Orderly Conquests unique to POP?

[sPOONz]

An issue Ive always been bothered with by playing vanilla or mods is in the way the A.I factions conqure towns/castles. For instance, where faction A from will conqure random castles from faction B whos all the way over the other side of the map. Resulting in faction territory being very mixed up.

This dosnt happen in POP. Here, factions seem to gradually 'expand,' which is much more pleasing. I guess it creates the illusion that factions operate in a more 'realistic' manner.

Has there been some programming to make this so, thats unique to POP? Is anyone aware of other mods that make their factions expand in this way?

I ask as Ive returned to playing warband. Thought I give some other mods ago but remembered why I stuck to POP before. I see there are new mods about now, but having been conditioned for POP standards Im reluctant to try. 

 

[NicotiN]

Hehe, they do more than that, the ai declares war and imediatly starts a campaign against you.
They are very anoying since they come to raid my villages again and again...even before the "looted" sign is removed....so i just see that nice message with an army of enemies....War is war here....and war in Pop never changes....only the killing weapons do
And here the lord relation really works, i had 2 lords attack my castle....not on campaign, just war.
There are a lot of nice things that the ai can do here

 

[noosers]

The PoP coding team dealt out a few spoonfuls of brain to the AI and totally overhauled the AI behaviour. They´re still pretty stupid, but not that imbecile as native.

PoP has the tendency to spoil the whole MnB/WB experience, so it´s best to try it out after you toyed around with a few other mods and got all the pleasure off them you can - because once you had your fair share of PoP you´re biased, spoiled and rotten. And you´ll ultimately return to it every once in a while.

 

[reaver456]

Yes its the Campaign Ai and the Battle Ai that makes every other mod ive played just seem silly now. No other mods ive played so far come close to the battle Ai of PoP. I think its the mods most defining feature.

 

[M0rdred]

Yes its the Campaign Ai and the Battle Ai that makes every other mod ive played just seem silly now. No other mods ive played so far come close to the battle Ai of PoP. I think its the mods most defining feature.

Treebeard, and the others who helped balance it will be very happy to hear that

 

[sPOONz]

I think Modders are getting better recognition for their efforts also now. For a long time their mods only appeared to be known by the hardcore fans. I see PC Gamer for instance often mentions available mods. The future of pc gaming is always brighter when the mod community is healthy.  Thinking about it, the only games I come back to play are due to mods beefing up the experience.

Long live the Modders!

 

[M0rdred]

Actually I sent a letter to PC gamer about 2 weeks ago introducing them to PoP. Fingers crossed an article will appear in the next issue. If you have twitter please tweet at them about PoP, peer pressure never hurt anyone 

And speaking of modders getting better recognition... I was speaking to an Intellectual Property developer at Ubi-Soft earlier today (at a conference in London) about their lack of recognition towards modders, he hinted that they would be working more closely with modding teams in the future.

Also there is good proof that it is happening. Battlefield 2 was produced after the developers bought the Desert Combat mod team. Paradox have also funded many mod teams to create commercial products (Magna Mundi is the most well known).

Next is Taleworlds? 

 

[JatuWrangler]

Let us also not forget that Counterstrike was a mod (albeit on a rare scale of success).  The opportunity is out there.  I think the hardest part of the crossover from amateur to professional is proving that your product can sell without actually having sold it (no empirical proof to present).  You need to sell yourself pretty hardcore.

 

[Caba`drin]

And speaking of modders getting better recognition...

Next is Taleworlds? 

Actually, Taleworlds has been, in my experience, extremely responsive to modders. Numerous modder requests have been filled in the most recent patches, adding new coding commands that modders specifically asked for in order to do new, interesting things. And, from recent activity in their BugTracker, more of modders' requests for new coding operations will be added in the next patch.

 

[Treebeard]

Yes its the Campaign Ai and the Battle Ai that makes every other mod ive played just seem silly now. No other mods ive played so far come close to the battle Ai of PoP. I think its the mods most defining feature.

Treebeard, and the others who helped balance it will be very happy to hear that

Thank you kindly

(After the next official Taleworlds WB Patch comes out, there might be a few new tools and game engine improvements that will allow for added sophistication of the VI challenge. I'm hoping for game engine improved behavior after the charge command has been issued and also for dismounting annoyances to be solved and a good set_division function with more functionality that can allow code for the VI to split up the troops more and execute more complex maneuvers. A better game engine weapon switch code would be nice too).

 

[Caba`drin]

also for dismounting annoyances to be solved and a good set_division function with more functionality that can allow code for the VI to split up the troops more and execute more complex maneuvers.

Agent_set_division "kind of" works now. It is persistent until an order is given to the agent's original division, at which point the agent tries to revert back to that original division. (Unfortunately they've not responded to my bug report about it in the BugTracker yet). Adding a few lines to maintain the new division setting to one of the frequent agent loops that the formations code uses is all that is needed to make it work fully.

In my experience, giving the "mount" order, rather than leaving it at "free" takes care of dismounting annoyances.

 

[M0rdred]

Actually, Taleworlds has been, in my experience, extremely responsive to modders. Numerous modder requests have been filled in the most recent patches, adding new coding commands that modders specifically asked for in order to do new, interesting things. And, from recent activity in their BugTracker, more of modders' requests for new coding operations will be added in the next patch.

I meant in terms of picking up mods as a commercial venture, not in terms of support. I fully recognise that Taleworlds are a league above most developers already in that sense.

 

[JatuWrangler]

I'm certain that this has been said before, but a native C API plugin system would be nice to have.  Their reasons for not adopting any of the existing scripting languages (perl, lua for example) are not obvious.

 

[dowdpride]

the only thing that annoys me about the ai (which is MUCH improved) is that when i was playing as a sarleon lord, we had just crushed the ravensterns army, and then we could have easily taken the castle for our empire! add to the fact that the only reason we won the battle was because i convinced the marshal to go join it, and even then all the rest of the lords stood around not joining. the mod is much much much better, but the AI still never fails to anger me

 

[HunterAlpha1]

the only thing that annoys me about the ai (which is MUCH improved) is that when i was playing as a sarleon lord, we had just crushed the ravensterns army, and then we could have easily taken the castle for our empire! add to the fact that the only reason we won the battle was because i convinced the marshal to go join it, and even then all the rest of the lords stood around not joining. the mod is much much much better, but the AI still never fails to anger me

that is the Warband game engine.  the AI leaves much to be desired, and probably always will, no matter how many mods are introduced to improve it.

 

[timetogetaway]

I must say it's pretty interesting to sit back and watch the AI duke it out. I had intended on making my current daughter a knight of that order that was exiled from Ravensten when Ursula was denied succession and setting out on a quest to restore her to her throne.... but the Friedistan seem to have another idea entirely. It's day 30 and they've already taken Ravensten and Senderfall. The King of Ravensten has been a prisoner for about 20 or so days and the kingdom is crumbling without him! Good stuff! Now my character will probably be pretty angry about not getting to restore Ursula, but I'll figure out what else she can do.

Excuse my spelling of the faction names.

 

[iceman0486]

Ditto on loving the way this mod works as opposed to vanilla and the other mods I have come across.  Tried to go back to playing vanilla for a bit, waiting for 4.0 to come out, and I just couldn't do it.  It was far too easy and the scope of the game just didn't feel . . . epic enough. 

Damn you PoP team!  Your mod is so badass it makes the original game quaint and boring. 

 

[JatuWrangler]

...snipped....
Next is Taleworlds? 

Have you considered approaching Taleworlds about purchasing a license?

Placing myself in the shoes of the developers (and proprietors) from a business prospective I would have to say "no, not right now." until WFaS has played out.  You never know until you ask, though, and it is the proper way to begin the dialog (with cash in hand) I think.

That being said, I would open my wallet to purchase this mod.