Patch 1.125 - feedback and suggestions

[Ronan37]

  Hello there all, just wanted to add my 2 bits to this thread.

  I've experienced exactly what Orange has already stated here.  On the previous versions, I've been playing with my damages set to easiest (Newb has to learn), and both AI for battle and campaign set to "Good."  I had done this because in previous versions, the AI lords seemed to run around like chickens with their heads cut off, and setting the campaign AI up seemed to help this..... a bit.

  Now, I happily load up my game yesterday without realizing not one, but two new patches have occured since I last played..... and next thing I know, we lose two sieges against the Rhodoks when in each one they simply had 120 castle defenders, and we had around 300 troops worth with 3 lords participating.  Cause?  Castle suddenly stacked full of sergeants and sharpshooters instead of having a few o them and mostly trained or veteran spearmen or recruits.

  Turn my back for a bit, figure.... hey, grab some more troops, some more lords, try again..... and realize that Praven is under siege by a Nordic army..... with 200 odd Huscarls in it.  Needless to say, we lost THAT one.  In my opinion, it seems that these other factions are gaining higher tier troops faster than my own now..... my Swadian lords rarely have more than 20 knights with them.  Which is better than before, true..... but when the rest of your lads are footmen, it doesn't help much against Rhodoks or Nords. 

    Besides adding my experience there, I've got two questions a more experienced player may be able to answer.

  First..... in previous versions my companions trainer skill stacked with my own, eventually resulting in thousands of experience being distributed throughout my army and allowing my later game characters to be able to field experienced armies much more quickly.  This game, that seems to not be the case.... it is only registering my own characters trainer skill, even when Lezalit has a skill that is higher than mine.  Also when I open the party menu, trainer does not show up at all upon the skill list on the left, despite myself, Lezalit and Alayen having points in it.

  Is this the way it was supposed to be, with stacked and shared trainer from before being a bug?  Or is this a result of the dreaded savegame incompatability I've heard a bit about?  Is the trainer skill even worth putting on your companions now?

  And also, for a player with a late game character out there..... we all now know that the AI Lords have a much higher chance of obtaining high tier troops from villages during recruitment.  My question is, does this also pertain to you?  I only realized in my last game that my village with 30-40 relation to me would give me militia instead of recruits..... can we now receive men at arms and knights like our lords do?

  Thanks. 

 

[darkhorse]

I notice that long weapons bounce off the ground now, this may have been there before but yesterday was the first time I noticed it. There were a couple of occasions where I was unable to finish off someone I dehorsed because of this.

 

[Loktarr]

  Hello there all, just wanted to add my 2 bits to this thread.

  I've experienced exactly what Orange has already stated here.  On the previous versions, I've been playing with my damages set to easiest (Newb has to learn), and both AI for battle and campaign set to "Good."  I had done this because in previous versions, the AI lords seemed to run around like chickens with their heads cut off, and setting the campaign AI up seemed to help this..... a bit.

  Now, I happily load up my game yesterday without realizing not one, but two new patches have occured since I last played..... and next thing I know, we lose two sieges against the Rhodoks when in each one they simply had 120 castle defenders, and we had around 300 troops worth with 3 lords participating.  Cause?  Castle suddenly stacked full of sergeants and sharpshooters instead of having a few o them and mostly trained or veteran spearmen or recruits.

  Turn my back for a bit, figure.... hey, grab some more troops, some more lords, try again..... and realize that Praven is under siege by a Nordic army..... with 200 odd Huscarls in it.  Needless to say, we lost THAT one.  In my opinion, it seems that these other factions are gaining higher tier troops faster than my own now..... my Swadian lords rarely have more than 20 knights with them.  Which is better than before, true..... but when the rest of your lads are footmen, it doesn't help much against Rhodoks or Nords. 

    Besides adding my experience there, I've got two questions a more experienced player may be able to answer.

  First..... in previous versions my companions trainer skill stacked with my own, eventually resulting in thousands of experience being distributed throughout my army and allowing my later game characters to be able to field experienced armies much more quickly.  This game, that seems to not be the case.... it is only registering my own characters trainer skill, even when Lezalit has a skill that is higher than mine.  Also when I open the party menu, trainer does not show up at all upon the skill list on the left, despite myself, Lezalit and Alayen having points in it.

  Is this the way it was supposed to be, with stacked and shared trainer from before being a bug?  Or is this a result of the dreaded savegame incompatability I've heard a bit about?  Is the trainer skill even worth putting on your companions now?

  And also, for a player with a late game character out there..... we all now know that the AI Lords have a much higher chance of obtaining high tier troops from villages during recruitment.  My question is, does this also pertain to you?  I only realized in my last game that my village with 30-40 relation to me would give me militia instead of recruits..... can we now receive men at arms and knights like our lords do?

  Thanks. 

Facing a Swadian lord with 30 knight is quite disturbing too. And swadian castles full of sharpshooters really are a nightmare now. The good point is that now one can loot high level armors. (Looted some banded armor, first time in warband!)

 

[Tyomanator]

Had anyone found where it is possible to buy cheap wine in 1.125? Previously both cheap wine and cheap oil were available in Suno; after patch can't find big amounts of wine to export to sarranids anywhere...

 

[Feddgard]

Do savegames from 1.124 work in 1.125? Or do I have to start over again?

Edit:

Had anyone found where it is possible to buy cheap wine in 1.125? Previously both cheap wine and cheap oil were available in Suno; after patch can't find big amounts of wine to export to sarranids anywhere...

In 1.124 Curaw had no big amounts of Iron, at least not in my game. I'm thinking they are trying to reduce the profits from those most common trade routes. Can anyone clarify this?

 

[Helraham]

I notice that long weapons bounce off the ground now, this may have been there before but yesterday was the first time I noticed it. There were a couple of occasions where I was unable to finish off someone I dehorsed because of this.

Well, this finally stop the 2h spammer that happily aim the ground and you see this big 2h axe doing weird swings...

 

[Somebody]

Anybody else had the bug where troops didn't spawn with weapons? More specfically, some don't spawn with polearms?

Just to clarify, I launched a Custom Battle, and less than a third actually spawned without a weapon (They have one weapon defined), and the same goes for the Cavalry (again, only lances) on the other side, at a 1/2 ratio. Guys with swords spawned fine though.

 

[othr]

This bug seems to affect troops equipped with polearms such as spears/long axes etc.

 

[Rad]

My game crashed in the course of fight with some Nord. And I fought with some Rhodock too and his low-grade troops didn't have any weapons at all in many  cases and they fought with bare hands. It was funny and ridiculous.   

Yes, I wrote about it already. 

 

[Sir Faldor]

I had the "no weapon army"'s problem too andi quite enjoyed fighting against fist guys 

 

[Rad]

I would want all Rhodocks were fight with bare hands. 

 

[kekn06ab]

I just witnessed the rhodock's "overpowered-ness" first hand. It was basically 35 rhodock sharpshooters against 30 high tier sarranid archers, 15 mamlukes, 25 high tier nord infantry and the rest of my companions (mounted)... it took my 5 playthroughs to win... and when I did, it was only because of the battle simulator! 

 

[Jericho]

@ kekn06ab
Was that an open field battle or siege? 

 

[Hamel]

Question, does the Campaign AI affect both lord behavior and party composition? If so, those should probably be put into separate options. I, for one, would like for the lords in my world to behave intelligently, but I don't think I would enjoy crossing swords with a bunch of wizardly lords that can conjure up elite troops with a word.

 

[StinkyMcGirk]

Question, does the Campaign AI affect both lord behavior and party composition? If so, those should probably be put into separate options. I, for one, would like for the lords in my world to behave intelligently, but I don't think I would enjoy crossing swords with a bunch of wizardly lords that can conjure up elite troops with a word.

To my knowledge, campaign A.I. affects ALL A.I., and campaign difficulty will affect multiple factors, one of which is the rate at which A.I. lords' troops level up.  This higher leveling rate is what is responsible for the higher-tier troops present in enemy / ally armies post 1.13.

I, for one, love the new challenge.  It makes skills like surgery all the more important since you're actually going to take casualties, it makes strategy important to prevent casualties even against smaller forces, and it sort of evens out the A.I. with you once you have your 'multiple companion trainer' system in place.

It also sort of has the side effect of rewarding players who build up reputation with lords and organize them to help fight off large armies instead of just soloing their inferior troops with a small batch of top tier knights or huscarls.

(It should also be noted that the reinforcement templates for all kingdoms were fixed in this patch.  Prior to 1.23-24-25, sarranids received 3-6 mamelukes while other kingdoms would receive 3-6 of their middle or second-to-top tier troops.  Now, every kingdoms receives 1-3 of their top tier (or second to top tier for nords) troops, and 2-4 of their second-to-top tier troops.  Essentially, all kingdoms are using similar army compositions to what the sarranids used to field in 1.13.  You'll see more heavy cavalry in general which if you do not prepare for strategically is a death sentence.

The game is now a lot more strategic.  I'm happy.  If you're not, then turn down campaign difficulty, and you should be fine.

--------------------------

The A.I. is acting much different, though I can't exactly pin-point why.  Grounded troops seem to refuse to use pole-arms under any circumstance.  That may be why some rhodok lower tier spearmen are using their fists - they don't have anything but spears in their weapons loadouts.  As an experiment to see if that is indeed the case, try modifying your rhodok spearmen in morgh's editor to have a pick or club in their possible item tables, and you may see them use that while having their spears strapped to their backs.

A funny side-effect of this A.I. refusal to use spears is that the higher tier rhodok troops like veteran spearmen are much better in combat now because they are using their spiked staves instead of spears and shields.  Rhodoks just became a lot more formidable now that the A.I. is choosing weapons it can use correctly... well, except for the poor spearmen trying to perfect their boxing.

Here's my wild theory:  We have a 'beta' version of some new A.I. the developers are working on for spear infantry that uses the weapons until close range, then switches to a smaller weapon.  It's just a guess, though.

 

[Childe_Rolande]

The last patches totally ruined the alt-tab thing.

Now each time i alt-tab can happen:

-m&b stop working...
-i am unable to come back and play (i clic the icon and nothing happen, i have to terminate m&b processo from task manager)
-some more weird sometime................

Yup, getting this too, as well as the unarmed "Rhodok Trained Spearmen". It seems to be this unit in particular, as I don't think they spawn with any other weapons besides the two-handed polearm.

 

[ironpants]

With campain ai on hard all the rhodok troops were either sharpshooter or sergent. So fighting one of the lords with 150 men is tough. fighting two or three destroys your army.

This is really overkill. Please devs, exercise some restraint and common sense. Hard AI should NOT eliminate lower tier troops from fielded armies!! Making them ALL top tier is just silly.

 

[Flash Vium]

I really like the added difficulty. It was sorely needed IMO, as most lords (and even armies) were often just considered speed bumps in your road to total domination. Now I might actually have to use strategies other than "CHAAARGE!"

I haven't noticed much difference in the multiplayer department though. Once in a while I notice that people seem a little laggy, but that could just be the server.

 

[StinkyMcGirk]

With campain ai on hard all the rhodok troops were either sharpshooter or sergent. So fighting one of the lords with 150 men is tough. fighting two or three destroys your army.

This is really overkill. Please devs, exercise some restraint and common sense. Hard AI should NOT eliminate lower tier troops from fielded armies!! Making them ALL top tier is just silly.

Read my post.  It isn't campaign A.I.  It's campaign difficulty.  If you think the campaign is too difficult, turn down the campaign difficulty.  Makes sense, right?

 

[Sinful01]

With campain ai on hard all the rhodok troops were either sharpshooter or sergent. So fighting one of the lords with 150 men is tough. fighting two or three destroys your army.

This is really overkill. Please devs, exercise some restraint and common sense. Hard AI should NOT eliminate lower tier troops from fielded armies!! Making them ALL top tier is just silly.

Read my post.  It isn't campaign A.I.  It's campaign difficulty.  If you think the campaign is too difficult, turn down the campaign difficulty.  Makes sense, right?

I think a lot of the problem is simply because everyone learned that the easiest path to victory is to rush-train a full army of top tier knights and just bowl over everyone in an open field.  Rhodok's as a faction are the counter to this (as they should be by design and backstory), and now that the AI isn't just stupidly throwing 40 tier one and tier two troops with no shielding at people, they're suddenly not able to plow through the enemy.  "What?! .. setting up my cavalry charge then going to the restroom and then to refill my chocolate milk doesn't work anymore?!  BUG!!"

I do think the Rhodok's are a tad over-powered as of 1.23/1.24 ... and I'm still playing the same saved game in 1.25, so I'm not sure if what I am still seeing are residual forces from the prior patches, before being "toned down," or if this is the newer, toned version ... but literally having nothing but sergeants and sharpshooters is a tad excessive (and makes sieges horribly slow and painful, multi-day, multi-trip events).  I'm currently helping the Swads, and while they do have some higher troops, I do not yet think I have seen a comparable army fielded of all knights and sharpshooters, etc.



Question: Does the AI have to "train" their troops?  Obviously they don't go around XPing them like the player does, but do they just "appear" when they need them, at full strength, or do they trickle in at times?  As in: they get tier one troops in a couple hours .. tier two by night .. higher tier shows up the next day, etc.

I ask because there are lords that I ransomed after capture that are showing up on the field a day or two later with full 60/60 sergeant/sharpshooter armies.  Are these troops they're collecting from the town garrison, thereby weakening it for a brief time, or do their troops just "appear" in their army from thin air and they head out again?


... and if they do just "appear" ... is there a reason why, as a fief-owner, I cannot just sit in town or a castle that I own and have troops trickle in, or request them for the garrison and they show up?  Is it a balance thing so the other lords don't have to spend half their time visiting fiefs to pick up 5-10 recruits at a time like I do?

Realistically, while I can imagine a lord visiting fiefs to ask for men to join up, I could also foresee them just sending out word to their villages that they're "always hiring" and letting people trickle in over time.