I don't actually know which is the last version, so I am playing "Warsword Conquest Freelancer edition + patch". The others seem to be submods? All following feedback is related to that version.
The mod is wicked good fun! I especially like playing the skaven, goblins and orcs! Will try chaos dwarfs next
WSE
I always had trouble using it. A few pages back I found a tip from a player which ultimately worked for me. I had to copy the contents of the WSE folder from /Warsword to the main Warband directory.
Thanks for the tip!
Performance
After reading through the topic, I expected serious lags and stutters, as I don't have a dedicated gaming PC. It is not old, but not a real gaming rig. It was a pleasant surprise to be honest, mostly it runs fine.
There are two exceptions: some siege scenes with mists and other effects, and
fighting the Empire. Empire units look very cool, but it seems my PC cannot handle them in big variety. In the end I opted to play folks on friendly terms with the empire, or far away from them.
Companions
In general the named ones are really cool, I especially like the writing.
My only concern is the lack of low level companions, who could become medics are pathfinders. The best I found are Oggy Boggy and the two araby guys, but thematically they don't fit with evil races.
In my game I edited Bug, Bastich, Adele (? barefoot archer lady) and Nakwatcha to be level 1 intelligence heroes.
Suggestion: there are ~50 generic companions, but they are randomly levelled up when generating the game. Unfortunately this results in them becoming useless. For example the dwarf I recruited had 4 in horse archery, 2 in magic with 1's all over the place.
Suggestion: They would be much more useful as the Gekokujo generic companions: level 1, STR 9 AGI 9 INT 9 CHA 9 (or 8's or 10's) weapon master 6, ironflesh 3, weapon profs all 80 or 100.
This way you could get a skaven medic or a vampire pathfinder by level 8-10.
Suggestion 2: (I think this is much more difficult to implement). On auto level-ups, there should be some skills which are never taken, such as horse archery, power throw, willpower, magic, etc.. Also, even after randomizing, the total level should be rather low (5 or so), so that the companion could be saved with some care.
Female armor
I didn't find a female kislev armor for my ice witch character. Also, in general there are not many female armor choices for wizards. (I used some native warband "nord furs" from the cheat menu for the ice witch)
Tournament
I don't find tournaments fun in this mod, and there are two reasons for this.
The first issue is that when spawning without a shield I cannot tell which bots are in my team. (even when spawning with one, I have to turn around the camera to check the color)
Fighting lords in their overpowered armor with a wooden club is very-very-very time consuming. Last night I had a fight in the finals with the nippon faction leader, and it took about 20 hits (each for 1-3 damage) to kill him.
Suggestion:
- if you want to leave the armor in, give a japanese style banner, a sashimono to the troops (which is visible on the back of bots when not being used actively). This way you would see the color of yourself and the bots all along. The added value would be that the shields could be removed, so the fights would end sooner.
- it would be nice to have a backup sword when spawning with a lance
General gameplay
Freelancer: In general I don't really like freelancer, but here it has a very nice, but I guess unintended side effect. After character creation, you can immediately sign up, and then instantly retire from service. You get 1000XP for doing this, but more importantly, retiring sets the relationship with everyone to 0. (I think the freelancer contract overwrites the original faction standings) So you can visit evil towns as a good race and vica-versa.
Renown: I will need to further test this, but I feel that the AI lords have too much renown. Since renown is decreasing continuously, it is very difficult to have more then 1500-2000, and the AI lords have more than that. This results in two things: unnecessarily big armies and the player not getting fiefs awarded.
Suggestion: I think it would be nice to decrease renown to lower levels. ~1500 for the top dogs, and ~1000 for the rest.
Looting: Currently you get an honor penalty for doing it, which means that it will decrease relations with lords. It is really strange when you get a relationship hit with a chaos lord, for looting a Kislev village.
Suggestion: I think rather than reworking all lord personalities, the easiest would be to turn off the village raid honor penalty. This would fit the lore I think, definietly for chaos and dark elves, but I think burning a chaos village should be ok for empire lords too.
Magic: Hm. On one hand this is the most impressive magic system implemented in any warband mod, including Phantasy Calradia and Chronicles of Might and Magic. On the other hand, it is very demanding: no meaningful armor, no ranged weapons, and not usable in sieges. It is possible to delete whole reinforcements waves with some AoE spells. However, I feel that in most cases it is a "win more" option. That is, in the long run you would be just as useful without magic, but with heavy armor + ranged attacks. There are a few expections though, where a certain magic school would greatly help with a weakness of a faction. (eg. when troops have no piercing/blunt weapons, turning enemy armor into lead. When troops lack halberds/pikes, slowing down the enemy cavalry movement, increased movement speed/less ranged damage for infantry factions, etc.)
Magic 2: I couldn't figure out what "ward save" and "decrease/increase courage" mean.
Faction balance: I didn't not play all factions of course, but I tried three shorter games (two with cheats to try out options). It seems that the orcs and chaos really have it rough. Especially orks on a battlefield, with no hills to break line of sight. What would help them greatly in live battles: boar riders available earlier (currently they are tier4!), to act as a decoy until the infantry arrives.
Suggestion: move boar riders to a lower tier, and possibly to the skirmisher/archer line. This would make the orcs use more infantry, the same amount of boar riders (but earlier), and less archers, which would help them I think.
Suggeston 2: some stronger neutral stacks, or an early fixed war would maybe keep the dwarfs and empire a bit, so that they don't gang up on the orcs.
Suggestion 3: some factions with spread out territory have difficulties concentrating their forces. Tomb Kings, Chaos and Dark Elves are impacted the most. It would do them good to make their territories more compact, or to spread out the lord holdings. (if lords have fiefs on both ends of the country, they have a higher chance to happen to be where the problem is. They don't sit in their castle, because they sometimes visit their other fief on the other end of the country)
Question:
- is there some documentation available for companion relationships? I recenty lost the ogre king companion, because the chaos champion disliked him.
- is there some documentation with character generation? I am not really a warhammer scholar, so I don't even understand what the choices supposed to mean (in what terrain were you planted? Rocky-lush, etc.
). And even when I do, they give unpredictable results (eg. getting throwing with blood bowl background). Since I don't understand, I usually just export the character and redistribute the points...
- the most important: is there a list of spell effects per school? In general I feel that for me, the best are schools with a minor magic missile, and ally buff spells. But it is not easy to identify these. (save. enter guild, pick school, check spells, nope, reload, enter guild...) Alternatively, does anyone know which schools are set up like this? 1 minor magic missile + ally buffs.
