Suggestions and Critique

[MihailoSRB]

Well, yeah, that was more or less my point.
I wasn't saying that the lances were always breaking with couching attack, but that the breaking of the couched lances (in the game) should be made, in order to represent the fact that the lance must stay impaled in the enemy's body after the couching attack.
I think I even saw a mod where the lances break after one hit (only after couching attack), but I cannot remember what mod was it.

 

[GodHandApostole]

My signature might give you a hint

 

[Chevalier Bayard]

In Mount and Blade Warband the fighting is pretty well designed ; and I am really amused that you can punch enemies when you have no weapon, all the more so it's not very crucial in the game ...
Why not adding a little thing about it ? For example, I suggest you add in training camps, an option "sparring practice with no weapon" : you choose 1 or 2 of your men, and figth against them with fist punches  . If a kick inflits some 4 damage, you may be able to finish in about 12 punches ; so it may be longer than other sparring matches. In compensation for it, such a fight could give more experience. I think it's a quite simple thing to add to Europe 1200, and wouldn't it be funny ?

 

[qwe5]

I think it would be great to be able to filter the events log in the global map, sometimes there are too many events and I can easily miss the important ones regarding my nation and the ones whom we are at war with. So feasts are fine, but looting/capturing only for my nation estates. I don't care whether the village 1000km far is being looted or not

 

[MihailoSRB]

My signature might give you a hint

Really? 1257AD? Man, it was a long time since I played it, it must be completely different now.
I was recently asked to do a research for Serbia in 1257AD (which I did), and while I did a historical part of the research quite good, I seem to have missed a point when it comes to troop trees and even equipment, because 1257AD seems to be a lot different than E1200.

Why not adding a little thing about it ? For example, I suggest you add in training camps, an option "sparring practice with no weapon" : you choose 1 or 2 of your men, and figth against them with fist punches  . If a kick inflits some 4 damage, you may be able to finish in about 12 punches ; so it may be longer than other sparring matches. In compensation for it, such a fight could give more experience. I think it's a quite simple thing to add to Europe 1200, and wouldn't it be funny ?

While it would indeed be very funny to have a fistfight with someone in the game, I don't think it is relevant enough for our coders to waste time on it.
But, damnit, it would be fun. 

 

[Komnenos]

I think it would be great

Spoiler

to be able to filter the events log in the global map, sometimes there are too many events and I can easily miss the important ones regarding my nation and the ones whom we are at war with. So feasts are fine, but looting/capturing only for my nation estates. I don't care whether the village 1000km far is being looted or not

I am not sure but this may be something that is harder to alter in game code. Though filtering of the events is a good idea, especially if another log is added. I mean a log of significant and landmarking events, that could act as a history account, for example:
dd/mm/yyyy - Lord X defects to...,
dd/mm/yyyy - France and their marshal lord X win the war over Flanders
dd/mm/yyyy - Major building project finished
dd/mm/yyyy - Claimholder X wins the French crown, etc.

May be I should have posted this in EU3 topic, as that game accounted the events in that fashion. It was always interesting to scroll over such landmarks at a game/save end...

 

[Chevalier Bayard]

I think it would be great to be able to filter the events log in the global map, sometimes there are too many events and I can easily miss the important ones regarding my nation and the ones whom we are at war with. So feasts are fine, but looting/capturing only for my nation estates. I don't care whether the village 1000km far is being looted or not

I have the same opinion.
We are also often disturbed by border incidents... The fact that famer skirmish may trigger a war is not bad (by the way, why don't lord squabbles /duels /lootings  in peacetime have any influence on kingdom's relations, whereas 3 farmers do ? ), but whith all these factions, it happens a little to often...  --> mentioning only those regarding the player's faction ?!?

 

[Dent]

My signature might give you a hint

Really? 1257AD? Man, it was a long time since I played it, it must be completely different now.
I was recently asked to do a research for Serbia in 1257AD (which I did), and while I did a historical part of the research quite good, I seem to have missed a point when it comes to troop trees and even equipment, because 1257AD seems to be a lot different than E1200.

1257AD uses a lot of generic regional troop trees. Serbia and the Bulgarians share a balkan troop tree.
Generally speaking, 1257 AD has much better battles and fief management. EU1200 is much more in-depth and diverse in terms of factions. Give the latest SVN revision a try when you have the time and you'll see what I mean.

 

[qwe5]

I would suggest making optional function (similar activation like manpower) that would make the number of troops in both armies at the battlefield equal like in total war series, you start both with the same amount of troops (if the limit is exceeded) and the others come after someone dies.
I don't like fighting with 20 men against 50. Especially when the enemy throws in his best men into the first waves.

 

[Komnenos]

I would suggest making optional function (similar activation like manpower) that would make the number of troops in both armies at the battlefield equal like in total war series, you start both with the same amount of troops (if the limit is exceeded) and the others come after someone dies.
I don't like fighting with 20 men against 50. Especially when the enemy throws in his best men into the first waves.

Hm, are you sure? There is such a native game option already - it concerns the total of units on battlefield and the ratio depends on the Tactics skill of the General, I think. And such parameters shall be altered carefully and prudently, as the thing you suggest is going to spoil the game. You shall try to avoid such battles (20:50) or pick a defensive strategy to survive and later in game others shall flee from fighting you - all that Warband is about.

Btw armies were not equal in Total war, just had equal number of free slots.

 

[qwe5]

...as the thing you suggest is going to spoil the game.

That's why I mentioned "optional" so you could turn it on (if you like it) or off (if you don't)

Sometimes I have to stand against the whole army alone because the allies are too slow in making organized raids so we capture a castle/town then they leave to celebrate but nearly no-one is left to defend it. Meantime the enemy rushes in with lords and takes it back and that goes in circles. So I need to progress a bit. I'm tired of capturing the same castle all the time.

I've managed to repel the invasion just thanks to the castle. I lured them (800-900) to the castle they attacked and lost 150 men (most of the fighting was in very narrow coridor so they couldn't use their advantage in numbers), then I rushed in from the castle with 100 men (mostly knights) against their 700 (mixed army), first battle was very tough but I managed to survive. Aftre that troops ration was more balanced so I drove them off.

 

[Komnenos]

I've managed to repel the invasion just thanks to the castle. I lured them (800-900) to the castle they attacked and lost 150 men (most of the fighting was in very narrow coridor so they couldn't use their advantage in numbers), then I rushed in from the castle with 100 men (mostly knights) against their 700 (mixed army), first battle was very tough but I managed to survive. Aftre that troops ration was more balanced so I drove them off.

Sounds thrilling! Did you snap some pictures?

Btw did you check this Poll?

 

[qwe5]

Sounds thrilling! Did you snap some pictures?

Unfortunately not

What about increasing damage done by horses. In full speed it was really deadly "weapon". But here it usually saves a poor running man from deadly blow of sword or spear if he manages to change direction and got run over by horse therefore he can dodge the sword hits while lying on the ground inflicting little or no damage at all from horse.

But on the other hand there should by more efficient way of stopping horse running towards you by polearms.

 

[Korinov]

I've been thinking for a while about making horses more 'deadly' when charging (as they really were, specially the armored ones thanks to the additional weight of the armor) but also a bit easier to kill. I mean, I'm no expert at this but I suppose that disabling a horse IRL takes as much as a well calculated blow to one of its legs, or just a well aimed spear to its guts.

Armored horses should resist a little more (at least a significative number of weak attacks) but unarmored ones should go down after suffering a few blows... or arrows/bolts.

 

[GodHandApostole]

I'd also suggest making them significantly faster... The whole tactic of medieval cavalry was about coming in swiftly, clashing with the enemy line and back again. They needed to be swift in the last bit else any line of archer would have been able to pick them out one by one before they could trample the shooters. So yes, more vulnerable, faster and way way more dangerous horses. Make it so that an unarmoured man would fall unconscious if trampled at full tilt because that's what would happen IRL

 

[qwe5]

Would it be possible to increase/decrease reputation with lords after battles without talking to them? They always seem to already know what happened so if they know it why shouldn't they change the reputation with me just because they hear that I won a battle?

- I can fight many battles before speaking to the lord and he only notices the last one (not the hardest).

Also fighting with other lords by my side means to click every lord to increase my reputation even if they fight by my side all the time.

 

[Alex_S]

I'd love to see that too, it's a pain to try and talk to every lord that took part in a siege afterwards, especially if you're playing for a nation like England or the HRE.


But back to the horses. Better charges would be great and you've all made some good points here about that but I was thinking a bit further, this is also linked to another very recent discussion on another thread here about the annoying habit of horses to stop dead in their tracks and get on their hind legs when encountering an obstacle. This is ok if they encounter a tree, because no horse would willingly charge head first into one, though I imagine they'd be more likely to steer a bit and avoid it; however it's very annoying that they do that when they encounter another horse and it makes cavalry vs. cavalry fights difficult (actually I'd describe them more as buggy). What I'm suggesting is that if a horse charges full speed into another horse at an angle close to the perpendicular it would knock horse and rider head over heels just like it does infantry. An important note however; I don't think all horses would have been capable of charging into another horse like that, it would be nice if this could be implemented ONLY for warhorses, the rest remaining as they are; I don't believe regular riding horses would have been aggressive enough for that sort of manoeuvre plus the warhorse tends to be stronger and heavier than the regular horse.

Now the problems here would be coding this for only one type of horse (don't know if that's even possible) and we'd need a new animation for it that's going to be hard to do to look good (I mean what does the movement of a horse falling down after it's been rammed from the side look like?)

 

[quapitty]

I very much like the idea of horses falling because they get rammed or hit - without being killed. A horse can fall and drop off its rider even if its very afraid of something. If it has fallen the the horse could get up again and the rider can try to catch it or try to survive on the ground.... The rider should get a pretty strong hit of course.

 

[Komnenos]

Hei,

I wonder if the island of Iceand will be added to the map... There are lot of accounts about Iceland either as a fraction or as norwegian domain - Icelandic poet Snorri Sturluson

 

[qwe5]

Is it possible to sort the list of towns/castles when assigning lords tasks alphabetically? I'm at war with HRE and picking the right castle to attack from the list is sometimes hard work. Especially if the names are sometimes similar so seeing them next to one another would be really helpful.