Suggestions Thread

[Suspicous Pilgrim]

Post your own ideas for features/improvements to current features here.


In siege mode, it is very quiet if you're the only player, mainly because you're the only person doing any fighting. I suggest skirmish units running up to the walls to harass the defenders. In addition, the catapults make no sound when fired or loaded, which I suggest changing. Lastly, the defenders' onager can only fire in one place that doesn't really hit anything. To solve that without too much complexity, you should be able to adjust the loading power of the onager so that it isn't always 90%.

 

[nijis]

Those are all good ideas, although the skirmishers might take a while to implement. You can always do a sally on your own as defender through the sally gates.

You should be able to change the direction of a catapult with the arrow keys while unloaded, and the power setting while loaded.

 

[LittleHelper]

I'd like to see the website improved. To be honest at the moment I have to squint my eyes so I can read the text even though my screen is quite big. Surely zooming has done the job for now, but that is rather annoying having to zoom in and out when it's something that could be implemented in another way, I'm not sure how you could change it at the moment, as I can not remember my character name and I am not able to get my hands on my own pc for some time. I'll probably edit this post later on and say how it could be made instead etc.

I'd also like to be able to ride the camel as in decoy, so when a player comes at me as in thinking "Oh easy bot, easy kill" It'll be a surprise to the enemy. No but really it can change a lot if you get a camel. I'd also like to see less camels in caravan raiding, so the battle would concentrate around the camel(s) instead of just waiting for a camel to come, if you fail at killing it you'll just wait for another one to come by. I feel like the less camels come the more important they come. "Ohh if I let this one go by I have to wait for another one for some time".

 

[ManOfWar]

Either make ti so livestock raid happens much less often or get rid of it entirely. It is a really sucky game mode. Also in siege make it so the bots do not respawn immediately. You kill the an engineer silently then he respawns and comes running back to kill you.


edit- Get rid of reflective damage pronto, the AI gets in the way and you just need to tk them

 

[Suspicous Pilgrim]

Yeah, livestock raid seems to compose a huge amount of the game mode, and to be honest the slow pacing and entire premise of the mode is really dull. Caravan raiding and field battles can damage a kimgdom by a lot, but stealing a half dozen cows from a few isolated peasants doesn't really seem worthy of a gamemode.

 

[Thalamond]

Please change the name of the Islam faith from 'sunni-islam' to just 'Islam'. In Persia in the 13th century (and even before) Shia islam was the dominant religion there. For gameplay reasons i would advice you to just call it "Islam" to make it easy, or add a new faction for shiites. 

 

[nijis]

On the Shia, they would have been what the game calls an "undercurrent" in this period. It wasn't really until the Safavids that Shiism was a religion of state. I'm still trying to figure out how to represent Shiism properly, and believe me I want to...

Yeah, livestock raid seems to compose a huge amount of the game mode, and to be honest the slow pacing and entire premise of the mode is really dull. Caravan raiding and field battles can damage a kimgdom by a lot, but stealing a half dozen cows from a few isolated peasants doesn't really seem worthy of a gamemode.

What! Cattle raids were epic...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T%C3%A1in_B%C3%B3_C%C3%BAailnge

Okay, that raid was a myth. But the raiding represents a whole series of clashes and skirmishes over months, not just the few cows going back and forth.

On the game, there's a couple of reasons why I want to maintain it. It pulls players to the center of the maps, and it requires some situational awareness. I've had some memorable moments ambushing, getting ambushed, and going to a hill to scan the villages for smoke and riders.

I'd like to improve it, though. One thing it could benefit from is more tension -- ie, you're trying hard to keep cattle ownership above and below a certain threshhold, more all-or-nothing to the scoring, and you have a better sense of the balance of ownership. Other ideas that don't go too far from the basic premise are also very welcome.

 

[Suspicous Pilgrim]

After asking a bit ingame what players would like to see in cattle raid, I got a few good ideas. They mainly revolve broadening the game mode into something that has more goals.


A) Make peasants run around the farm and make them killable.

B) Make the farms into small hamlets, and make them burnable.

C) Create a "loot" item you gain from looting hamlets, and get gold and scoring points for returning safely with the item.

D) Add more raiders! There seriously aren't enough.

E) Make livestock go faster. Escorting them across the map takes so long.

 

[Slawtering]

Improvement in the whole family and house aspect would be good, like you could have the king and his relatives and then a bunch of houses of lords who all have their own relatives,knights and soldiers. These would all be real people (maybe NPC's for the soldiers) with each faction/Kingdom having their own different king and what not. These could all hold lands which are part of the kingdom in which the lord of the lands was in.

 

[Thalamond]

On the Shia, they would have been what the game calls an "undercurrent" in this period. It wasn't really until the Safavids that Shiism was a religion of state. I'm still trying to figure out how to represent Shiism properly, and believe me I want to...

The kings of Yemen? Kara Koyunlu? 

 

[nijis]

SP -- those are all good ideas. Thanks for taking the poll!

I'll need to think about accelerating the cows. I need a footman to be able to keep up. Also, speedy cows don't look right.

The others are good ideas but might be tricky to implement. One issue, though -- because of the AI mesh limitation, I can't have troops moving in and among the houses. Some of those might have to wait for another future game mode.


Slawtering -- At some point, I would like players to be able to establish themselves as a "royal" dynasty with a claim to a province's throne. This is for some time in the future, though.

 

[Thalamond]

nijis, what do you think of my proposal for larger armies?

 

[nijis]

The kings of Yemen?

Yes! And a couple of rare ruling queens, too. I think they were mostly out of power by the 13th century, though, but this is an alternate history...

You will actually note the tag "religious minority" if you click on Syria and Khurasan. In Syria, that represents the whole range of Shia and Shia offshoots that settled in the coastal mountains, and in Khurasan that represents the longstanding Shiite tradition. But they should also probably be in Arabia.

For bigger player armies, I don't want to have too many bots on the server. Maybe at some point I'll try to do a "battle royale" mode similar in scale to NW commander battles.

 

[Thalamond]

Ok, glad you agree with me  . I just wanna be shiite in this game for some reason

On the player armies, well, personally i think 5 units is just too few to be very tactical with them - even when you cooperate with your teammates - but of course performance is important, i understand.

 

[Suspicous Pilgrim]

5 units, in my opinion, are very tactical. You can do a lot with 5 decently equipped troops, be it distracting caravan guards or falsifying an advance during siege while you sneak through some other way.


Also, increasing the AoE of magonels would be great. Only direct hits seem to be able to kill anything, which is really hard to pull off.

 

[ManOfWar]

Make AI aim somewhere other than the head. The Ai cheats and these constant freaking head shots are driving me insane, make em aim for the body!

 

[Deathwhisper]

Make AI aim somewhere other than the head. The Ai cheats and these constant freaking head shots are driving me insane, make em aim for the body!

The behaviour of the AI is hardcoded afaik. But it doesn't matter much since you'll never get hit if you just keep moving...

 

[Caba`drin]

Make AI aim somewhere other than the head. The Ai cheats and these constant freaking head shots are driving me insane, make em aim for the body!

The behaviour of the AI is hardcoded afaik. But it doesn't matter much since you'll never get hit if you just keep moving...

Aye, no way to change where bots aim. ...or who they aim at.

 

[Lethal Crow]

Make AI aim somewhere other than the head. The Ai cheats and these constant freaking head shots are driving me insane, make em aim for the body!

Just use a shield...Works..Most of the time. 
Or just keep moving. Its best to move through a place with alot of trees, trees can save your life from pesky arrows or annoying javelins.

Btw. what about the idea of sending messages or such to other players, on the map?
A exempale : I send gold to a lord of another province, and in return, he allows me to recruit some low ranked scum of him.
Or he repay me with goods or such. Dont think it will be easy to implement that, but its just a minor idea.

 

[RalliX]

I think the mod needs a few more big features before it goes big itself.

Things like being able to raise feudal levies on the campaign map, being able to fight battles against neighboring provinces, and take them over for a faction.
I think what is most needed is the ability to be a leader in a faction. One who has an ability to say what the faction does.
Obviously this would entail many things. Haven't put much thought into it yet. What players want is the ability to fight big battles, and have a say in what happens on the game-map.
Like Risk, except with deeper mechanics than rolling dice. And of course, there's the part of gameplay where you maintain and strengthen your political/military/religious power.

You could have something similar to field-battle, except on a larger scale(100 vs. 100+skirmishers/cavalry?), and command over the bots if they're yours.
This kind of mode would be used when two opposing armies are present in a province. Players could join either side in scheduled events like these, and even be given command over units besides their retainers; like having a friend of yours/trusted faction associate in command of the cavalry, or archers.


Also, what about a vassalage system? If a player house/dynasty is in the same faction & province as you, perhaps you should be able to send an offer to make this person a vassal? There should be something to indicate how much power they hold in the province.
Faction politics and feuds would need to be implemented for this to make sense.