but I can't get the full enjoyment of bandit hunting like I could in the Mrcmod. For bandits, I wanted a step up from Native difficulty, but not to the extreme PoP has at the start.
Second, the bandit lairs and prison escapes can be pretty frustrating in Pendor. Even with the first merchant mission, you are facing armored knights in the kidnapper's hideout, and while I appreciate the variety of enemy units in these lairs, it is annoying to see all your recruits die so easily to what is supposed to be the easiest mission in Warband. The amount of spawning enemies can also be a problem as even at a lower player level the lairs spawn far more enemies than native warband, and the same thing happens when trying to rescue a lord from a castle (which gets frustrating as the lord often then gets sniped by all the projectiles). I do enjoy PoP's difficulty as a step up from native, but I think Mrcmod did a better job with these scenes. In that mod, you have access to your whole army as it gradually pours into the bandit's base. It doesn't happen all at once, but your army reinforcements do eventually spawn and join your battle against the bandits. This makes the higher levels more managable and also fits the storyline better as a warlord should have far more soldiers than the lairs have bandits. As for the prison escapes, you are accompanied by your companions to help escort the lord (though they don't appear until you talk to the lord; you have to steal the keys on your own). This makes prison escape more fun as your see your companions chasing after the prison guards and I believe this setup would have worked well with Pendor's spawning rate.
Third, the villages. In PoP, villages are not worth your time. Even saving a village from bandits (one of my favorite quests in native) has been reduced to a slaughter fest as knights are annihalting all the villagers and your rookie army. I don't mind the raise in some unit difficulty for the village raids, but scores of blackheart knights at the early levels? Yuck. As for villages, it hardly pays to recruit from them anymore as you hardly get a lot of troops even with better relations, and those troops take far too long to level up before they are massacured by one of the wandering minor factions or bandits. The village upgrades aren't bad, but even at an engineer skill at 10 some of those improvements took longer to make compared to the ones found in vanilla. The most annoying thing, though, are the village elder reports. While an interesting twist, these quests seem to pop up far too much for my taste and it doesn't help if you are engaged in military activities on the other side of the map to help out. In the Mrcmod, there are only a couple more improvements for the village from vanilla, but honestly I prefer it that way. If the gameplay doesn't allow you to get deeply connected to your village, then you shouldn't need all the additional upgrades or quests, and saving the village should not be a slaughterfest. The other mod did a better job at just adding some slight improvements from native without feeling like an overload.
Fourth, the factions. In PoP, I am always intrigued more by the Knight Orders and the minor faction groups, but I have no fun interacting with the 5 major factions of the game. I know PoP was aiming at some variety of culture between the 5 factions, but it just didn't work for me. I found it odd that there was a Greeco-Roman nation alongside a Medievel nation, and it just felt out of place to me. I could never get myself interested in the faction's npcs like I could in native, and I hated the idea of having to join a faction. I honestly wished PoP gave you more options to join some of the other minor factions like Noldor or one of the cult groups. In Mrcmod, I like how the factions were handled. There are actually 14 factions in the game. 12 of these factions are copies of each other (so 2 of each culture) with the claimants of the native game being the leaders of the copy culture. While this may seem a poor choice, I actually like the idea as it splits the 6 factions down into smaller and more managable factions with more personal bonds with the npcs. I also thought lorewise it was a smart move as these claimants could theoritcally gain political power and cause splits in the same culture, and it makes uniting them all the more fun. There are also two other cultures in the game: a Calradian culture and an all Amazon culture called the Valkyrie. I personally love unlocking these two cultures and sometimes lead either an all Calradian or Valkyrie army. Neither culture seems intrusive to the native factions, but both add some neat gameplay opportunities. On a side note, I also do like that this mod has a foreign mercenary unit that specializes the flintlock pistol. While I know the arquebus is in PoP, I felt the foreign mercenaries in the Mrcmod worked better in battles (especailly seiges).
Fifth, the books. I felt the books in Mrcmod were better than PoP. IN the mod, all the books have to be read, so there is no need for keeping a book in your inventory to gain the skill. There is a book that covers every skill, and some books even increase things like strength, intelligence, agility, and charisma. The best part about these books, though, is that they are well worth reading. Most of these books at least give a 2 point increase (and I believe some give 3) which is far better than the 1 increase of native and Pendor. Some games, I spend the first many days just reading all the books to increase my character stats before even starting to venture out on my own.
Sixth, the town merchants. In this mod, you capable of upgrading your equipment from the various merchants (up to Masterwork for any type of weapon in the game) and it only takes half a day to do. Alongside, you have the opportunity to ask any of these merchants for work. You have to spend the whole day in the town working for the merchant to receive your pay. Sometimes the merchant will only offer you a small amount (which you should refuse), but there are plenty of times they may offer you 800-1100 denars for a days work. That is a good way to get easy money in the early game. You will receive moral penalty if you have troops with you, but this is no problem if you are doing the work by yourself. You can even work for them if you have conquered all of Calradia. The best part though is that while you are working, the waiting time counts as camp time; this means this is the best opportunity to read up on all those books. Appearantly you can read while you work. This is a good early game strategy, and adds some variety to the beginning gameplay. I was dissapointed that PoP didn't really add much to the town merchant experience and I really missed working for those guys. I really didn't understand much about the diamonds bit, and I still can't figure out how to make a training grounds to create your knighthood order.
Seventh, lord deaths. I believe there is an option in Pendor that allows you to execute certain spawn leaders, but I don't think you can execute faction lords (at least I was never able to). In Mrcmod, you can execute them, and sometimes it is nice to execute that jerk who keeps travelling all the way across the map to raid your poor village. Such sweet justice. Along with that, when the lord is executed sometimes their wife will take their place as lord and command their own army. It's a fun challenge to try to convince one of the ladies to join your kingdom when you have -100 relations with them over their husband's death.
Eigth, a slight change in the skill sets. The Persuasion skill in Mrcmod actually uses Intelligence instead of Charisma. This is very handy as Intelligence is such an important attribute to upgrade. I had a lot of fun persuading lords in this mod thanks to that change. You don't even need to persuade the lords to join you when you can persuade them to change their personality. If you have at least 10 relations with a lord and a high persuasion skill, you can get a sadistic lord to change into a good natured lord. Man, that is quite an accomplishment. I don't know if you can do the same thing in Pendor, but still that skill change for Persuasion is a nice addition in the Mrcmod I find lacking in other mods.
All said, PoP is a good mod with a lot of care and work placed into it. I probably will try to play it again tonight to see if I can get anywhere in it. My main issue with PoP is the huge spike in difficulty and the large amounts of waiting time. I am a casual player, and while I don't consider myself a bad player, I mostly play Warband to have fun, not to get stressed out either with the huge difficulty rise or the long waiting times. I honestly can't play Pendor without having full stats for my character as I feel its the only way I can enjoy playing the game as even at full stats it is easy to lose in a battle. The Mrcmod gives me most of the basics of native gameplay that I like while just enhancing certain areas without rehauling the vanilla game. It's how I like it, and if I want to add difficulty or more things to the mod, that is what Morgh's is for. Still, I do appreciate PoP and do try playing it now and then.
