SP Native [WB] Zavel's mod to Native, whould you like this type of mod?

[Zavel]

Hi all,

You might have read about my attempts at a sub-mod on the Gekokujo sub-forum, well there i aimed way too high, i would probably have to change every single python and txt file in the game to get such high levels of realism.
But i have a new idea, having messed around with native,viking conquest, gekokujo, and floris, I decided to upgrade the features i like most, instead of building a game from scratch.


Now i will post below some features i like , and some i dont. Then i will wait for some feedback and see if you folks would like to see a mod with these features.
Those i Like

1)Companions,
Can't stress how much fun it was to sail with a boat full of companions in viking conquest, especially when they dont bicker like toddlers. Gekokujo's companions were the best in my opinion, very interesting back stories, different cultures and very varied skill levels from Yimra like servant girls to a seasoned sensei who had better skills than my bow oriented player! The point of this feature is to add 50+ companions so that you would actually choose them because of limited party space, and interesting back stories and skills, not cause they bicker and whine all the time. 

2)Raiding villages,

Made millions of $ in VC just raiding every single village of all the factions we were at war with, sold 1000's of farmers into slavery. In Gekokujo it was more about undermining the prosperity of other lords than earning cash, probably cause the Mori clan (my faction) decided to be a pacifistic for months on end. The point of this feature is to make raiding the main way of earning cash instead of gambling in tournaments or earning a 20% interest for money in the city bank(WFAS) or selling dead bandit's socks for the first couple months.

3)Disparity between low and high tier troops

Very big issue for me. Never liked my Nord huskarls from Native getting massacred, i spent 3 ingame years conquering the  Vaegirs cause my troops were constantly dying even with a companion with 10 in all medical skills. In Gekokujo the hatamoto were alot better for the time and money spent on them, i'd say 100 hatamoto infantry were the same as 300 Nord huskarls (yes i ran such big infantry only armies, mostly to survive the 1500 Vaegir sieges and i did usually losing 100 dead huskarls a siege )
Finally in VC the elite northvegr troops(Berserkers maybe forgot) where my only survivors in major battles with multiple lords, i kept the low tiers only as a meat shield around my elites, 100+ or so levies died in practically every battle with a lord or two. To conclude this feature, high tier troops dont necessary have to annihilate levies, on the contrary they are not supermen, they just have to survive better relative to their extremely expensive equipment and training, other wise i can just get a village very happy and they will give groups of 50+ levies for the price of one elite. 

4)Separate Troop trees for different socially classes.

My favorite feature in Gekokujo is the sperate trees for the ashigaru, footmen upgradeable from farmers recruited in villages, and the samurai, 30 times more expensive to recruit but much better troops at end of tree. This feature is a must in any mod that has a social ladder, Native farmers can become a huskarl, a personal body guard of a nobleman, no way, you cant replace years of training and good food with a week of drilling and a lifetime grain gruel. I would make these following separate trees, Lesser Nobles, Professional Warriors, Militia, Levies.

Nobles                        will have the best equipment and medium skills  recruitment place=castles
Professional Warriors  will have  average equipment and high skills      recruitment place=towns
Militia                          will have  poor equipment and medium skills      recruitment place=towns
Levies                          will have  poor equipment and poor skills            recruitment place=villages


I'll add more later, hope that it's not too rant like and await feedback.

Best regards,
Zavel

 

[Comrade Crimson]

The troop disparity looks interesting to me; I'd also like to see less morale loss and perhaps coded cultural mentalities. Some cultures are after all, more violent than others, some have different values. Perhaps cultures with overall more well rounded troops suffer bigger morale penalties because citizen rights and respect is higher, while those who arm their soldiers more cheaply and conscript them en masse have less value for their serfs and value more professional warriors better.

Just a thought on that.

 

[Zavel]

The troop disparity looks interesting to me; I'd also like to see less morale loss and perhaps coded cultural mentalities. Some cultures are after all, more violent than others, some have different values. Perhaps cultures with overall more well rounded troops suffer bigger morale penalties because citizen rights and respect is higher, while those who arm their soldiers more cheaply and conscript them en masse have less value for their serfs and value more professional warriors better.

Just a thought on that.

Thanks for the idea on morale and cultures, I think that there is definitely a place for that in my mod.

Nords ,Khergits, Sarranids come from harsh environment so probably should be egalitarian, no morale penalties mixed culture troops, less food requirements, but if your at war with their faction they loose a lot of moral because of their bonds to their faction, and also they take large penalties from heavy losses during battles because of tribal/family bonds.
Also troop disparity might be smaller the levies are free people not serfs so they have better equipment and skills but cost more cause its hard to feed family in harsh environment.
Their nobles dont have such large fortunes and their equipment is modest compared to feudal's, but their skills are higher to compensate.


Swadians, Rhodoks , Vaegirs are more feudal, so they dont like other faction's troops, are more spoiled by civilization and take more penalties from lack of varied food. But they dont really care if you fight their faction as they are used to nobles fighting each other, and dont react to heavy losses during battles because society is less tribe/family based.
While these factions on the other hand have greater troop disparity because their levies are serfs.
These nobles are much richer because of their serfs and land, but they are very expensive and require lots of food moral boosts, and their skills aren't too high cause they are used to the fact that their men-at-arms and levies do most of the fighting.

Now this is just a rough sketch and subject to change, if M&B lore experts see any contradictions in the above scheme do let me know, dont wanna mess up the lore.

Best Regards,
Zavel

 

[The Defender]

if i can also let my opinion i concur with everithybg you said and if i may i think a good feature would also being the armors getting bigger diferences betwee leather to mail to plates with a good diference between weight and what enters for example low bows with cuts enter in leather and in even mail but in plates doesnt so theres no damage at all from that low weapons what helps your idea of making other troops more survivable against levies as you said

 

[Comrade Crimson]

I would say Rhodoks are a mid point in terms of serfdom and family bonds. They are still a republic, technically; its just their current king is a usurper who claimed power during a time of turmoil, with their people being a mix of affluent merchants, mountain clansmen and various valley peasants and the like. And the Sarranids are a mix of desert nomads and well established oasis merchants and city/village peasants.

I'd make Nords the sort of "most experienced but prone to morale penalties" with possibly Khergits lying in that boat, Sarranids and Rhodoks being a mix with Swadians and Vaegirs being the most inclined to Serfdom.

I'd also suggest that the warrior civilizations reap higher rewards from pillaging villages too in terms of morale boosts to balance it, as both Nords and Khergits are very violent societies compared to the others and would be privy to looting and pillaging places for spoils.

 

[Zavel]

Hi all

Yes definitely armor will be tweaked, a long term goal would be adding a 2nd armor slot for under-armor, so a levy or militia might have a gambesson in their under-armor slot but no "armor",
while a warrior might have a gambesson under a chainmail hauberk, and finally a noble man might afford a plate suit or 2 suits of chainmail, as was done by the Rus' and Muscovites and maybe in a Norse saga if i remember correctly.

I also want to emphasize the stabbing attack of a sword as the main way to bypass chainmail and plate by increasing piercing damage a lot, to the extent it is the only effective way to take down a noble or warrior with a sword.

Also low tier blunt weapons will get nerfed cause a gambesson will absorb a lot of impact form a staff or a club,to bash skulls in helmets with padding you in need solid metal weapons like:maces, warhammers, war-flails(not the agricultural implement). a blacksmith levy with a sledgehammer might break all of your bones even through armor, but not a peasant armed with a stick. Also its a good way to limit the money you can earn form slave trade, nobody is going to pay for looter with a smashed skull, prisoners should be those that survive cause maybe the fainted from fear, or shock from a wound, not immortal adamantium boned looters.

@Comrade Crimson    so for the time being  Nords , Khergits are Tribal. Swadians, Vaegirs Feudal. Sarranids ,Rhodoks in between and get a bit of all penalties.

On a side note what battle size should i use as a standard for balancing, cause i play at max of my pc , have had battles of 150 vs 350 all on the field at the same time.
Ranged weapons become very powerful at high battle sizes cause more of the missed shot hit someone if a big blob get volley shot, might have to make bowmen more expensive and longer to train, instead of nerfing bows to the extent it take multiple(3+) arrows to take down a naked looter, as done in Native to a lesser extent, but taken to an extreme in Gekokujo and VC.

Thanks for feedback,began weapon testing and troop tree plans,will post soon.

Zavel

 

[Comrade Crimson]

Hi all

Yes definitely armor will be tweaked, a long term goal would be adding a 2nd armor slot for under-armor, so a levy or militia might have a gambesson in their under-armor slot but no "armor",
while a warrior might have a gambesson under a chainmail hauberk, and finally a noble man might afford a plate suit or 2 suits of chainmail, as was done by the Rus' and Muscovites and maybe in a Norse saga if i remember correctly.

I also want to emphasize the stabbing attack of a sword as the main way to bypass chainmail and plate by increasing piercing damage a lot, to the extent it is the only effective way to take down a noble or warrior with a sword.

Also low tier blunt weapons will get nerfed cause a gambesson will absorb a lot of impact form a staff or a club,to bash skulls in helmets with padding you in need solid metal weapons like:maces, warhammers, war-flails(not the agricultural implement). a blacksmith levy with a sledgehammer might break all of your bones even through armor, but not a peasant armed with a stick. Also its a good way to limit the money you can earn form slave trade, nobody is going to pay for looter with a smashed skull, prisoners should be those that survive cause maybe the fainted from fear, or shock from a wound, not immortal adamantium boned looters.

@Comrade Crimson    so for the time being  Nords , Khergits are Tribal. Swadians, Vaegirs Feudal. Sarranids ,Rhodoks in between and get a bit of all penalties.

On a side note what battle size should i use as a standard for balancing, cause i play at max of my pc , have had battles of 150 vs 350 all on the field at the same time.
Ranged weapons become very powerful at high battle sizes cause more of the missed shot hit someone if a big blob get volley shot, might have to make bowmen more expensive and longer to train, instead of nerfing bows to the extent it take multiple(3+) arrows to take down a naked looter, as done in Native to a lesser extent, but taken to an extreme in Gekokujo and VC.

Thanks for feedback,began weapon testing and troop tree plans,will post soon.

Zavel

I typically play with battlesizer at the troop limit of about 250 these days just so my machine is nice and comfortable, but then again its a tad old (but still quite functional!) so it may be different. I think the 250 mark is a good middle mark for those who play lower settings and those who play higher, and really it'll just scale up finely anyways for those who play on higher troop amounts.

 

[Zavel]

Hi all

Changed all the weapon and armor stats, now moving onto horses and other goods. Also done planing troop trees, around 300-400 troops(6 factions plus all others).
Once i finish item's and inventories i'll edit the troops and trees.
An example of the changes i made: now a textile armor like a Aketon or gambeson costs 20-80 dinar, while chainmail costs 300-400 dinar.
Now levies equipment costs about 10 dinar, their hire price, while a chainmail armored nord would cost to hire and upgrade 400-600 dinar, ie 40 times the levy.
This does not mean that he alone can beat 40 levies but considering that you are limited by party size , party speed, and food costs the nord is a better option.

I have encountered an issue while changing inventories of the troops, if i give a recruit a scythe and a knife in the editor then most of the 50 recruits i use for testing end up with both weapons. The bad part is they fight with the knives even though the scythe has a bit more damage and a lot more reach. Any idea how the AI chooses weapons, or is that stuff hardcoded?
I've looked a inventories of other troops like swadian knights and they have lots of different weapons on the list, but dont spawn with 4 different swords for example.


Some good news, Ive pitted 40 scythe and pitch fork armed recruits against a dozen sea raiders and the results we what i expected after the stat tweaks, the raiders without helmets died first, but on average still killed 1-2 recruits before going down. Next to die were those raiders in the nomad coats, they killed 2-3 recruits before dieing, and finally those with helmets and chainmail lived through the encounter most of the time killing the remaining recruits, thats not to say they didnt die at all and were invincible gods, on the contrary of the dozen about 3 had chainmails and helmets usually 2 survived but were pretty badly wounded, i suspect if i added an other 10-15 recruits they would be dead.

A important flaw and need for a major tweak i think is the speed of training troops, In Native with 10 Trainer skill i can train 30 swadian recruits into 30 knights in 18 days and for 8000 which include food,wages, and upgrade cost. This i absurd 3 chargers cost 10-11k depending on trade skill, to buy all the equipment for 30 knights would be hundreds of thousands of dinar, and the 18 days would probably be enough to teach peasants to form formations and follow orders, not riding horses fighting with swords all while wearing armor.

I'll Later edit the first post and add this as a mod feature but for now its here, awaiting feedback before i add it.

5)Troop upgrade costs,time, and wages
You'll have to pay full price of their equipment and troops will take weeks to upgrade.


Im expecting to get this mod into some sort of Alpha state in a week or two, and once i get it there i'll release it for you guys to test and play around with.

Best Regards,
Zavel

 

[KhivalrousBear]

Holy crap I am currently doing something very similar to this (although it's a personal submod).
Looking forward to this!

 

[Zavel]

Holy crap I am currently doing something very similar to this (although it's a personal submod).
Looking forward to this!

Thanks!


Now here is a Big question: What time frame should i take as a standard for equipment, cause stuff like awlpikes, bascinets , full plate armor suit in 100 year war 14-15 century.
I am aiming for 1230-40, so right at Mongol invasion of europe and in game lore just after khergit invasion, so that the armor of the invaded factions stay the same.
Thats cause the Rus' adopted a bunch of stuff from the mongols and before the invasion were much more like vikings.
Native does a good job of keeping the factions in the same time period, unlike Floris, there there the nords look much more vendel(550-800ad) while swadians look like early 16th century gothic knights, you cant have a gap of 1000 years in technology, cause then you got to balance in by nerfing the gothic plate armor.

Now sorry for rant, Floris is a very good and atmospheric mod i'm just a Nord fan and when your favorite faction gets thrown 700 years into the past it's not cool.
So i plan to eliminate all stuff thats 14th cent and after, unless you guys what the mod at a different time period, then i can make a new version set a couple hundred years later and dealing with the aftermath of Khergit invasion. 

Best Regards,
Zavel

 

[KhivalrousBear]

Well I think a mix of mid middle ages and late middle ages should be fine, Plate armours should be ridiculously expensive and
are exclusively used by lords and very wealth knights. But that said, they shouldn't be too strong either. Mail armours
are a bit common than plate armour, and padded shirt, leather, and gambeson should've dominate the store I think.

There is another thing in mind, how are you going to balance weapons? For ranged weapons there's this handy tweak
in the module.ini named air_friction_arrow where you can tweak how much damage the weapon does based on distance.
Maybe make the crossbow have a very high damage, but in the sense that it can only use the maximum damage on very short
range. And to melee weapons, maybe swords and other cutting objects have a very high damage, but tweak the amount of
damage it does to armours?

 

[Zavel]

Hi all,

My plan for balancing weapons is:

1) all weapons  now have requirements(Strength,power draw) i used 10 as average male, 15 trained male, 20 very trained male, 20+ is like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Kazmaier
Your average man can swing a sword and shoot a hunting bow(40-60 lb draw weight), but stuff like: Dane axes, Bardiches, Mauls, Longbows, Siege Crossbows will require more strength.

2) armor  requirements raised a lot for multiple layered armor,  I've split the armors into layered and non-layered, so a Cuir bouilli you can see that the ingame version is a chainmail suit with leather on top and logically must protect more than its components, But at the same time these armors weigh much more and you'll need a horse to move fast.

3) Since there is no mechanic for blood loss and the damage system is hardcoded, most weapons received an increase in damage. The weapons base damage is ideal circumstances and i think we all agree that a malnourished naked looter under ideal circumstances will die from a slash from a sword, be it in 10 seconds or 45 mins it doesn't matter its a mortal wound and because of a blood loss its fair to say he out of the fight. That means my measuring stick is a 35-45 dmg sword all other weapons are calculated for there. A knife or instance has 30 stab 20 slash, but a tiny range, you wont be able to beat armies of sea raiders on your own, i tested a lot. As proof of 1 hit dead sword theory you can read these links, you cant treat that stuff until you invent blood-transfusion and most die before hospitalization (minutes in most cases, in worst immediate loss of conciseness and subsequent death).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hemothorax 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pneumothorax
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traumatic_aortic_rupture

4) Ranged weapon fire speed lowered i bit.
If my math is right the fastest bow at 5pd and 200 bow skills in Native is the hunting bow 15 shots a min. While the war bow had around 12 shots.
I changed it to 10 for hunting and 6 for warbow,while crossbows range for 8-4.
(Tod from Tod's Stuff reloaded his siege crossbow in 30 seconds so 2rpm so i'm still on the fast side for gameplay reasons )

5)Throw weapons have smaller bags now,  Never under stood how you can carry 4*14=56 throwing knives, or 4*4=16 throwing axes. Axes have 2 per slot, knives 3 ,javelins and spears 1.
Roman legionnaires had 1-2 pila,scutum,sword 4 items, so same thing here sword, sheild and 1-2 spears, or else sieges become a nightmare cause of the endless supply of spears and axes.

6) Archery training takes longer than melee.  The reason both medieval  europe and medieval japan gave firearms to peasants is cause it doesn't take lots of skill and strength to use compared to bows(mary rose warship deformed skeletons of archers).

@KhivalrousBear , first good luck on your mod, and yes most troops will have either textile or leather armor depending on culture, mostly mercenaries, professional warriors, and noblemen will have metal armor.
The image of an average infantryman in metal armor comes from later half of the 100 years war, and in my opinion most stereotypes of earlier periods are from there. To my knowledge there was an incredible metallurgical revolution in the 14 century, when most of europe started using blast furnaces in large quantities, and greatly eased the mass production of metal armor(the first one in europe was in sweden 1250 and can be a hypothetical source for plate armor ingame but it had a monopoly so prices must have been enormous)

P.s the 35-45 dmg 1h sword might seem a lot but i've also increased armor and tested a lot and im sure that the balance is ok but i'll continue tweaking,
and hope seemingly overpowered numbers dont discourage people from trying out this mod.

Thanks for all the feedback everyone it gives motivation to do more!


Best Regards,
Zavel