First of all, a big thanks to KratosMKII for picking this up and trying to make it all finally come together. I'm especially happy about enabling ranged weapons for besiegers, I had been pointing this issue out for years without any fix - well, up to now.
On my current test-run I started as an adventurer and, after circling the entire map numerous times, I decided to finally capture a town on day 230 in hopes to encounter stuff you'll only get to see as a monarch. Whenever possible/applicable I'll add a screenshot to the bug report.
The 3 top tier bows appear to be Mongol, Hun and Saracen. While the former two have a range from 60-65,
the Saracen bow has a mindblowing 160 speed. The projectile speed also seems to be substantialy higher, cause the hit area on long-range shots indicates that there is hardly any spread. I guess it's a typo, cause otherwise all three look fairly similar (3 PD requirement).
None of the newer weapons like the "European" ones or the new shields can be improved beyond "plain" (no modifier). If this was done for balancing reasons I can live with that, but you'll still find higher quality versions (like Masterwork Saracen Bow) in towns though. For the sake of consistency it should be either/or, cause in comparison the new armors can be upgraded without any problems.
The prices to buy an improved version of a weapon seem to not be in line with the cost of upgrading it yourself. I get that buying the finished product should be a little bit more expensive, akin to a service fee. But currently a Masterwork weapon will be about twice as expensive compared to buying the normal version and upgrading it all the way at the weaponsmith. At least it is for me with 0 in Trade, are upgrade costs not affected by the trade skill?
Do certain items have drop restrictions? I must have killed hundreds of Crusader knights/sergeants by now and so far not a single armor piece dropped, not even boots or gloves. All I get is tons of loot from auxiliary troops like Turkopoles. Edit: Killed a whole bunch more, still not a single knight/sergeant piece, the most you can get seem to be the Padded Armors (33 body armor). At this point I'm fairly certain that anything above that is excluded from the loot tables.
Did you alter the rate at which you gain proficiencies in any way? So far I only took part in a couple of skirmishes and one siege and my croswsbow skill is already at 218 on day 16 (was starting at around 50 I think). That seems awfully fast, I'm afraid I'll be 300+ in no time, making the character building aspect of the game become obsolete before long. Don't get me wrong, I'm not asking for the tedium of levelling that is Viking Conquest, but gaining levels/skills too fast can take away from the game as well. As an example, when I tested out the Saracen bow a single (long-range) hit gave me +7 archery prof, that's a little too much imo. My char's Weapon Master skill was only 3 at the time.
When joining sieges you are given complete control over all troops, even when you aren't part of their faction. This makes it very easy to manipulate/sabotage sieges by giving silly commands like only use blunt weapons and such. I know that I'm basically cheating myself with this, but the very existence of such a possibility feels wrong. PoP realized this a few patches back and only lets you issue orders for your own troops for example. I'm aware that it's a double-edged sword, cause manual control in sieges is pretty much the only way to avoid huge losses. Maybe restrict control to situations where you are either the faction leader or marshall?
It shouldn't be possible to join sieges without (a) being part or a mercenary of either faction or (b) being at negative relations with the defending faction. Right now you can join any siege on either side and gain positive relations with a whole bunch of lords, without incurring any negative relation with the loosing faction. If I actively join a siege, the other side should be angry with me and not just brush it off like it's nothing.
In town scenes you can attack/kill anyone with ranged weapons, even the merchants. They are still immune to melee attacks though. This makes prison breaks very easy, you just kill all guards beforehand, so that the jailor has no backup. And not even the guards retaliate when being attacked, they just stand around.
Several battle maps are missing the inventory chest. It doesn't seem to be an issue with wrong z-axis coords, as I checked with the Freeview camera and it couldn't be found at subsurface-level either. Is there a way to check the scene number? I'd take notes on where it's missing, but I don't know how to identify a certain map.
The "Retreat" command seems to be bugged. At first I thought it had to do with positioning, maybe there are only a fixed number of exit points, where a retreat is possible for your tropps. But no matter where I was relative to the enemy, on issuing the command they would turn right around and charge straight into the enemy lines. This applies to both field battles and sieges. Makes it very hard to get your squishy units out of harms way.
Crusader crossbowmen seem to not be able to switch to melee once they run out of bolts. They just stand in place twitching occasionally, not even trying to attack when standing right next to them. Archers on the other hand seem to behave properly.
Siege announcements mention the wrong faction at times. In both cases the Ordo Teutonicus was neither at war with any of those factions, nor anywhere near the towns in question. Edit: The name continues to appear, for targets all over the map. It seems that it's a particular problem with this faction and not a general issue.
Manors can be unreachable, in this case the one of Famagusta.
About two dozen bandit parties spawned (and are stuck) on an impassable montain halfway between Iconium and Ankara. Can't say whether it happened all at once or gradually over time, just came across it.
Since day one my budget lists a wagon train cost without actually having one. I even made one and disbanded it right away, but still no change.
The helmet merchant seems to have a random assortment of stuff in stock, he even offered me a Practice Bow, those probably should not exist outside the tutorial/training areas. The other merchants seem to be ok, though the sword guy only had one model for sale (that one 30 times though).
In the courtyard of Aleppo the floor has an overlay of the Saracen Bow bumpmap. It's only visible from certain angles, but it's there.
One of the "European" axes seems to be very strong compared to the rest. It got average speed/range but has bonus damage against shields and can crush through blocks. Coupled with a base damage of 48C this seems a little bit too much considering it's one-handed. Another European axe with similar speed/range has only one modifier and 10 less base damage, but the same strength requirements. The power difference in weapons should be reflected in the ability to use them in some way imo, otherwise we have tons of equipment that nobody will ever use. Weapons topping out at 14 strength (Heavy Flanged Mace) seems weird, considering that you can get that much at char creation. Even companions can be leveled up fairly fast to the point where they got 20+ in one skill. A strength requirement of 9 is almost useless, might as well not be there at all. Is there a way to change requirements to two attributes? This way you could assign one-handed swords a hybrid req of strength/agility, while large two-handed weapons would have a (higher) pure strength req.
I guess what I'm proposing is a gear progression system, so that you can't be op from day 1.
The Custom Troop Tree lets you create too powerful Tier 0 and Tier 1 units. In the first picture you see my troop tree, the second shows the Tier 0 (base) unit and on the third is the Tier 1. I managed to give my Lvl4 base unit 140 proficiencies, a body with 33 armor and a bow with PD3. That is completely detached from what the AI factions get at that level, it's almost a Tier 1.5 unit. My Tier 1 unit already has 220 proficiencies, also way higher than what your average Lvl10 unit would have. With an army of just those 2 unit types I could probably complete most of the content, while their normal role should be cannon fodder.
For both of those tiers the budget needs to be cut and the available attribute/skill points lowered. The imbalance is reinforced by the fact that the base cost of several items is too low in relation to comparable gear. You'll find the most extreme example in the fourth picture, that helmet should cost around 6-7k. There are many more items with lesser but still noticable differences, like the Saracen Swords, which makes gearing your low-level troops way too easy. This imbalance starts to diminish from Tier 2 onwards and at top-tier-level there isn't much of a difference between you and the AI anymore, which is good.
On that note, what are the interdependencies between tiers? It seems that whatever I do, I always end up with one or more units having a negative attribute or skill point balance. If I fix one, another one will change as well. Also sometimes I can't lower attributes, although no gear/skill requirement should prevent it.
Regarding faction balance,
the Sultanat al Mamalik seems to be in a really bad spot power-wise atm. I remember them being able to give the Crusader States a run for their money in old 1257AD. Currently, they get absolutely decimated by both Regnum Hierosolymitanum and the Ilkhanate. I joined several battles on either sides and as soon as it gets into a melee brawl the Sultanat's troops drop like flies, I'd estimate a K/D ratio of 1:5 for their side on average. Which was quite surprising to find out, cause the Sultanat actually is the only faction which uses the crazy Saracen bow. Still doesn't seem to compensate for those inferior melee troops. I haven't checked all the gear, maybe it's just a case of lower armor rating, cause the weapons seem to be pretty balanced across the cultures.
markfamily said:
Is there a fix for the unable to find material grass_no_shadow?
Besides from what was already mentioned (deleting rgl_config.txt in Documents or setting use_pixel_shaders to 0 in said file) I found the easiest solution to be this: just enable plant shadows. This will of course cost you a tiny bit of performance, but even on my mid-range system it's hardly noticeable. No more white patches on the ground, you'll still get the error message though.
konakona said:
5) Just noticed on my girl rescue mission, bandits reward me with a whopping 980exp a pop? Not that I am complaining
This seems to affect all mobs spawned by guildmaster quests. I got a "Troublesome Bandit" one (41 troops total), each bandit gave more xp than a lord would and on completion I got another 15k team xp. The game apparently thinks you're up against some uber elite mobs.
EDIT: I made the
main points bold, hopefully that makes this post a little less like a wall of text. I'll keep ading new points here to avoid spamming this thread with mini-posts.