SP Viking Conquest Balance Mod 13

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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)
 
Nerevar said:
I have one proposition but not sure about it - what do you think about adding some income to the refuge? Like, 0 for the level 1(it's basically a few tents), about 250-300(random amount in this range) for level 2 and 400-500 for level 3

Not a big sum, but it can help to make the refuge more self sufficient
I don't know, the refuge is meant to be a hideout in the first place. While I agree that it looks like a small settlement when fullly upgraded, logically it would make little sense to give it a weekly income. Because that would imply your troops are in regular trade contact with other settlements, something that pretty much would guarantee you to be discovered before long (RP-wise, ingame nothing would happen of course).

I see the main benefit in reducing troop wages by 3/4, effectively saving you thousands per month when you have it a max capacity with all high-level troops. So in a way you already get a lot of savings out of it (if you use it heavily).

EDIT: I did not reload the page and didn't see the reply from Tingyun before posting. He pretty much answered it, so disregard my post :smile:
 
DeSoto said:
Because that would imply your troops are in regular trade contact with other settlements
I thought about it and in fact some contacts are already present :smile:
1. Such small settlements weren't able to rely on themselves fully
2. This is further confirmed by the fact that your cook tells you that he will buy stuff in nearby villages when you asks him about preparing a party
3. Armor and weapon smiths should buy raw materials and sell their wares somehow. Ulfberth is too good smith to have only you as an occasional customer :smile:

But my idea was mainly about the fact, that medieval logic was like - peasants are paying stuff and money to nobles in exchange of protection, because without peasants nobles will have no stuff and money :smile: And now it seems that some plebs are living in your well-protected(that's the point!) refuge(small village) for free.
I'm not talking about big sums of money, but for me it's strange that there is some activity in your domain that is not shares the profits with you.
 
Nerevar said:
I thought about it and in fact some contacts are already present :smile:
1. Such small settlements weren't able to rely on themselves fully
2. This is further confirmed by the fact that your cook tells you that he will buy stuff in nearby villages when you asks him about preparing a party
3. Armor and weapon smiths should buy raw materials and sell their wares somehow. Ulfberth is too good smith to have only you as an occasional customer :smile:

But my idea was mainly about the fact, that medieval logic was like - peasants are paying stuff and money to nobles in exchange of protection, because without peasants nobles will have no stuff and money :smile: And now it seems that some plebs are living in your well-protected(that's the point!) refuge(small village) for free.
I'm not talking about big sums of money, but for me it's strange that there is some activity in your domain that is not shares the profits with you.
Yes, I can see that, and that's probably also what bothers me about the refuge in general. When fully upgraded it basically stops being a hideout and becomes a downsized city with all the amenities you could want. At the same time it is completely immune to attacks (it is, right?) and on top reduces your troop wages to a petty amount. You can often get enough loot from a single random viking party to pay for the whole week.

I established my refuge right between Caer Dyf / Brycheiniog on one side and Cippanhamm / Cirren Ceaster on the other. I could strike in any direction in less than half a day without them being able to retaliate, all they could do is take their original holding back. Couple this with the very efficient training options you have via the hired trainer and you'll probably never run out of tier 3 troops. I don't know, for me a refuge should be something more temporary and it should have a (small) chance to be discovered and subsequently attacked. Also the max capacity seems to be too high, 250 is the average garrison of a castle. Historically those had often vast landholdings around it which supplied it. Your refuge has a few tiny fields, there is no way you could feed 250 people with that.

I really think the third expansion stage should not exist, being able to securely store away 120 guys is already very generous. At that stage the refuge also visually appears to be more believeable. If we really want to go the other route (bascially making into a semi-heavily fortified, castle-like settlement), then it has to be targetable by the AI, cause a structure like that would not just fall off the radar. Maybe give the attacker a slight penalty, but it pretty much breaks immersion when you can just drop off your whole army into it and the marshalled force, which was chasing you a minute ago, goes like "Where the hell did those 250 men go, anybody saw that?".

I know that changing the refuge mechanic is probably way beyond the scope of this balance mod, but that has always been one thing that bothered me with VC.
 
My previous problems solved. My other simple request (I hope it is simple) increasing the money in villages and monasteries. By that we could also trade efficiently in some extend. Also do you know how to change the castle loot? Not the money of I mean the qualities and the quantities of the castle plundering.


Ah this is probably the hardest one but it's doesnt hurt to ask (hope I'm no being demanding too much) can you add patrol system where we pay to our castle reeve to patrol area, just like in perisno? I'm not talking about auto patrol.

Have a good day  :grin:
 
Desoto and Nerevar: thanks for contributing the interesting and informative discussion! I think you two have clarified this issue a great deal, and I’ll keep all your points in mind when I next look at refuges.
 
Ruan: glad to hear you fixed your personal version! Village money is unlikely to change in the mod, as it is too closely tied to the prosperity system (a village stores the money it makes off a player, and when a certain amount is reached, it trades that money for a prosperity point). I haven’t looked into castle loot before.
 
I'd like to make a case for the removal of throwing weapons from tournaments.

With the random weapon distribution (for example 2 x shieldless vs. 2 x axe/sword + shield) and wide range of participants (1-4 teams with 1-8 fighters each, which oftentimes leads to one team staying back while the others grind themselves down) tournaments are unbalanced enough already. Adding throwing weapons in the mix, which most of the fighters wield with pinpoint accuracy, makes the whole brawl even less fun. It's very hard to discern between throwing spears and normal ones from a distance and many arenas have obstacles/elevated terrain, so you'll most likely spot them too late.

Also from a realistic standpoint it makes little sense to include them, cause they would often cause fatal injuries and although I have close to zero knowledge about tournaments during that timeperiod, I'm pretty sure they weren't held just to kill off a good chunk of the participants, seeing that nobles took part in it as well.

And lastly, tournaments were always a M&B staple for making some money early on. When you advance to mid-late game, the rewards (even with max bet it's only around 4k) are hardly worth your time, an average bandit spawn will most likely exceed the earnings from a tournament. In the early game, you'll probably lack the WP to wield any weapon to full effect and unless you are a veteran of the game you'll have enough on your hands without a surprise throwing spear to the butt.

I'd much rather see a Prophesy of Pendor approach to tournaments. In that mod, every city has it's own rules. One might be mounted + lance only, another is on foot with everyone (!) having the same weapon (axe or sword). This way skill actually matters and you don't get screwed over just because your char doesn't use polearms. That way you could skip the ones you'll most likely fail anyway and focus on the ones where your WP is high. This is the extended wishlist though, my main point remains the removal of all throwing weapons.
 
DeSoto: Great points, I'm convinced. I'll mourn their loss a bit, because I liked the added tactical variety (sometimes I'd hang back and grab a few missed thorwing spears, and use them to take out the shieldless), but you are right, both realism and game balance point to removing them from the standard list.

Hmm...implementing tournament weapon assignment by town isn't too difficult, but do you have any suggestions regarding how to vary them up? And should throwing weapons be available in a few select regions, like Irish? The realism concerns you raise are valid, but maybe in the name of variety making a few Irish towns where most or all participants have throwing weapons, and removing them otherwise? Spears tend to be the worst weapons, but maybe an all-spear shield tournament might be interesting for a couple of towns? Would a horse tournament in maybe Pict lands make sense? Anyone that has any ideas, post them here, will look at for a future version.
 
6.0 Released!

Includes realistic map speeds. Alternate download available if you prefer vanilla VC's 2x-as-fast-as-realistic speeds.

Final Changelog for 6.0 main version:

Map travel speeds reduced to 50% of vanilla VC values, to achieve realistic travel times based on:

- mounted travel times between London and York vs speeds achieved in the Tevis cup

- sea travel speeds from Ribe to London vs historical guesses at longboat speeds

- historical records of roman army marching speeds (couldn't find anything closer)

It should now take realistic times to travel between most cities (the few exceptions are areas where the map is condensed, possibly in the North Sea or Frisia, but even there the speed reduction should make things much more realistic). Tested and AI seems to be doing fine conducting sieges and defending their territory with the slower speeds, outside of the trouble they always have.

Alternate download with restored vanilla faster-than-realistic speeds also on Nexus, in case you don't like this particular change.

Player no longer has a lower ship speed multiplier than AI. change of random speed adjustments to -2 to 2 rather than to 3. Proportionally balanced speed adjustments to new base multiplier values.

Frisian lords now recruit Frankish Cavalry mercs as part of their elite roster, and recruit frisian cavalry in greater numbers (A chance for a little anti-cavalry combat if the player likes, and to see some of the deadly franks on the other side of the battlefield, though of course they are still overwhelmingly foot troops)

Battle renown gain capped at base 30 per battle, to limit the renown advantage of farming bandits as a solo player for crazy high renown gains, and put winning big battles as a commander in not so disadvantaged a position for growing fame.

Renown reduction for troop join cost now more limited.

Tournament renown gain slightly increased

War trophy renown gains increased moderately

free renown when storyline jarl asks you to recruit men reduced from +18 to +2, and for reporting back from +9 to +2. The player wasn't doing anything to earn those boosts.

free renown on recruiting companions changed from +10 to +1. Companion hiring is no longer easy renown gain.

Some minor tweaks to difficulty settings

Renown bonus from completing grand conquests changed from +60 to 4x+30 (so 120 total to make much more rewarding overall for such a great achievment, but also allow to be reduced a bit more by existing renown)

BELOW: Minor changes that will only show up in new games

removed lady headgear

Some stat changes for Lords

Sigurd snake in the eye-+4 Int, +2 leadership, +2 training

Helgi Hvasi- +10 strength

Ubbe/Hubbi--+30 strength, +80 WP, +2 PS, +2 Ironflesh (heed Ravn's warning regarding fighting Ubbe)

Ketill Bjornson--+2 charisma, +2 strength, +20 WP

Alfred the Great- +7 Int, -2 strength, -2 agility (total of 7 points distributed scross leadership, surgery, spotting, pathfinding)

Wulfhere-- +2 int, +2 tactics

Ceowulf--+2 int, +2 leadership

Egbert--  -2 int, -2 charisma, -2 leadership

The following lords now have set reputations:

WESSEX
Aelfred the Great--upstanding
Wulfhere--cunning

NORWAY (we can't recreate Harald's conquest of Norway, but this should create some internal conflict between loyalists and the others)
Guttorm--upstanding (loyal regent)
Ketil---upstanding
Bjorn Ketilson--martial
(Ketilsdottir made moralist to fit in with the family)
King Erik--quarlsome
Kjvoti--debauched

LAITHLAND
Ketilson--upstanding

NORTHYMBRIA
Egbert--cunning
Ubbe/Hubbi--martial

Divourced Thorunn Ketillsdottir from Kjvoti, to leave a Norway player with another spouse option (Gyda being the famed love of Fairhair)

AI Lords will no longer court women who are 35 years or older (This is to protect Aslaug and Rhodri's wife from getting courted. Sure, the player can still court the wives of kings, but at least the player has to opt-in to such silly behavior, and the AI should leave them alone)

Ketil given Rogeland (before it was between him and his son to randomly get it)

Guttorm give Skirringsalr (the castle close to Tunsberg, him being Harald's regent)

Family relationships added:

Ketilson in Ireland now has proper Norwegion parents assigned

Guttorm (Fairhair's regent) age reduced

Frisian Haraldsson lords now assigned as sons of Frisian Harald. Ages adjusted accordingly.

Egbert the 2nd made son of the 1st

Assigned  Tiarna_Cummascach_mac_Cathalan son of Mael_Cathalan_mac_Indrechtaig (didn't assign wife as mom, was significantly younger, figured some amount of lords should have second marriages from initial wife dying in childbirth)

Assigned sidroc the young as son of sidroc the elder (not sure if that is true really, but we need some more complicated family structures, too many simple lone lords right now, and the ages match

Assigned  Tiern_Brochwael_map_Meurig son of Guledic_Meurig_map_Arthfael. increased age of father to compensate, decreased age of son

3 lords (all mac conchobar) made son of Mael_Conchobar_mac_Taidg_Mor and his wife, age adjustments accordingly

A couple of lords with father/son names (in mide and glyswing I think) left without relationship, because graphics and other relations made adding father/son relationship seem like a bad idea.

Ketil's wife slightly increased in age

Harald (Frisian) age increased to give more leeway to new sons with children. His wife also increased in age for same reason.

Gotrik haraldon's daughter decreased in age, wife moved up in age

Both haraldsons moved back up in age slightly (still younger than before

added mother relationship for the haraldsons

2 goidelic newly defined as mother ladies slightly increased in age

And Lynxbuckler 's suggestions: Dyfnwal map Rhun (and his brother Echou) sons of Rhun map Arthgal, Ages adjusted accordingly, Alanorous map Eliud son of Eliud map Eferferdyn

Credits list:

Reddit user D_Pear and BallioLeno for discussions regarding siege accuracy mechanics (forgot to include this credit in the 5.0 list, so adding it here)

Reddit user Lynxbuckler for suggesting several missing family relationships

Finally, a note on the implications of the new realistic travel speeds:

Slower travel increases the significance of both troop wages and income from fiefs, as those will stay constant, while the rate of looting will go down. This improves the AI lords, and gives a bit more of an economic challenge to the player, who now will be more likely to see his fiefs as an important means of supporting his army. Keeping a vast army in the field indefinitely will also challenge food provisions more. The player will be more likely to keep their army garrisoned when not campaigning, both to reduce the wages and food issues, which seems realistic, and focus more on developing his fiefs as a source of income.
 
Many thanks for putting that much effort into this submod Tingyun, you shape VC into the game it should have been in the first place without sacrificing the overall feel of it (unlike Blood Eagle, which messed the troop tree/economy up and made ranged OP again).

I have two issues I'd like to change/fix in my game, maybe you can help me out here. I'm not requesting these changes to be included in your release.

Firstly, the quest "Track down bandits" seems to be downright broken to me. I was able to complete this once, all the other times the party got killed off by someone else. I search around and talk to literally anybody without getting any hint regarding their whereabouts. It appears the only way to finish this is to aimlessly wander around for weeks on end. I'd like to change this so that you are guaranteed a clue after talking to X number of parties (lords/traders/whatever). That way you still have to put some effort into it without having to rely entirely on chance to complete it.

Second, the way retreats are implemented always bothered me. If you are in a situation of life/death, you will likely experience an adrenaline surge. But the effect will only last for about 30 seconds and there is a good chance that you already "spent" all of it in the battle that came before it. Considering that battles ingame last a fraction of the time they'd take in real life, I'd like to make the following changes to the mechanic (if possible): When troops start to retreat, they get a moderate (not the almost-as-fast-as-a-horse nonsense we have now) increase to running speed. This effect will wear off after about 15-20 seconds, after which their speed will be reduced to below normal (simulating bodily exhaustion). That way units close to the border still have a good chance to escape, while the ones that decide to retreat in the middle of the map will get killed off, even without the other party having horses. Adrenaline mainly affects your perception (increased alertness and pain tolerance), it does not turn people into superhumans for prolonged periods of time.
The fact that the VC devs allowed you to tab out after the enemy retreats and still win as if you beat them completely goes to show that the mechanic is nowhere near realistic at the moment. I don't want to skip 1/4 to 1/3 of the battle, I want to get the chance to fight til the end.
 
Hi DeSoto,

I’m glad you like the new release, and thanks for all your feedback!

I’m unfamiliar with modding combat behavior, so I can’t offer help right now on your 3rd paragraph. I might try to learn about it later, but that might take some time, so if you’d like to do your personal edits soon you might try asking in the modding help section of the taleworlds forum.

On the bandit quest info issue: something like that might work, but let me first check if you are aware of a couple thing (apologies if you already are):

1) VC track down bandit quests come in land or sea bandit varieties, both on the same cooldown timer. You can refuse a given type if you prefer, eventually another town will have the other kind. You can tell which it is by whether it is travelers from “port of _____” (sea) or not (land).

2) Land bandits are usually pretty easy to track down. This is because bandit roaming grounds of a certain type do not range too far. So, for example, in Anglo Saxon lands, “Danish elite vikingr” being the land target means they are somewhere in East Angelia, usually around the coast near Dunwic. Vikings in Briton lands have two roaming grounds, one in the middle of cornubia, another in northwestern wales. Even stuff “thieving franks” vs “raiding franks” (is that the right adjective? The other land frank bandits) distinguishes two very seperate roaming grounds, Frisia vs Danmark, and each designation of vikings (danish elite, vs plain vikingr, etc) also defines different locations. Sometimes a particular bandit type has 2 or 3 possible roaming grounds, but they will be separated by a vast distance, so you know which one it is by the identity of the attacked traders. But generally even if you don’t know the particular roaming ground in advance, you can guess it by guessing where the caravan was attacked, and looking until you start seeing that kind of bandit party, then you know you’ve arrived.

3) I can post a complete list of land bandit hunting grounds later if helpful, let me know if you’d like that, but the end result is by knowing the identity of the attacked land traders, and the name of the bandit type, you can usually find the bandits within a day of searching. A given type really doesn’t go far. Tracking skill helps a great deal here—seeing how many hours ago, and what party size, let’s you find them quickly.

4) Sea bandit tracking missions are a little tougher, but not hard once you understand a basic principle—ignore entirely the identity of the attacked traders, it provides no additional info, because the mere identity of the attacking bandits is enough to know where your target is.

5) Sea bandit hunting grounds are as follows:

Frankish Raiders—triangle between Dorested, Dunwic, and Ribe
Swedish Vikingr—between southern part of Norway and just a bit south of it, to northern part of Britain where the Northymbrian lands border the Pict lands.
Danish Elite Vikingr—Sea south of Britain. Sometimes one goes nuts and sails far south, where the player can’t even click on the map, but he comes back soon enough, and basically by sailing along the southern coast of Britain you find them (that is the trader route, hugging the coast, so you sometimes find them fighting or chasing a trader)
Vikingr and (forgot the name, maybe “raiders”, the two plain names)—Irish Sea between Britain and Ireland. I think the Vikingr roam the southern part, the raiders roam the northern part.

6) Sea bandit hunting can take several days if you get unlucky even with the above info, but I’m not sure clues would help too much. Ships move on fast, so they will be gone soon from wherever they were.

7) Usually, sea bandit hunting isn’t too much of a bother because it is so generally profitable that some additional time taking care of some non quest types isn’t so unlucky. They tend to have a lot of nice prisoners you can recruit. But it is the more time consuming and random of the two, so most of the time I refuse sea bandit tracking quests unless I have reason to be sailing to that exact roaming ground and don’t mind adding a few days to the trip to sail around killing off all the bandits (it really is a decision of, do I want to hunt 5 ships of that type, not the particular one)

So once aware of the above, I am not sure how valuable clues are. Once you know the roaming grounds, clues about sea bandits don’t tell you anything additional that isn’t already obsolete within a few hours given the random directions and speed ships travel, and clues about land bandits aren’t really needed because the bandit hunting grounds are so tight you can usually guess their location anyway (land bandits in pictland are the exception, as their grounds are a bit larger, so you might refuse quests to hunt them). Clues would be helpful to anyone unaware though (presumably most people), so maybe this is something to look into for the mod, but as far as a personal mod for you goes, maybe the above info already fills that need.

But maybe not, and I am happy to help you look into your personal mod idea if you still want to pursue it, let me know what you decide!
 
Wonderful news Tingun  :grin:

Reposting
Ah this is probably the hardest one but it's doesnt hurt to ask (hope I'm no being demanding too much) can you add patrol system where we pay to our castle reeve to patrol area, just like in perisno? I'm not talking about auto patrol.
Is it possible to implement a feature like this?
 
Tingyun said:
Even stuff “thieving franks” vs “raiding franks” (is that the right adjective? The other land frank bandits) distinguishes two very seperate roaming grounds, Frisia vs Danmark, and each designation of vikings (danish elite, vs plain vikingr, etc) also defines different locations.
Thanks for the in-depth information, that's interesting and works (if I understand it right) differently from other mods I played. I got the "raiding franks" quest from the mayor of Caer Dyf, so nowhere near Frisia or Danmark. I did expect them to be in the vicinity or at the very least on the same island, especially with the meager rewards (must be the lowest out of all quests). For example in PoP those bandit parties always spawned near my territory and not in a designated area if I recall correctly. Would raiders really travel across the North Sea and all the way to Cardiff, just to harass some trade caravans? I agree with you that in this case clues won't be of much help because of the distance traveled and the effort to change this to a different mechanic would be unreasonable considering it's not a vital part of the game. I guess I'll just skip this quest entirely from now on.

I got another problem, this time a visual one. Sorry for pestering you so much, but the normal forums are sparsely used at best and you seem to have some deep knowledge of the game.
I'm playing a skirmisher, meaning I'm trying to go as light as possible without sacrificing too much defense. The berserker's "Wolf Skin" armor seemed perfect for this, but it is near unplayable in first person view with it (which I'm using all the time except when mounted). The problem is that the top part is visible at all times. 1/3 to 1/2 of your screen will be covered up by it and when you look around it appears like you don't tilt your head but rather rotate it inside it with the armor being static. This is inconsistent with all the other heavy helmets, which become invisible. My only explanation is that this problem is caused by the fact that the headgear is part of the body armor. Could this be replaced in first person view or made invisible entirely? You don't see much of it anyway, even when looking straight down, so the tiny immersion loss would be more than made up by an unobstructed view.

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Hi Ruan: Don't worry, I have that suggestion saved on the planning list. But the list is very long, and that idea would be somewhat complex to implement and test, so don't worry if you don't see it soon--it might take me a very long time. But I will keep it in mind!
 
Hi DeSoto: Is it possible you have it reversed? Raiding Franks are land bandits in Danmark. Frankish Raiders are sea bandits in the triangle between Dorested, Dunwic, and Ribe.

If it was Frankish Raiders, it happened like this--a caravan set off from Caer Dyf by sea. They sailed along the southern coast of Britain, probably narrowly avoided getting killed by the danish elite vikingr ship parties there, then rounded the southeastern corner, arrived at that triangle that the Frankish Raider ships hunt, and got killed. Technically, they were still out of Caer Dyf, they hadn't landed anywhere yet, as there are no ports on the southern coast of Britain, so the missions got assigned to the guildmaster of caer dyf, and he gave it to you.

If it was really Raiding Franks, then I am stumped, because they don't leave Danmark, and caravans that stop in Danmark just pop into Ribe before sailing off, so no chance of getting hit by land bandits there.

So basically slight variations in names can be a very different kind of bandit and location. One note though, while sea bandit hunting grounds are unique, outside of the franks most land party bandits have a couple different hunting grounds.

So to the general point--every mod is basically the same in this respect. All bandits have defined spawn locations, track down bandit missions get assigned the same way, etc.

The difference for VC is that caravans travels by ship, and they often travel halfway across the map before they enter a new port. That is why you are having trouble.

So I wouldn't say skip the quest, instead you have two options:

1) Always refuse any version of the quest where the caravan was out of the "port". Those are always sea bandits that killed them. Instead just take the normal land bandit tracking missions. Those will work like you expect from other mods.

OR

2) Take sea bandit hunting missions, but use the list I gave you of the sea bandit hunting grounds, and don't get fooled into thinking they are close to the town--just head directly to the part of the sea I listed for that kind of bandit. Sea bandits are always unique to an area, and never travel outside it.

There is something here to improve, and I will look into it for the future, but since it will be awhile just offering you options in the meantime.

On the wolf head--I'll look into it for a future version. Several people have complained about it in the past actually, since the problem exists for other similar armors. But the graphics side of warband modding is something I am completely unfamiliar with, so I won't be able to look into it quickly.

In the meantime, you could try some Pict ritual clothing if you can get it. I think it gives +2 to both athletics and powerthrow, most combat skills actually, so it would be helpful for you in that regard.

BTW, as a light foot troop, Berserker is probably the trait of choice, as in VC Balance Mod it lasts the whole battle and increases movement speed a great deal. One of the leadership traits is probably still more powerful given the whole army effect, but if you plan to do a lot of light infantry play, the new berserker trait should be a lot of fun.
 
I've received some requests to reduce Vanilla VC late-game rebellions.

An optional add-on to reduce rebellions has been uploaded to Nexus. This changes relations penalty from a potential rebel from vanilla VC -30 to a much softer -5. The result is that lords who hate you will still rebel, but those who like you probably won't: https://www.nexusmods.com/mountandbladevikingconquest/mods/5?tab=files

You install it after installing whichever of the 6.0 full install options you prefer.

This is an entirely optional add-on—if you are happy with vanilla VC rebellion chances, then just ignore this additional file entirely.
 
A reddit thread spurred my curiosity, so I ran some in-game tests last night to confirm something: hard campaign AI has no significant effect on max party size of AI lords vs normal campaign AI. Whether vanilla VC or Balance Mod, the size of AI armies will be a function of factors like renown differences, income to support troop wages, and the player character’s experience level.

In general I’m against leveling AI lords party size to player level, but with dramatic slowing of player leveling after the early levels, it mostly functions as a slight softening of the early game, and then becomes largely stable, so it hasn’t been a priority to change. Unlike the vanilla VC bandit leveling that an early version of Balance Mod removed, which was tied to the constantly fluctuating player army strength intensified by the frequent use of the camp and refuge features, and so was a priority for replacing with a weighted random number.

In Balance Mod hard campaign AI’s most significant effect is increasing the speed at which an AI lord will recover their losses, and slowing player vassal lords down in recovery. This is because it changes the amount AI lords pay to recruit (but doesn’t change wages).

In vanilla VC, there are other differences, but by Balance Mod 6.0 almost all are removed, either by rebalancing hard to be like normal (rents, some marshall code, etc) or rebalancing normal to be like hard (tax inefficiency, recruitment of AI lords, removing some pro player cheats, etc). There are a few minor exceptions, but they aren’t significant in end result (hard gives slightly higher xp for AI lords after autocalc battle, slightly lower tariffs for player, and somewhat lower player party morale)

Easy campaign AI retains tons of pro-player cheating though, so it remains an option for those who want a casual experience.

So when you pick between normal and hard campaign AI, think of it entirely like picking a speed for defeated or high casualty lords to recruit a new army. I personally prefer “normal” for a more immersive experience, and to create difficulty through hardcore finance and leveling settings, but it really comes down to how fast you want lords to bounce back after losing men.
 
DeSoto said:
I got another problem, this time a visual one. Sorry for pestering you so much, but the normal forums are sparsely used at best and you seem to have some deep knowledge of the game.
I'm playing a skirmisher, meaning I'm trying to go as light as possible without sacrificing too much defense. The berserker's "Wolf Skin" armor seemed perfect for this, but it is near unplayable in first person view with it (which I'm using all the time except when mounted). The problem is that the top part is visible at all times. 1/3 to 1/2 of your screen will be covered up by it and when you look around it appears like you don't tilt your head but rather rotate it inside it with the armor being static. This is inconsistent with all the other heavy helmets, which become invisible. My only explanation is that this problem is caused by the fact that the headgear is part of the body armor. Could this be replaced in first person view or made invisible entirely? You don't see much of it anyway, even when looking straight down, so the tiny immersion loss would be more than made up by an unobstructed view.

dx2gcmqp.jpg


lkk9vn4z.jpg

The way to fix this would be to separate the berserker armour into 2 parts - torso and head. The reason helmets become invisible in first-person is because your actual head becomes invisible to avoid exactly this issue. That doesn't happen with body armour meshes, which remain visible, and the bear head is part of the body mesh, as you say. Someone would have to create a 2-piece berserker armour and then edit the troops file to have them wear it instead of the current 1-piece.

I can't think of a way to make a piece of body armour (which the head is currently part of) disappear
 
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