Final changelog VC Balance Mod 5.0 Part 2
- AI Kings now get 2000 instead of 1000 additional base income, which should be closer to matching what the player can achieve from a midsized kingdom tribute. AI marshalls no longer receive free money.
- No more cheating in favor of player marshalls on normal difficulty, forcing AI lords to join their campaigns even if they wouldn't have joined an NPC martial. The prior script to do this was justified by this comment to the code: "#Because players become confused when they see very less participation from AI lords to their campaigns." I will leave it on for "easy", but if you are playing "normal" I assume you want a fair game and won't be confused when things don't go your way.
- tax efficiency no longer has a maximum. No more gamey keep taking centers until you hit the limit--this is the dark ages, you are a feudal lord, not an emperor. Well, it will cap at 99, but that won't help you.
- merc contracts now pay about 6 times as much (should cover close to your wages plus some profit). I didn't have time to deal with the relationship issues of all your faction enemies hating you after contract concludes yet, but at least you'll be sufficiently compensated if you decide to explore this oft-neglected aspect of Viking Conquest.
- Special tournament participant chance of joining reduced. They were traveling the world just a little too fast at 50%
- No more "camp defender" female npc tournament participants. Hordes of female tournament fighters never fit into the spirit of a realistic look at the dark ages. What was worse is that the camp defenders had terrible stats, so Vanilla VC wasn't throwing great female fighters into the mix, it was instead using them as low-skilled filler troops to be soundly beaten by the male troops tournament after tournament. Female heroes should be special in the 9th century--rare, but very powerful. As they were in the sagas, and as represented by Brunhild, Solveig, the female tournament special fighter "the pict", and the female player character.
- Slightly less reductions to tax inefficiency available. In vanilla VC, you could get bonuses to fiefs without inefficiency really easily--+2 if your minister likes you, +6 for hiring tax collectors, meaning even on the hardest difficulty you could have 10 center points without inefficiency. So 5 towns or 10 castles without any tax inefficiency on the hardest difficulty in vanilla. They in combination would also reduce inefficiency rate to (x-2)/2, meaning you could get it a point below native. The end result was far less inefficiency than other mods, and the costs of increasing relationship with minister and hiring the tax collectors wasn't really high enough to justify this, especially in a player kingdom (where the tax collectors also double tribute)
- So, let's separate it out both game mechanics wise and conceptually. The tax collectors already double tribute, so let's make them have the scaling effect only here as well, leaving in place them multiplying inefficiency by 1/2, while reducing their straight bonus down to 2/3 the vanilla value, making it +4 center points. The minister liking you bonus one can understand as them not skimming off the top from wherever they happen to be located, probably a town, worth 2 center points. So let's leave them with their vanilla +2 to center points without inefficiency. Now the player can get +6 center points, and subtract 2 and then divide his inefficiency by 2 (bringing it down 1 below native rate).
- That means with both the player can hold 3 towns and 1 village and 1 castle without any inefficiency on the hardest difficulty level, which basically entails controlling a region of the game. That seems about as powerful as these should be (remember, in a player kingdom , the tax collectors fee will be in large part covered by the doubling of tribute payments as the kingdom gets larger---and the hiring decision should require weighing some things). This may still be too powerful. Let me know if you think so, and we can examine nerfing it further.
- Player religion no longer reduces tax income. I can think of a number of ways a pagan lord could ensure his christian subjects pay their taxes, and in-game dialogue from Frisia seems to confirm this is the general order of things. Besides, it only applied to the player, which is the sort of mechanic best removed.
- Campaign ai setting no longer reduces tax income. Too important to keep it as a balanced source of income vs other sources.
- finished getting all town, castle, and village recruiting code consistent to the above described changes
- Normal Campaign AI will have the tax inefficiency limit of Hard (base 2 points). Even with the nerfs I did to vanilla VC "minister likes you" and "tax collectors" mechanics, you will still get +6 from those, and be able to have 4 towns or 8 castles with 0 inefficiency, and only minor growth in inefficiency after that. 4 towns is plenty rule yourself.
- All ways the game cheats in favor of the player on Normal Campaign AI are removed.
- Many changes have occurred to allow the AI lords to compete on a more even footing with the player, including increases to their base finances, increased king simulated tribute to match what the player gets, and much better army templates.
- scriptorium now grants rent bonus (400, half the boost of the slave market) and very small prosperity boost (0-2) occasionally. The prior renown bonus was worthless--by the time a player had a town to build one, they would often never get a single point of renown from it.
- schools also give a small 0-1 prosperity boost. Same for mead halls.
- religious buildings have their bonus to prosperity reduced to keep overall bonuses around equal
- added upgrade from basic Vikingr to danish and Norwegian elites (thanks to EvilSquid for contributing this)
- Bandit XP required to promote changed for easy and normal leveling to 3/2, from vanilla 2/3. I think the 2/3 was probably a typo in vanilla VC. Hardcore leveling has a 2x modifier for bandit leveling, and while easy and normal should be lower, they shouldn't reverse the trend entirely and make it easier to level bandits. So 3/2 is probably what was intended in the first place.
- PD -1 penalty from medium armor, increased penalty from heavy armor to -2. I removed the penalties from helmets to protect units like the briton archer, but the light armor/medium armor divide is a useful way to present some tradeoffs to the norse warrior archer's heavier gear, and seems realistic enough. Basic longbow +1 PD requirement. Dodging the debate of whether higher tech bows arrive with the norse, the other kingdoms can at least make approrpiate drawweights for their worse bows. (This couples with changes to the PD skills of units)
- Angle and Saxon horsemen now are tier III units upgrading from the archer, similar to the briton horsemen, irish horsemen, and pictish horsemen. As with the britons, picts, and irish, this is a bit odd, but let's face it--the player was basically never going to upgrade into them otherwise. Limit of 2 upgrade paths prevents placing them where most logical, in the swordsmen line.
- standard bearers can now upgrade to top tier units. If you use them and one survives long enough, seems fitting.
- Irish horsemen can now upgrade to irish mounted bodyguards. Their skillset fits, and they need something to compensate for being tier IV (compared to the briton skirmishr cav) and only having ponies (compared to both pictish and briton versions)
- Norse warrior archers can now upgrade to tier IV sworsdman Veterans. There is a historically accurate transition among norse from using bow to greater status as a melee fighter, so it makes sense to give that chance, especially given their skillset fits. Being lvl 26 themselves, means it will take a LOT more to get them ready to upgrade than a normal tier III swordsman.
- Briton horsemen can now upgrade to briton tier IV units. The briton line could use some additional potential anyway, and their skillset fits well. As a level 26 unit, it will take forerver to upgrade them anyway.
- Absurdly high pictish veteran 1 handed skill dropped 30 points
- Absurdly low Irish champion 2 handed skill raised 50 points. Then its crazy high irrelevant WP lowered.
- norse bodyguards guarantee helments
- frank horsemen, old captains, irish bodyguard, storyline heavies, pictish noble guarantee gloves
- svear mercs, storyline heavies guarantee helmet
- merc skirmisher cav level lowered to 24 (will make cheaper, especially given mercs and cav are both more expensive in 5.0, and they aren't that good--I never thought they were worth hiring even in vanilla costs)
- All tier II archer units get powerdraw +2, tier III get +3. For most archers with basic bows, this will increase their damage by about 7-10 points. They remain cutting, limiting effectivness against armoed opponents.
- All archers get +40 WP.
- saxon and angle arches get additional +10 WP
- Finn archers get powerdraw +4, +25 bow proficincy above 40 already granted, only use featured longbows. level raised to 24 (archers getting more powerful), puts them over cut off point of lvl 23 making wages more expensive. They will be over twice previous wage cost now, and almost twice as expensive as norse elite archers to maintain, but about their equal in pure archery (with more arrows and a bit more powerdraw because no armor or shield)
- Briton archers get an additional +30 archery proficicncy, putting them just under the skill of the top norse by only 10 less (but with worse bows). They are a tier III unit competing with excelent horsemen skirmisher cavalry.
- Camp Defender archery not buffed (would be silly, none of the previous iterations of the unit have any archery skill, so she would go from no skill to amazing in one upgrade). Instead, general level reductions for the line of unit, to make upgrades easier and units cheaper.
- Frisian horsemen reduced to be more like an actual tier II unit. They are now fairly comparable to the Frisian Warrior they compete with for upgrades--lvl 21, 170 wp instead of 210, -1 to most skills, etc. It was crazy before--they were matched to the veteran that the warrior upgrades into, which made no sense. I have enabled them upgrading into the Veteran though, so if you train them up they can get there.
- frankish horsemen lvl increase to 33, old captain to 38, storyline special heavy units to 38
- standard bearers get guarnteed gloves. they need all the help they can get, and have top armor anyway.
- top tier units have base of level 30 (+1) , better aligns with their value for wages and autocalc.
- Norse noble significantly buffed and then made lvl 33.
- top of the line tier Vs like Norse bodyguard and Saxon noble level increas to 35. (to reflect top of the top in their class, and get a bit more wages and higher autocalc)
- Better but not absolute best like angle bodyguard to 33, same reason
- Ok but not top like angle noble to 32.
- lvl 27 tier IV units given between 20-30 extra WP to their primary weapon, to account for wage increase and displayed potential in promotion. (handling the promotion potential fiancnail issue with level differences at tier V, while still having current wages reflect current abilities)
- Briton tier IV and V units given +10 WP. Let's make them just a little better, and not so clearly the trash faction troop tree.
- Briton tier V noble two handed skill buffed to match one handed
- Svear Warrior upgrades to Svear Elite Vikingr (given the level this will take as much XP as a Tier V unit, so very very rare). Thanks Scar and EvilSquid for this idea!
- Angle and saxon horsemen now upgrade to banner carriers. Will be very rare though given their level, as rare as a normal tier V upgrade. Briton horsemen upgrade switched to banner carriers, same added for briton archer.
- Basically, banner carriers are the pesumptive update for a tier III unit lacking another path now. They distinguished themselves in combat, and earned the honor of carrying the standard. Should encourage use of these units, since you don't have to always sacrifice another good upgrade for them, as before.
- Banner carriers now upgrade back to same unit line they split off from, ie either noble or bodyguard depending on where the banner carrier is in that particular faction troop tree.
- Guarantee helmets for Frisian veteran.
- Gurantee helmets for Elite bandits (all 3 elite vikingr, ship captain, bandit leader)
- Distinguish touurnament heroes. Uhtred is now the best overall fighter among them, while Nial is a bit more skilled with swords/axes and Anchorect with spears.
- Character creation stat boosts rebalanced. For those upgrading current saves, here are the detailed character creation changes, so you can see if you are entitled to extra import/export points:
- Generally, all character creation choices now get the same total stat points (the one exception being age--being the normal adult age is still superior to being very young or very old, as makes sense). However, skill point differences remain, as they aren't so critical and precious in VC compared to stats.
- Female PCs now have the same base stats as males (+2 strength/agility, -2 charisma/intelligence, instead of the reverse from Vanilla VC). I understand why the VC devs reduced starting female PC strength. but the female PC is by her nature an exceptional being--she should be able to defy the normal averages if she wishes. Second, vanilla VC female PCs having higher intelligence/charisma (+4 relative to males) doesn't fit the uses of these stats--charisma is often troops or nobles responding to someone as a leader or fellow lord, and intelligence is basically education--if anything females at this time would have a harder time obtaining both. Third, the player has stat points to distribute as she wishes--let her decide what kind of game she wants, rather than pushing her towards a non-melee player. Given the other stat boosts in creation available for intelligence and charisma, and the need for a minimum of strength and agility, this ensures maximum flexibility for everyone to create the kind of character they want.
- Sandbox starts now get the same +1 Seaking skill that storyline starts get
- All personality choices now equalized to the stat points of choleric. This means that:
- sanguine, phlegmatic (+2 stat points relative to vanilla); melancholic (+1 stat point relative to vanilla)
- Virtue choices equalized in stats to vanilla Justice, and skill boosts removed. This means: wisdom: gains 1 stat point; fortitude: gains 1 stat point, loses 1 skill point; temperance: gains 1 stat point, loses 1 skill point
- Player now starts at 1 renown, instead of 60. Giving the player 60 free renown at character creation cheapened the beginning part of the game.
- Village defender changes altered a bit to better adjust to current saves (will still take a while to upgrade, and may need to be looted once, to replace most of the defenders with the new better-equiped ones) (this reminder needs credit attributed to a user when making final log, will do so in a few days)
- Farmers taking their goods to market will now have a few hired spearmen along to defend them. (Thanks EricAKAPode for coming up with this idea)
- AI Kings now get 2000 instead of 1000 additional base income, which should be closer to matching what the player can achieve from a midsized kingdom tribute. AI marshalls no longer receive free money.
- No more cheating in favor of player marshalls on normal difficulty, forcing AI lords to join their campaigns even if they wouldn't have joined an NPC martial. The prior script to do this was justified by this comment to the code: "#Because players become confused when they see very less participation from AI lords to their campaigns." I will leave it on for "easy", but if you are playing "normal" I assume you want a fair game and won't be confused when things don't go your way.
- tax efficiency no longer has a maximum. No more gamey keep taking centers until you hit the limit--this is the dark ages, you are a feudal lord, not an emperor. Well, it will cap at 99, but that won't help you.
- merc contracts now pay about 6 times as much (should cover close to your wages plus some profit). I didn't have time to deal with the relationship issues of all your faction enemies hating you after contract concludes yet, but at least you'll be sufficiently compensated if you decide to explore this oft-neglected aspect of Viking Conquest.
- Special tournament participant chance of joining reduced. They were traveling the world just a little too fast at 50%
- No more "camp defender" female npc tournament participants. Hordes of female tournament fighters never fit into the spirit of a realistic look at the dark ages. What was worse is that the camp defenders had terrible stats, so Vanilla VC wasn't throwing great female fighters into the mix, it was instead using them as low-skilled filler troops to be soundly beaten by the male troops tournament after tournament. Female heroes should be special in the 9th century--rare, but very powerful. As they were in the sagas, and as represented by Brunhild, Solveig, the female tournament special fighter "the pict", and the female player character.
- Slightly less reductions to tax inefficiency available. In vanilla VC, you could get bonuses to fiefs without inefficiency really easily--+2 if your minister likes you, +6 for hiring tax collectors, meaning even on the hardest difficulty you could have 10 center points without inefficiency. So 5 towns or 10 castles without any tax inefficiency on the hardest difficulty in vanilla. They in combination would also reduce inefficiency rate to (x-2)/2, meaning you could get it a point below native. The end result was far less inefficiency than other mods, and the costs of increasing relationship with minister and hiring the tax collectors wasn't really high enough to justify this, especially in a player kingdom (where the tax collectors also double tribute)
- So, let's separate it out both game mechanics wise and conceptually. The tax collectors already double tribute, so let's make them have the scaling effect only here as well, leaving in place them multiplying inefficiency by 1/2, while reducing their straight bonus down to 2/3 the vanilla value, making it +4 center points. The minister liking you bonus one can understand as them not skimming off the top from wherever they happen to be located, probably a town, worth 2 center points. So let's leave them with their vanilla +2 to center points without inefficiency. Now the player can get +6 center points, and subtract 2 and then divide his inefficiency by 2 (bringing it down 1 below native rate).
- That means with both the player can hold 3 towns and 1 village and 1 castle without any inefficiency on the hardest difficulty level, which basically entails controlling a region of the game. That seems about as powerful as these should be (remember, in a player kingdom , the tax collectors fee will be in large part covered by the doubling of tribute payments as the kingdom gets larger---and the hiring decision should require weighing some things). This may still be too powerful. Let me know if you think so, and we can examine nerfing it further.
- Player religion no longer reduces tax income. I can think of a number of ways a pagan lord could ensure his christian subjects pay their taxes, and in-game dialogue from Frisia seems to confirm this is the general order of things. Besides, it only applied to the player, which is the sort of mechanic best removed.
- Campaign ai setting no longer reduces tax income. Too important to keep it as a balanced source of income vs other sources.
- finished getting all town, castle, and village recruiting code consistent to the above described changes
- Normal Campaign AI will have the tax inefficiency limit of Hard (base 2 points). Even with the nerfs I did to vanilla VC "minister likes you" and "tax collectors" mechanics, you will still get +6 from those, and be able to have 4 towns or 8 castles with 0 inefficiency, and only minor growth in inefficiency after that. 4 towns is plenty rule yourself.
- All ways the game cheats in favor of the player on Normal Campaign AI are removed.
- Many changes have occurred to allow the AI lords to compete on a more even footing with the player, including increases to their base finances, increased king simulated tribute to match what the player gets, and much better army templates.
- scriptorium now grants rent bonus (400, half the boost of the slave market) and very small prosperity boost (0-2) occasionally. The prior renown bonus was worthless--by the time a player had a town to build one, they would often never get a single point of renown from it.
- schools also give a small 0-1 prosperity boost. Same for mead halls.
- religious buildings have their bonus to prosperity reduced to keep overall bonuses around equal
- added upgrade from basic Vikingr to danish and Norwegian elites (thanks to EvilSquid for contributing this)
- Bandit XP required to promote changed for easy and normal leveling to 3/2, from vanilla 2/3. I think the 2/3 was probably a typo in vanilla VC. Hardcore leveling has a 2x modifier for bandit leveling, and while easy and normal should be lower, they shouldn't reverse the trend entirely and make it easier to level bandits. So 3/2 is probably what was intended in the first place.
- PD -1 penalty from medium armor, increased penalty from heavy armor to -2. I removed the penalties from helmets to protect units like the briton archer, but the light armor/medium armor divide is a useful way to present some tradeoffs to the norse warrior archer's heavier gear, and seems realistic enough. Basic longbow +1 PD requirement. Dodging the debate of whether higher tech bows arrive with the norse, the other kingdoms can at least make approrpiate drawweights for their worse bows. (This couples with changes to the PD skills of units)
- Angle and Saxon horsemen now are tier III units upgrading from the archer, similar to the briton horsemen, irish horsemen, and pictish horsemen. As with the britons, picts, and irish, this is a bit odd, but let's face it--the player was basically never going to upgrade into them otherwise. Limit of 2 upgrade paths prevents placing them where most logical, in the swordsmen line.
- standard bearers can now upgrade to top tier units. If you use them and one survives long enough, seems fitting.
- Irish horsemen can now upgrade to irish mounted bodyguards. Their skillset fits, and they need something to compensate for being tier IV (compared to the briton skirmishr cav) and only having ponies (compared to both pictish and briton versions)
- Norse warrior archers can now upgrade to tier IV sworsdman Veterans. There is a historically accurate transition among norse from using bow to greater status as a melee fighter, so it makes sense to give that chance, especially given their skillset fits. Being lvl 26 themselves, means it will take a LOT more to get them ready to upgrade than a normal tier III swordsman.
- Briton horsemen can now upgrade to briton tier IV units. The briton line could use some additional potential anyway, and their skillset fits well. As a level 26 unit, it will take forerver to upgrade them anyway.
- Absurdly high pictish veteran 1 handed skill dropped 30 points
- Absurdly low Irish champion 2 handed skill raised 50 points. Then its crazy high irrelevant WP lowered.
- norse bodyguards guarantee helments
- frank horsemen, old captains, irish bodyguard, storyline heavies, pictish noble guarantee gloves
- svear mercs, storyline heavies guarantee helmet
- merc skirmisher cav level lowered to 24 (will make cheaper, especially given mercs and cav are both more expensive in 5.0, and they aren't that good--I never thought they were worth hiring even in vanilla costs)
- All tier II archer units get powerdraw +2, tier III get +3. For most archers with basic bows, this will increase their damage by about 7-10 points. They remain cutting, limiting effectivness against armoed opponents.
- All archers get +40 WP.
- saxon and angle arches get additional +10 WP
- Finn archers get powerdraw +4, +25 bow proficincy above 40 already granted, only use featured longbows. level raised to 24 (archers getting more powerful), puts them over cut off point of lvl 23 making wages more expensive. They will be over twice previous wage cost now, and almost twice as expensive as norse elite archers to maintain, but about their equal in pure archery (with more arrows and a bit more powerdraw because no armor or shield)
- Briton archers get an additional +30 archery proficicncy, putting them just under the skill of the top norse by only 10 less (but with worse bows). They are a tier III unit competing with excelent horsemen skirmisher cavalry.
- Camp Defender archery not buffed (would be silly, none of the previous iterations of the unit have any archery skill, so she would go from no skill to amazing in one upgrade). Instead, general level reductions for the line of unit, to make upgrades easier and units cheaper.
- Frisian horsemen reduced to be more like an actual tier II unit. They are now fairly comparable to the Frisian Warrior they compete with for upgrades--lvl 21, 170 wp instead of 210, -1 to most skills, etc. It was crazy before--they were matched to the veteran that the warrior upgrades into, which made no sense. I have enabled them upgrading into the Veteran though, so if you train them up they can get there.
- frankish horsemen lvl increase to 33, old captain to 38, storyline special heavy units to 38
- standard bearers get guarnteed gloves. they need all the help they can get, and have top armor anyway.
- top tier units have base of level 30 (+1) , better aligns with their value for wages and autocalc.
- Norse noble significantly buffed and then made lvl 33.
- top of the line tier Vs like Norse bodyguard and Saxon noble level increas to 35. (to reflect top of the top in their class, and get a bit more wages and higher autocalc)
- Better but not absolute best like angle bodyguard to 33, same reason
- Ok but not top like angle noble to 32.
- lvl 27 tier IV units given between 20-30 extra WP to their primary weapon, to account for wage increase and displayed potential in promotion. (handling the promotion potential fiancnail issue with level differences at tier V, while still having current wages reflect current abilities)
- Briton tier IV and V units given +10 WP. Let's make them just a little better, and not so clearly the trash faction troop tree.
- Briton tier V noble two handed skill buffed to match one handed
- Svear Warrior upgrades to Svear Elite Vikingr (given the level this will take as much XP as a Tier V unit, so very very rare). Thanks Scar and EvilSquid for this idea!
- Angle and saxon horsemen now upgrade to banner carriers. Will be very rare though given their level, as rare as a normal tier V upgrade. Briton horsemen upgrade switched to banner carriers, same added for briton archer.
- Basically, banner carriers are the pesumptive update for a tier III unit lacking another path now. They distinguished themselves in combat, and earned the honor of carrying the standard. Should encourage use of these units, since you don't have to always sacrifice another good upgrade for them, as before.
- Banner carriers now upgrade back to same unit line they split off from, ie either noble or bodyguard depending on where the banner carrier is in that particular faction troop tree.
- Guarantee helmets for Frisian veteran.
- Gurantee helmets for Elite bandits (all 3 elite vikingr, ship captain, bandit leader)
- Distinguish touurnament heroes. Uhtred is now the best overall fighter among them, while Nial is a bit more skilled with swords/axes and Anchorect with spears.
- Character creation stat boosts rebalanced. For those upgrading current saves, here are the detailed character creation changes, so you can see if you are entitled to extra import/export points:
- Generally, all character creation choices now get the same total stat points (the one exception being age--being the normal adult age is still superior to being very young or very old, as makes sense). However, skill point differences remain, as they aren't so critical and precious in VC compared to stats.
- Female PCs now have the same base stats as males (+2 strength/agility, -2 charisma/intelligence, instead of the reverse from Vanilla VC). I understand why the VC devs reduced starting female PC strength. but the female PC is by her nature an exceptional being--she should be able to defy the normal averages if she wishes. Second, vanilla VC female PCs having higher intelligence/charisma (+4 relative to males) doesn't fit the uses of these stats--charisma is often troops or nobles responding to someone as a leader or fellow lord, and intelligence is basically education--if anything females at this time would have a harder time obtaining both. Third, the player has stat points to distribute as she wishes--let her decide what kind of game she wants, rather than pushing her towards a non-melee player. Given the other stat boosts in creation available for intelligence and charisma, and the need for a minimum of strength and agility, this ensures maximum flexibility for everyone to create the kind of character they want.
- Sandbox starts now get the same +1 Seaking skill that storyline starts get
- All personality choices now equalized to the stat points of choleric. This means that:
- sanguine, phlegmatic (+2 stat points relative to vanilla); melancholic (+1 stat point relative to vanilla)
- Virtue choices equalized in stats to vanilla Justice, and skill boosts removed. This means: wisdom: gains 1 stat point; fortitude: gains 1 stat point, loses 1 skill point; temperance: gains 1 stat point, loses 1 skill point
- Player now starts at 1 renown, instead of 60. Giving the player 60 free renown at character creation cheapened the beginning part of the game.
- Village defender changes altered a bit to better adjust to current saves (will still take a while to upgrade, and may need to be looted once, to replace most of the defenders with the new better-equiped ones) (this reminder needs credit attributed to a user when making final log, will do so in a few days)
- Farmers taking their goods to market will now have a few hired spearmen along to defend them. (Thanks EricAKAPode for coming up with this idea)