direstorm
Recruit
Summary:
Battle of Ascension content should get a second pass. Based on forum thread titles it sounds like it might need a technical pass anyhow, so why not get a content guy involved too?
Issue occurred in current steam version of game as of 1/5/17, no third-party mods, save game was from latest version.
For your convenience, a copy of the relevant save (just prior to the battle) is https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_RHD1oLuE0ON0JCQWlqWjQ1UzQ/view?usp=sharing
Background:
Just ran through the Battle of Aescesdun. Battle took six hours over three attempts to complete. My forces were approximately 185 strong (I can only fit 144 on my boats, so there you go) averaging mid-tier troops, which I feel is appropriate for this stage of the campaign: I have two forts (although I would -love- if Din Bych could stop getting attacked while I try to do the campaign quests) with small garrisons, and a modest income, with a Snekka and three Karvi's to my name.
I'm a total newbie, didn't even do a complete run-through of a vanilla campaign yet. I got the boxed set of all the M&B games for christmas, and I've been playing them basically non-stop since. I can sometimes win tournaments, if I don't get stuck with a spear or a q-staff against a sword-wielding opponent, but I'm getting better.
My preferred tactic for myself (since AI seems to be too dumb to do this consistently to a shield wall) is to circle around on a horse chopping down archers and those juicy fat targets at the back of the shield wall with some javelins, while my troops turtle up and soak arrows. I feel like I've got sort of a mid-level grasp of tactics, which seems to be about what I need for this stage of the game. My difficulty settings are at 14%. My first two attempts at this battle had battle size set to 150, and my final (successful) attempt I set it to 450.
For the battle of Aescesdun, I feel like the battle content and approach could use some adjustment. One thing I noticed, is that the battle starts with a huge majority of my troops and only a few if any friendly NPCs, who run in and die right away.
The battle starts out pretty great: my troops turtle up, I take out the archers, they grind through the first couple waves, everything is great.
Issue:
The problem starts around wave 3, roughly when a -normal- battle would take a break. My troops have already lost about half their numbers, and they've taken out three times their number in vikings. I'm out of javelins and scrounging on the battlefield for more, my troops are out of javelins and my archers are running out of arrows and rocks.
In real life, a sane commander would pull those troops back, get them some water, some more arrows and if available a fresh horse, while the allied commanders -- who up til now have been sitting on their butts -- take a stab at the decimated, demoralized enemy.
What happens in the game is my horse gets shot out from under me and my troops are ground into paste through waves 4 and 5. At this point, the winning strategy is for me to run to a corner and go AFK for an hour or two while the NPC's duke it out. From a gameplay perspective, this is problematic, and unless I want to bring 600-800 troops on this little outing there's no way to avoid this problem. There's also no warning that hey, this is a three-hour epic battle with no potty breaks, so you'd better hit the head and grab a drink because you're going to be here a while.
Having intentionally sent me through a meat grinder (thanks!) you then cheerfully point out that this was just a warm up -- the real battle is around the corner, and so sorry your troops are all sausage now, here's 10k pesos to go recruit some new ones.
Proposed Solution:
First, I suggest rethinking the whole massive AI on AI action. If the player's been following the Wessex campaign, they've already seen big AI numbers. The important issue to consider here is that this battle does not work as scripted. It is not fun gameplay to intentionally grind a player's hard-earned force into paste and then, to add insult to injury, force the player to sit in a corner for an hour while the big boys decide things 75 troops at a time, with no way to skip and good odds, if the player attempts to participate (by actually playing the game), that s/he will be killed and forced to load their last save (no other battles work like that, only the story ones, and this one strikes me as especially ornery).
The solution I propose has two parts. First, why not have those same 1200 vikings broken up into two battles of 600? This can lead to a potentially greater feeling of "this is an epic battle" because there's room for additional plot exposition: The vikings have taken the hill, we have to charge uphill to take it back. This gives an important pause in pacing for ammo, health recovery thanks to first aid or whatever that skill is, and a key bathroom/beverage/save point break.
Second, in every campaign battle I did with the default AI, if I had 100 troops and they have 200 on my side, then when the battle starts I have 25 and they have 50. Why does this battle not do that? It needs to do that, because I'm a lot more comfortable leading my men into a meatgrinder 20 at a time while the AI with eight times more troops than me does all the heavy lifting. I feel like this may be a glitch of some sort. Do all the commanders but me in this battle have a tactics score of zero? There's something wrong here.
Conclusion:
Great game, I was thrilled that you seem to be actively developing and maintaining a game that's ten years old. That's epic, guys. Great job with the game, I can really appreciate the effort that went into it. There was a steam patch two weeks ago.
Hoping you guys put this into the bug tracker. I know it's just a quality of life fix, it's low priority, but c'mon. It's an easy fix. You don't need to torment a player who's already dropped almost a hundred hours into the game. The RNG will do that just fine without your help.
GG,
Dire of Storm
Battle of Ascension content should get a second pass. Based on forum thread titles it sounds like it might need a technical pass anyhow, so why not get a content guy involved too?
Issue occurred in current steam version of game as of 1/5/17, no third-party mods, save game was from latest version.
For your convenience, a copy of the relevant save (just prior to the battle) is https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_RHD1oLuE0ON0JCQWlqWjQ1UzQ/view?usp=sharing
Background:
Just ran through the Battle of Aescesdun. Battle took six hours over three attempts to complete. My forces were approximately 185 strong (I can only fit 144 on my boats, so there you go) averaging mid-tier troops, which I feel is appropriate for this stage of the campaign: I have two forts (although I would -love- if Din Bych could stop getting attacked while I try to do the campaign quests) with small garrisons, and a modest income, with a Snekka and three Karvi's to my name.
I'm a total newbie, didn't even do a complete run-through of a vanilla campaign yet. I got the boxed set of all the M&B games for christmas, and I've been playing them basically non-stop since. I can sometimes win tournaments, if I don't get stuck with a spear or a q-staff against a sword-wielding opponent, but I'm getting better.
My preferred tactic for myself (since AI seems to be too dumb to do this consistently to a shield wall) is to circle around on a horse chopping down archers and those juicy fat targets at the back of the shield wall with some javelins, while my troops turtle up and soak arrows. I feel like I've got sort of a mid-level grasp of tactics, which seems to be about what I need for this stage of the game. My difficulty settings are at 14%. My first two attempts at this battle had battle size set to 150, and my final (successful) attempt I set it to 450.
For the battle of Aescesdun, I feel like the battle content and approach could use some adjustment. One thing I noticed, is that the battle starts with a huge majority of my troops and only a few if any friendly NPCs, who run in and die right away.
The battle starts out pretty great: my troops turtle up, I take out the archers, they grind through the first couple waves, everything is great.Issue:
The problem starts around wave 3, roughly when a -normal- battle would take a break. My troops have already lost about half their numbers, and they've taken out three times their number in vikings. I'm out of javelins and scrounging on the battlefield for more, my troops are out of javelins and my archers are running out of arrows and rocks.
In real life, a sane commander would pull those troops back, get them some water, some more arrows and if available a fresh horse, while the allied commanders -- who up til now have been sitting on their butts -- take a stab at the decimated, demoralized enemy.
What happens in the game is my horse gets shot out from under me and my troops are ground into paste through waves 4 and 5. At this point, the winning strategy is for me to run to a corner and go AFK for an hour or two while the NPC's duke it out. From a gameplay perspective, this is problematic, and unless I want to bring 600-800 troops on this little outing there's no way to avoid this problem. There's also no warning that hey, this is a three-hour epic battle with no potty breaks, so you'd better hit the head and grab a drink because you're going to be here a while. Having intentionally sent me through a meat grinder (thanks!) you then cheerfully point out that this was just a warm up -- the real battle is around the corner, and so sorry your troops are all sausage now, here's 10k pesos to go recruit some new ones.
Proposed Solution:
First, I suggest rethinking the whole massive AI on AI action. If the player's been following the Wessex campaign, they've already seen big AI numbers. The important issue to consider here is that this battle does not work as scripted. It is not fun gameplay to intentionally grind a player's hard-earned force into paste and then, to add insult to injury, force the player to sit in a corner for an hour while the big boys decide things 75 troops at a time, with no way to skip and good odds, if the player attempts to participate (by actually playing the game), that s/he will be killed and forced to load their last save (no other battles work like that, only the story ones, and this one strikes me as especially ornery).
The solution I propose has two parts. First, why not have those same 1200 vikings broken up into two battles of 600? This can lead to a potentially greater feeling of "this is an epic battle" because there's room for additional plot exposition: The vikings have taken the hill, we have to charge uphill to take it back. This gives an important pause in pacing for ammo, health recovery thanks to first aid or whatever that skill is, and a key bathroom/beverage/save point break.
Second, in every campaign battle I did with the default AI, if I had 100 troops and they have 200 on my side, then when the battle starts I have 25 and they have 50. Why does this battle not do that? It needs to do that, because I'm a lot more comfortable leading my men into a meatgrinder 20 at a time while the AI with eight times more troops than me does all the heavy lifting. I feel like this may be a glitch of some sort. Do all the commanders but me in this battle have a tactics score of zero? There's something wrong here.
Conclusion:
Great game, I was thrilled that you seem to be actively developing and maintaining a game that's ten years old. That's epic, guys. Great job with the game, I can really appreciate the effort that went into it. There was a steam patch two weeks ago.
Hoping you guys put this into the bug tracker. I know it's just a quality of life fix, it's low priority, but c'mon. It's an easy fix. You don't need to torment a player who's already dropped almost a hundred hours into the game. The RNG will do that just fine without your help.
GG,
Dire of Storm
