First of all, I must say I love this mod, actually the best one I have been playing so far.
Here are my suggestions to improve it (LONG POST):
1) the map appears geographically upside-down when starting to play. I understand it's not a big issue, but maybe it's not too difficult to correct (if it is, well, I repeat, it's not a big issue).
2) spear bracing: it is incredibly overpowered, highly unrealistic and extremely annoying. Actually, it is the WORST FEATURE of the whole game. It works just as force-field, surrounding a soldier and killing every horse coming into it; in the meanwhile, the soldier is allowed to walk, use shield, charge and all.
I strongly suggest to try and implement the following:
- the soldier bracing a spear must remain stuck, unable to move (since the rear end of the spear must be firmly stuck on the ground, if you want to make an effective spear-wall. To end the bracing, you should hit again the hotkey; and maybe it should take some seconds before you could actually release the spear, a bit like shield-bash);
- the spear must hit ONLY the target it is facing, and only with its POINT, just like a normal blow (instead of acting as a horse-killing aura surrounding the soldier);
- the damage caused to horses must be proportional to the horse's speed, since the spear stays still and it is the horse that runs towards it (so, a very slowly advancing horse should suffer little or no damage);
OR:
if the above improvements are too difficult to implement, just add an option in the mod menu to simply DISABLE spear bracing (or just delete this feature). Too unrealistic. Heavily game impairing.
3) battle wounds: do battle wounds affect just the character or other lords too? If they affect the character only, I strongly suggest to simply delete this feature (I know, it can be disabled, but, IF it affects the character only, I don't see the point of such a feature. Don't take me wrong, it's basically a good idea, but, to be realistic, it should affect ALL lords).
4) merging with the "Pre-battle orders and deployment" (PBOD) mod; this mod is very useful ad realistic, because it lets you choose WHICH troops will follow you in battle. At the present it is almost random, it partially depends on the vertical order in the party menu, but the actual number of each fielded troop varies randomly from battle to battle (just like vanilla M&B-WB).
5) siege warfare: another heavily annoying feature. Basically it is a good idea (VERY good IMHO), but implementation is not as good.
Sieges became a nightmare, so that I simply avoid besieging castles and towns; I conquer only the ones with small garrisons, that surrender without fighting.
The continuous simulated fights inflict heavy casualties to your army and you can't do anything to avoid this.
Building a circumvallation (typical Roman technique) is realistic, but it takes too long (110 hours with an engineer skill of 5!!!). In 110 hours the whole world around you can drastically change, while you are stuck in the castle, suffering heavy and continuous casualties in simulated fights.
AI lords, on the contrary, usually conquer castles in less than 2 days.
I suggest to drastically decrease ALL the building times, decrease the frequency of all the sallies(->simulated fights) and replace them with REAL fights. Simulated fights are just frustrating.
6) Bows and javelins: too inaccurate, and remain inaccurate even at the highest levels of proficiency. It seems very unrealistic to me; if you are a born-master-archer (or javelinman), and train/fight a lot, you become deadly regardless of the quality of your bow (just as in every human activity).
7) Javelins and damage to shields: javelins (and the like) should cause much more damage to shields than they currently do (I know, you have already made an improvement from native M&B-WB, but, according to me, it's not enough yet).
Actually, Roman legionaries used to throw javelins ("pila") just in order to break the enemies' shields, thus leaving them defenseless against the following charge.
Maybe you could also raise the cost of javelins, in order to make them less easily accessible.
8 ) More about javelins: maybe you could try and implement a way to add speed bonus to damage, when throwing a javelin while running towards the enemy (since this is actually THE WAY a javelin is thrown, you run and you throw, so the faster you run, the stronger will be the impact).
9) Gae-Bolga: it is underpowered if compared to the Cu Chulainn legend. I think that a throwing damage of 80 would be fair (in the legend, the weapon actually killed every enemy it was thrown to). Take in account that you lose it once you throw it, so it must be worth throwing it.
Besides, it is too short! Not very effective as a polearm. I think that a 280 length would be fair. Maybe you could make a tougher quest but also a stronger spear. Actually,we are talking about the best weapon in all Britannia, aren't we?
10) Sept women, hornmen, meirgeaches and the like: it's a bit unrealistic/illogical that these troops cannot be recruited and the only way to get them is to free them when they are being held captive by other lords. Where did these lords capture these troops? From other lords, of course. But these other lords must have freed them from some other lords. And so we can go on ad infinitum.
I suggest that sept women could be recruitable from a single village or a special location in the far north. Hornmen and the like, instead, could be hired randomly in taverns, just like mercenaries. Or recruited by constables, like spies.
Anyway, since these troops are quite useful IMHO and represent an innovation in to the game, I think the issue needs to be solved.
11) Bleeding and special hits: both of them are a very good and innovative addition to the game. I think that bleeding, anyway, is a bit annoying, since a single wound can mean you are doomed.
It is partially realistic, but in long battles it is very annoying. I say "partially",because the coagulation system of human body,together to and boosted by high adrenaline levels in battle,stops bleeding quickly (unless a major vessel is cut,which means a deep wound from a powerful blow).
Sometimes you fight a heroic battle, direct your troops perfectly, suffer only minor wounds, but at the end...you are knocked down by bleeding and maybe you also suffer a battle wound owing to this. So I usually disable it. Unfortunately it's not possible to disable bleeding without disabling special hits as well, which I think are VERY interesting.
So I suggest to find a way to improve the bleeding feature (for example, adding the chance for bleeding to stop and making bleeding probabilistic, unlikely to happen with minor wounds and more likely to happen with major wounds, say from 40 damage on with a single blow).
If the above features look too difficult to implement,I suggest just to separate the two disable/enable options (disable bleeding separated from disable special hits).
12) Fearless units: it often happens that all the enemies are dead but one, and this single soldier keeps fighting, manuevering and all. It seems highly unrealistic to me. Think of that soldier, alone, wounded, his officers dead or routed and he keeps fighting against a whole army? I can understand a lord can prefer being beaten rather than fleeing in front of other lords, but not the simple soldiers.
Maybe it's an issue of the game itself (and not of the mod), but someone could try and correct it.
Last: these are just suggestions, but the mod is great! So, a big THANK YOU to all the guys who have been and keep working for this mod!
