Hi, first of all thanks for this awesome mod with updated troop trees. The only thing I dislike is how the Sarleon longbowmen was changed to crossbows which doesn't fit the lore. Since they also get upgraded into Clarion call sergeants its immersion breaking. In the vanilla PoP, sarleon longbowmen was easily trained so you could mass create this unit and they had a chance to spawn with 2 quivers of arrows which was great. Only downside is their proficiencies were kind of crap compared to the Ravenstern counterpart. Maybe you'll revisit the mod and tweak it some more but nice mod.
hello there, this is mostly a question on how hard would it be to make the cobra knight/warrior be able to upgrade into the anaconda knight and then into the Asp Knight ? i feel like that's a reasonable upgrade for that unit line it could take the same amount of exp as the Barclay conquistador or more so one wouldn't get them fast as fast it is to get the cobra warrior, anyway loved what you did with this improvements of yours
It's a super easy change to do with morgh's editor. I decided to not implement it for balance reasons - cobra into anaconda would be too fast to upgrade (because how fast a unit levels up is determined by its level, and cobra warrior is only lvl20 which would make it way too fast) and anaconda knight would be too strong and easy to acquire. On the flipside, since anaconda knight is lvl55 it would take incredibly long to level into an asp vanguard and totally impractical. I also think asp vanguards should be limited to unique spawns for lore reasons.
ah I understand now, thanks for answering , I'll see on how to use the editor, i just think there could be a another upgrade for it or just make a "female line" for them priest unit i think , or just make a new female line xD been wanting more at least i think on fierdsvain it would be more believable instead of the main recruit line just getting one out of nowhere and it being just two units is a pain xD do you have any idea how hard it is to make a female only army play-through, i had more fierdsvain huntress by the time i was able to get a sizable heroine adventure group that were able to survive battles
is it possible for you to add more firearms to barcley and cko in a similar way to falkruns tweaks i would love to use your mod but the guns in falkrun tempt me too much but other then that nice mod
is it possible for you to add more firearms to barcley and cko in a similar way to falkruns tweaks i would love to use your mod but the guns in falkrun tempt me too much but other then that nice mod
Projectile speed is the same, I just modified a value that influences how much the damage of ranged weapons drops with distance. For a clearer explanation you can see tweak 10j. Link: https://pop3.fandom.com/wiki/Tweaks#Tweak_10_j
Archers will do about the same damage at "regular" fighting distance (e.g. when they shoot enemy infantry in a melee with your infantry line). They are equally effective as before in this scenario, but require infantry protection and to pin enemies in place as they can't just annihilate a whole approaching army. This was done to avoid overrelying on ranged troops, encourage army composition variety and to increase infantry usefulness.
In the page I linked there are instructions and it's very easy to restore the default value if you don't like my balancing, but I don't recommend it.
Also, if I may give my opinion on my own personal balance (my personal tweaks): I think archers should be commited to range, and i dislike that they deal more damage at close range.
First, the bonuses: 1) I set missile_damage_speed_power = 0.1, which basically means the damage multiplier across all range is virtually 1. 2) Furthermore, Ive increased the projectile speed of all ranged weapons (+50 for bows and xbows; +20 for thrown). I added fixed values so that the difference between weapons doesnt get worse (if I had added like 50% speed, the difference between weapons would increase, so good bows would become even better relative to weaker bows). The reason I added speed was to increase accuracy, and its very noticeable. NOTE: If missile_damage_speed_power were a large number (even close to 1), this increase in projectile speed would greatly increase the damage of ranged units. However, since its 0.1, the speed of the projectile plays virtually no role in damage, so the much faster projectiles will not increase damage noticeably at all. This ensures that ranged units remain good at range.
Now the debuffs: 1) Simply decrease damage across the board for all bows and xbows by 10% (go crazy if you want more) 2) Change bow and xbow damage type to 'cut'.
The first is self-explanatory. The second is truly the interesting one: basically means that bows and xbows are less effective vs armor, given how armor works. This is VERY noticeable: plate armor can really tank bows, but bows are mega strong against fairly low armor. This is by far my favourite change. I was tempted to keep xbows as piercing, but since xbows already do much higher damage per shot, given the way armor works in this game that is already basically armor-piercing, and xbows are already so good that keeping xbows piercing would essentially trivialize bows.
Now to the Infantry issue: Ive tried to balance infantry many times, mainly through armor. However, buffing armor also buffs cavalry and cavalry is op already (especially mass cavalry). One just needs to embrace the fact that, if one were to pay the same between cav and inf, one would always choose cav. As such, my indirect buff is to increase party size per point in leadership (additional +10 party size per), as well as reduced renown to increase size. This allows for much larger armies, and so budget matters a lot more. Infantry is king of budget, since they are much cheaper than cav as they are already. But still this is not enough... Finally, I decided that in order to distinguish buff between cav and inf, the only way to go about it is to increase the damage of two-handed weapons and polearms (infantry polearms, NOT lances). Im considering a mega buff of like 25-30% across the board for these types of weapons. This means that inf would be much better at cutting down cavalry, while still being susceptible to charge, and i like the idea that infantry is slow moving but if it get to target it cuts them like butter, especially 2-handed infantry (1-handed is already ok since they have shield, and shield plays its own role).
Ideally, I would also like to increase overall hp of units (or some form of damage resistance), so battles last a bit longer, but I honestly dont know how to do that at all.
Anyway, thanks for the mod and thanks for reading.
Your ideas are very cool, I had also considered tinkering with armor values and ways to make battles last longer.
I don't agree with your bonuses because 0.1 scaling means that damage doesn't drop off at all with distance, which is unrealistic. The buff to projectile speed I also dont't agree with, because accuracy is already pretty high.
I had considered changing bows to cutting and I think it's a very good idea, but that would require a lot of effort and extensive tweaking and testing to find the right balance. I think a better solution for xbows would be to keep them piercing and maybe decrease damage a bit. You also have to consider that high tier bowmen still do more damage per hit than crossbowmen.
The simple fix for cavalry would be to make it less readily available and make it cost more, but I'm not sure how to do that. Unit level influences its pricing, but it also affects autocalc to my knowledge and I don't want to mess with that too much.
I agree that buffing infantry exclusive gear further than I have already done could be tried.
To make battles last longer, I wanted to increase the number of HP given by ironflesh but I found no solution. It looks like it's hardcoded to be 2.
Anyway, I stopped tweaking at some point because I was pretty satisfied with the balance and also burnt out from all the hours I spent doing it. Maybe we could get in touch in the future if you intend to do further work on the mod or if I start other playthroughs.
Hi, So there's always a point in which one has to consider Realism vs Balance. In my case, Im not interested in the realism of an individual feature, rather Im more concerned with the realistic feel and ultimate result. As such, it is not 'realistic' to consider that archers were considered more powerful at close range. So, I make them good at range, and basically only at range. If you have a high value for 'missile_damage_speed_power', you create this weird non-monotonicity on the practical strength of bowmen, where you would want enemies to be far but not too far. Simplify the model, and you get more consistent applications: bowmen are good at range, period. So, they have a straight-forward, not convoluted, usage in combat. Naturally, each person has a different philosophy on game design in general, so of course you may disagree.
Another thing: I cant seem to understand your claim on a bowman (using a bow) has higher damage per shot vs a xbowman. An empire armored xbowman has 92 damage xbow + 13 damage bolt, yielding 105 damage. (Note: It appears that in vanilla warband there is damage from proficiency, even for range, namely that each 100 points beyond 100 yield a 15% increase in damage. As far as exhaustive research ive conducted, proficiency in Pendor only increases damage for melee, not ranged. So, for these calculations, i will consider, like the wiki shows, that proficiency plays no role in damage)
A ravenstern ranger has a longbow with 28 damage + pitiful barbed arrows 2 damage (or bodkin for 3 damage, still awful), yielding 30 damage. Now, with power draw of 6, total damage is: 30*(1+6*.14)=55.2 This is still MUCH less than the xbow, per shot.
Now, to show how xbows, by having inherently more damage, are armor piercing, let's consider an enemy with 50 armor. Assuming that we have as vanilla, xbow dealing pierce damage, we see armor_soak_factor_against_pierce = 0.75, so the first stage of damage is: 1st damage reduction: 105 - 50*.75 = 67.5 Second stage, using armor_reduction_factor_against_pierce = 0.8 2nd final damage calc: 67.5 * (1 - 50/100 * .8) = 40.5 Percentage of damage defended by armor: (105 - 40.5)/105 = 0.6143
Now, doing this for the bow: 1st damage reduction: 55.2 - 50*.75 = 17.7 2nd final damage calc: 17.7 * (1- 50/100*.8) = 10.62 Percentage of damage defended by armor: (55.2 - 10.62)/55.2 = 0.8076 Bows' damage defended by armor is a whopping 19.3% more! So, implicitly, xbows are effectively more armor-piercing.
So it is shown that, although RAW damage of bow is over half the damage of the xbow per shot (52.6%), the actual effective damage is MUCH lower, at meagre 26%! This means xbows deal 4 times the damage of bows! The effect clearly comes from the first part of the damage reduction, since armor soak is linearly decreasing, favouring very large damage, even if they are very slow to reload.
Hi, there's an issue I find: This mod still inherits the bug from Pendor Enhanced whereas the game freezes in the fief improvement at the castle. I also cant seem to find the menu options, in castles to manage that fief.
EDIT: I've FINALLY FIXED THIS. For those who need, go to the file: conversations.txt In the very last line, you should have:
hey nice submod dude, with all the tweaks you've made to the meta, is infantry actually viable on the field now as opposed to f1 + f3 cav spam? i love the riddari KO but it suuucks in vanilla pendor compared to all the other KO's. Maybe this will actually make them good again!!
Hi and thanks for taking an interest in my submod.
In my last playthrough I found myself picking up a lot of infantry units and I have to say they didn't disappoint. Mounted units are still a bit better because being on a horse offers a strategic advantage per se, but I believe it is as it should be for a variety of reasons, as in medieval warfare the knights were the real stars while other troops were meant to support them.
You will be happy to know that one of the unlisted changes is that the Riddari have been buffed: strength from 33 to 39 and they have a decent chance to spawn with dragonspine axe.
Well that's good news! Is there any way to disable the texture overhaul that comes with the tweak? It is a good one and makes the game look a lot more realistic but also quite depressing and dark. IMO it doesn't work so well with such a flashy fantasy mod like Pendor. It would go perfect with the Game of Thrones modules however.
Another thing, If factions battles are now designed to be more even and for higher casualties to occur, wouldn't that mean until you get a CKO up and running you're going to be struggling to build a strong army that's capable of taking on superior numbers since the factions units will be very similar in stats.
In other words, I find Pendor to be most enjoyable when the player is rewarded for grinding high tier troops and using good battle tactics, if you have to lose a big chunk of said high tier troops to get a victory, it just adds to the grinds even more which isn't so fun personally.
Also, you mentioned somewhere here that you think this tweak + Pendor Enhanced are better than Falkruns overall. I'm curious why you think this is the case, I don't doubt that you've put significant time and thought into making this submod, but I'm not sure evening out all the troops would necessarily make for a more fun experience.
For example, If you're an infantry focused army and you come across another infantry focused army, I'm not sure battlefield tactics like taking the high ground, flanking, skirmishing, etc would make that much of a difference assuming your units are close in quality since casualties are designed to be higher regardless of faction. I've yet to test it as thoroughly as you though so maybe I'm just tripping
1. the change in looks can surely be changed but I don't know how. It's in the lighting/color though, not the textures. 2. the battles are not designed to have higher casualties, it's just a result of the improved troops. Keep in mind that most armies are going to field many more lower tier units compared to a mid to late game player army, and very few KO or noldor. While the casualties are higher, I didn't find they impacted the gameplay much since rescuing prisoner and stacking trainer on companions is more than enough to keep your army maxed out at all times. For the tougher battles (eyegrim, maltise etc) you still have to rely mostly on marshaled faction armies. All this not counting that Pendor Enhanced changes the prisoner rescuing formula (as a function of persuasion + relations) so that you can rescue a lot of Noldors with the right persuasion and relations. It also makes fiefs spawn KO troops as they do for AI, so with 2-3 fiefs you can have an ample supply. 3. adding to the previous point, Pendor Enhanced also has the al-aziz arsenal expansion, so there is a plethora of items that make the player almost a demigod. 4. I need to reread the list of Falkrun tweaks, and I will reply with a further comment once I have done so, but I remember very clearly that I thought the same thing both before starting my mod and after having completed it. 5. I don't really know about the last point since there aren't really effective tactics to come out on top on a purely infantry vs infantry situation in the game. But, by logic, if the troops are more even that's where the tactics matter more; if you have better quality you can just f1-f3.
Thanks for the in-depth reply. I'm looking forward to starting a playthrough with this submod since it's probably the most thoroughly made one there is. I'm curious what gameplay strategy you employ in your playthroughs? As in what your Early - Mid - Late game looks like
You mentioned persuasion, surgery, and trainer being very important. For example, you get high persuasion and positive relations with the Noldor, and use that as a way to consistently recruit many Noldor troops? sounds like fun, shame grinding relations is well... a grind lol. that's just Pendor though.
Also, how do you go about getting high enough relations with your faction to be marshalled? Doing fetch quests and helping them in battle is quite a slog I'll be honest. You really don't get very high relation through those methods IMO.
Also, Falkrun added this really neat tweak where you can whistle for a horse with the H key, which is really nice for those prolonged fights, do you think you would be able to implement something similar?
My last point was a bit moot the more I think about it haha.
In Vanilla Pendor, once you become a Vassal you start to really bleed money if your army is high quality, It's great you've made enterprises, fiefs and Tourneys give significantly more Denars. Honestly, I can't think of a good reason to become a vassal unless your relations are high enough to become Marshal.
- The smoothest early game I had was with a build that starts with 7 looting and 5 trade right off the bat. You can later turn this build into whatever you like, I prefer heavy melee cavalry. - The strongest fighter is without a doubt horse archer, but it starts to shine very late and has almost no other utility besides combat. - My favourite build is starting with the strongest possible melee fighter that also happens to have the highest persuasion and leadership, and going for a mounted melee fighter. This has plenty of skill points to spare for persuasion, surgery, trainer etc. and is a utility powerhouse.
In the early game I do fighting bandits, selling loot, gearing up and leveling up. I also spam guild master quests, try to set up enterprises whenever possible and build the hideout. I try to get three qualis gems ASAP and drink the elixirs.
In the early mid game, I become a merc and go for tourneys, finish setting up the enterprises and improve my Noldor relations.
In the late mid game I become a vassal, join a KO, try to get 2-4 fiefs in the vicinity of Laria/Ethos, go for noldor tournaments, hunt unique spawns and acquire the best equip.
In the late game I go independent and start conquering the map but that's usually where I stop playing since it becomes boring.
I never create my custom KO because it is too slow and not worth it IMO. I just upgrade an existing KO (the new KO upgrade system is dope).
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The best way to improve your relations with a faction is to just be a member and fight battles against their enemies. They'll make you a marshall once you have high enough renown.
I have seen that horse whistle tweak and it looks dope but honestly I didn't find it worth the hassle.
Yeah honestly I always thought it was so weird that being a vassal made you poor because fiefs don't even give enough money to break even with the garrisons. It's not the case anymore, so becoming a vassal feels like a more natural progression.
Thanks and let me know what you think later down the road!
Thanks for the reply! I'm curious how you manage to finance upgrading an existing KO? With a CKO, people usually turn them into enslaving machines especially for fighting Noldor which more than offsets the steep investment it costs to upgrade and equip a CKO.
But without a high level unit to amass tons of prisoners it takes quite awhile to save enough denars for a KO upgrade. At some point you're spending 100k+ just for one stat increase. It's nuts.
I encourage you to look at the new KO upgrade system from pendor enhanced as it is much different from vanilla :) it should take around 800k to 1m denars to do all the 10 levels, which net +2 to all strength-derived skills and more than +100 to proficiencies. It turns 8/7 template KOs into absolute killing machines :D
In my playthroughs, that's pretty much the only good use I can find for cash, and with the new rent compensation system money should not be as hard to come by. For prisoner taking, I always use blunt melee weapons or the "use blunt weapons" command. In my third playthrough I even almost had the money to do the whole 10 levels on two KOs.
I never liked creating a CKO because it takes way too much time, especially if you are an experienced player and can get a lot of stuff done in a short amount of in-game days. I only created one in my first ever playthrough, and when it was ready all I had left to do was conquer a handful of remaining fiefs. I don't really see any value in doing it apart from the cool factor, since the late game heavily relies on marshaled stacks and using autocalc.
Yeah it really sucks how long it takes for CKO's to become useable. pretty disappointing tbh... What KO's do you pick to spend all ur denars into? Pheonix, SLC or Clarion Call with enhanced archer AI seem to be the best options.
You spend 3 qualis gems into the potion on arkon right? How come you don't get the Janus one, for getting high ass surgery skill? what do you do after that? Seems to me like getting a large pouch of diamonds and using the funds to upgrade a KO is probably the best bang for buck once the glamour of Rune weapons fades. Using them to get Noldor troops really isn't that worth it either, apart from gambling :)
Also, I relate to quitting once you become a king, the game turns into long winded Native gameplay at that point.
I spend my qualis on arkon because it gives a total of +6 stats vs only the +2 of janos. Way more efficient to take arkon and use your level up points on int. I always get 30 int this way in every playthrough.
Clarion call fully upgraded is nuts since they are on par with noldor nobles statwise, and the sargeants become ravenstern rangers on steroids. I also like to upgrade radiant cross since i'm an empire shill and they have the best gear. When fully upgraded they are pretty much iron circle centurions and the crossbowmen kick ass too. I like KOs with ranged sargeants. In general I like to upgrade 8/7 template KOs for maximum efficiency.
I never turn on advanced horse archer ai because it becomes very cheesable, they bump into the map borders and become useless.
Wow I love how you added images of most reworked troop trees, they looks really streamlined and I'm excited to try them right now. thanks for making submod for this beloved mod.
Played for 180 days now, I love how it plays similar to pendor rearmed mod which is the mod I loved playing before this mod and you also reworked the look of troops. My issues is Fieldsvain and Empire noble troops being rather pathetic due to lack of lance, I find mounted javelin rarely hitting enemy when used by AI and they're more likely to switch to melee weapon once they are within reach of throwing weapon unlike horse archer troops. Maybe add a Elite Infantry for fieldsvain noble tree like you did for ravenstern? I don't know about empire though, I don't think it would be too out of place for them to use lance.
Thanks for taking the time to try out the mod and giving feedback
1. Fierdsvain having the weakest noble troops is in line with vanilla balancing, and they are still improved compared to vanilla. While generally (slightly) worse than their counterparts, Fierdsvain and Empire nobles are still good troops that can make short work of all common troops but the highest tiers, so I think they fit well in the overall picture. 2. Empire cavalry is the second weakest stats-wise, but they are good because of their spammability (they are the only nobles to level up from a lvl15 unit). 3. Having a lance is not always a good thing since the AI can fumble their weapon selection. 4. Giving a lance to empire knights would be inaccurate lore-wise, since the lance is a new custom for the pendorian people. I even removed it from the shadow centurions, since if you speak with their wandering knight he says exactly so. Lance on the common empire cavalry is justified since Marius wants to modernize the empire. An argument could definitely be made but I like to maintain the unit's identity and I don't want to give them both a lance and a ranged option. If you want lances, I encourage you to use more common empire cavalry since it is vastly improved compared to vanilla. 5. Adding a new troop for the Fierdsvain altogether (similar to the pendor rearmed wolf warriors) would require making extensive changes to a number of files. The new ravenstern noble unit is just a rebranded highlander, so I didn't have to edit anything except its stats and equip. I thought about rebranding the rogue knights (similar to pendor rearmed) but I also deemed that change too big for a number of reasons.
Sorry if this is a dumb question, I couldnt find mention of it requiring a fresh save. Does it require me to start over for the mod to take effect? I'm almost 600 in-game days in on my current save and I dont know if I have it in me to start over.
Hello, yes it requires a fresh save. The equipment changes carries over and so do the tweaks, but the unit stat changes don't. Also if you are coming from a standard PoP savefile and not Pendor Enhanced I believe the latter is outright incompatible. If you already had Pendor Enhanced installed, you can update unit stats with a savegame editor at the cost of some minor bugs.
I'm a bit in a hurry atm but I will update the mod description talking about savefile incompatibility. Thanks.
Thanks for taking the time. I gave using a savegame editor a go and I think I did it first try! The changes you made with this mod are much appreciated. Thanks again
51 comments
It's a super easy change to do with morgh's editor. I decided to not implement it for balance reasons - cobra into anaconda would be too fast to upgrade (because how fast a unit levels up is determined by its level, and cobra warrior is only lvl20 which would make it way too fast) and anaconda knight would be too strong and easy to acquire. On the flipside, since anaconda knight is lvl55 it would take incredibly long to level into an asp vanguard and totally impractical. I also think asp vanguards should be limited to unique spawns for lore reasons.
Projectile speed is the same, I just modified a value that influences how much the damage of ranged weapons drops with distance. For a clearer explanation you can see tweak 10j. Link: https://pop3.fandom.com/wiki/Tweaks#Tweak_10_j
Archers will do about the same damage at "regular" fighting distance (e.g. when they shoot enemy infantry in a melee with your infantry line). They are equally effective as before in this scenario, but require infantry protection and to pin enemies in place as they can't just annihilate a whole approaching army. This was done to avoid overrelying on ranged troops, encourage army composition variety and to increase infantry usefulness.
In the page I linked there are instructions and it's very easy to restore the default value if you don't like my balancing, but I don't recommend it.
Also: thanks a lot for your mod! The pendor troop trees were often so irrational. I really like these!
The hideout assaults are very difficult no matter what, and proof of this is that you were playing without the nerf. I will update the file soon.
Thanks so much for pointing out and thanks for trying out my mod!
I think archers should be commited to range, and i dislike that they deal more damage at close range.
First, the bonuses:
1) I set missile_damage_speed_power = 0.1, which basically means the damage multiplier across all range is virtually 1.
2) Furthermore, Ive increased the projectile speed of all ranged weapons (+50 for bows and xbows; +20 for thrown). I added fixed values so that the difference between weapons doesnt get worse (if I had added like 50% speed, the difference between weapons would increase, so good bows would become even better relative to weaker bows). The reason I added speed was to increase accuracy, and its very noticeable. NOTE: If missile_damage_speed_power were a large number (even close to 1), this increase in projectile speed would greatly increase the damage of ranged units. However, since its 0.1, the speed of the projectile plays virtually no role in damage, so the much faster projectiles will not increase damage noticeably at all.
This ensures that ranged units remain good at range.
Now the debuffs:
1) Simply decrease damage across the board for all bows and xbows by 10% (go crazy if you want more)
2) Change bow and xbow damage type to 'cut'.
The first is self-explanatory.
The second is truly the interesting one: basically means that bows and xbows are less effective vs armor, given how armor works. This is VERY noticeable: plate armor can really tank bows, but bows are mega strong against fairly low armor. This is by far my favourite change. I was tempted to keep xbows as piercing, but since xbows already do much higher damage per shot, given the way armor works in this game that is already basically armor-piercing, and xbows are already so good that keeping xbows piercing would essentially trivialize bows.
Now to the Infantry issue:
Ive tried to balance infantry many times, mainly through armor. However, buffing armor also buffs cavalry and cavalry is op already (especially mass cavalry).
One just needs to embrace the fact that, if one were to pay the same between cav and inf, one would always choose cav.
As such, my indirect buff is to increase party size per point in leadership (additional +10 party size per), as well as reduced renown to increase size. This allows for much larger armies, and so budget matters a lot more. Infantry is king of budget, since they are much cheaper than cav as they are already.
But still this is not enough...
Finally, I decided that in order to distinguish buff between cav and inf, the only way to go about it is to increase the damage of two-handed weapons and polearms (infantry polearms, NOT lances). Im considering a mega buff of like 25-30% across the board for these types of weapons. This means that inf would be much better at cutting down cavalry, while still being susceptible to charge, and i like the idea that infantry is slow moving but if it get to target it cuts them like butter, especially 2-handed infantry (1-handed is already ok since they have shield, and shield plays its own role).
Ideally, I would also like to increase overall hp of units (or some form of damage resistance), so battles last a bit longer, but I honestly dont know how to do that at all.
Anyway, thanks for the mod and thanks for reading.
I don't agree with your bonuses because 0.1 scaling means that damage doesn't drop off at all with distance, which is unrealistic. The buff to projectile speed I also dont't agree with, because accuracy is already pretty high.
I had considered changing bows to cutting and I think it's a very good idea, but that would require a lot of effort and extensive tweaking and testing to find the right balance. I think a better solution for xbows would be to keep them piercing and maybe decrease damage a bit. You also have to consider that high tier bowmen still do more damage per hit than crossbowmen.
The simple fix for cavalry would be to make it less readily available and make it cost more, but I'm not sure how to do that. Unit level influences its pricing, but it also affects autocalc to my knowledge and I don't want to mess with that too much.
I agree that buffing infantry exclusive gear further than I have already done could be tried.
To make battles last longer, I wanted to increase the number of HP given by ironflesh but I found no solution. It looks like it's hardcoded to be 2.
Anyway, I stopped tweaking at some point because I was pretty satisfied with the balance and also burnt out from all the hours I spent doing it. Maybe we could get in touch in the future if you intend to do further work on the mod or if I start other playthroughs.
So there's always a point in which one has to consider Realism vs Balance.
In my case, Im not interested in the realism of an individual feature, rather Im more concerned with the realistic feel and ultimate result. As such, it is not 'realistic' to consider that archers were considered more powerful at close range. So, I make them good at range, and basically only at range. If you have a high value for 'missile_damage_speed_power', you create this weird non-monotonicity on the practical strength of bowmen, where you would want enemies to be far but not too far. Simplify the model, and you get more consistent applications: bowmen are good at range, period. So, they have a straight-forward, not convoluted, usage in combat. Naturally, each person has a different philosophy on game design in general, so of course you may disagree.
Another thing: I cant seem to understand your claim on a bowman (using a bow) has higher damage per shot vs a xbowman.
An empire armored xbowman has 92 damage xbow + 13 damage bolt, yielding 105 damage.
(Note: It appears that in vanilla warband there is damage from proficiency, even for range, namely that each 100 points beyond 100 yield a 15% increase in damage. As far as exhaustive research ive conducted, proficiency in Pendor only increases damage for melee, not ranged. So, for these calculations, i will consider, like the wiki shows, that proficiency plays no role in damage)
A ravenstern ranger has a longbow with 28 damage + pitiful barbed arrows 2 damage (or bodkin for 3 damage, still awful), yielding 30 damage. Now, with power draw of 6, total damage is:
30*(1+6*.14)=55.2
This is still MUCH less than the xbow, per shot.
Now, to show how xbows, by having inherently more damage, are armor piercing, let's consider an enemy with 50 armor. Assuming that we have as vanilla, xbow dealing pierce damage, we see armor_soak_factor_against_pierce = 0.75, so the first stage of damage is:
1st damage reduction: 105 - 50*.75 = 67.5
Second stage, using armor_reduction_factor_against_pierce = 0.8
2nd final damage calc: 67.5 * (1 - 50/100 * .8) = 40.5
Percentage of damage defended by armor: (105 - 40.5)/105 = 0.6143
Now, doing this for the bow:
1st damage reduction: 55.2 - 50*.75 = 17.7
2nd final damage calc: 17.7 * (1- 50/100*.8) = 10.62
Percentage of damage defended by armor: (55.2 - 10.62)/55.2 = 0.8076
Bows' damage defended by armor is a whopping 19.3% more! So, implicitly, xbows are effectively more armor-piercing.
So it is shown that, although RAW damage of bow is over half the damage of the xbow per shot (52.6%), the actual effective damage is MUCH lower, at meagre 26%! This means xbows deal 4 times the damage of bows!
The effect clearly comes from the first part of the damage reduction, since armor soak is linearly decreasing, favouring very large damage, even if they are very slow to reload.
This mod still inherits the bug from Pendor Enhanced whereas the game freezes in the fief improvement at the castle.
I also cant seem to find the menu options, in castles to manage that fief.
EDIT: I've FINALLY FIXED THIS. For those who need, go to the file: conversations.txt
In the very last line, you should have:
dlga_villages_up2:close_window 4095 1885 0 Very_well_{reg63?My_Lord:My_Lady}._After_choosing_the_improvement,_your_build_orders_will_be_sent_out_right_away. 6 2 2133 2 72057594037927995 1 1907 1 0 NO_VOICEOVER
But this is not enough! You need to change the counter in the second line of that same file to:
4308
In my last playthrough I found myself picking up a lot of infantry units and I have to say they didn't disappoint. Mounted units are still a bit better because being on a horse offers a strategic advantage per se, but I believe it is as it should be for a variety of reasons, as in medieval warfare the knights were the real stars while other troops were meant to support them.
You will be happy to know that one of the unlisted changes is that the Riddari have been buffed: strength from 33 to 39 and they have a decent chance to spawn with dragonspine axe.
Enjoy!
Another thing, If factions battles are now designed to be more even and for higher casualties to occur, wouldn't that mean until you get a CKO up and running you're going to be struggling to build a strong army that's capable of taking on superior numbers since the factions units will be very similar in stats.
In other words, I find Pendor to be most enjoyable when the player is rewarded for grinding high tier troops and using good battle tactics, if you have to lose a big chunk of said high tier troops to get a victory, it just adds to the grinds even more which isn't so fun personally.
Also, you mentioned somewhere here that you think this tweak + Pendor Enhanced are better than Falkruns overall. I'm curious why you think this is the case, I don't doubt that you've put significant time and thought into making this submod, but I'm not sure evening out all the troops would necessarily make for a more fun experience.
For example, If you're an infantry focused army and you come across another infantry focused army, I'm not sure battlefield tactics like taking the high ground, flanking, skirmishing, etc would make that much of a difference assuming your units are close in quality since casualties are designed to be higher regardless of faction. I've yet to test it as thoroughly as you though so maybe I'm just tripping
1. the change in looks can surely be changed but I don't know how. It's in the lighting/color though, not the textures.
2. the battles are not designed to have higher casualties, it's just a result of the improved troops. Keep in mind that most armies are going to field many more lower tier units compared to a mid to late game player army, and very few KO or noldor. While the casualties are higher, I didn't find they impacted the gameplay much since rescuing prisoner and stacking trainer on companions is more than enough to keep your army maxed out at all times. For the tougher battles (eyegrim, maltise etc) you still have to rely mostly on marshaled faction armies. All this not counting that Pendor Enhanced changes the prisoner rescuing formula (as a function of persuasion + relations) so that you can rescue a lot of Noldors with the right persuasion and relations. It also makes fiefs spawn KO troops as they do for AI, so with 2-3 fiefs you can have an ample supply.
3. adding to the previous point, Pendor Enhanced also has the al-aziz arsenal expansion, so there is a plethora of items that make the player almost a demigod.
4. I need to reread the list of Falkrun tweaks, and I will reply with a further comment once I have done so, but I remember very clearly that I thought the same thing both before starting my mod and after having completed it.
5. I don't really know about the last point since there aren't really effective tactics to come out on top on a purely infantry vs infantry situation in the game. But, by logic, if the troops are more even that's where the tactics matter more; if you have better quality you can just f1-f3.
You mentioned persuasion, surgery, and trainer being very important. For example, you get high persuasion and positive relations with the Noldor, and use that as a way to consistently recruit many Noldor troops? sounds like fun, shame grinding relations is well... a grind lol. that's just Pendor though.
Also, how do you go about getting high enough relations with your faction to be marshalled? Doing fetch quests and helping them in battle is quite a slog I'll be honest. You really don't get very high relation through those methods IMO.
Also, Falkrun added this really neat tweak where you can whistle for a horse with the H key, which is really nice for those prolonged fights, do you think you would be able to implement something similar?
My last point was a bit moot the more I think about it haha.
In Vanilla Pendor, once you become a Vassal you start to really bleed money if your army is high quality, It's great you've made enterprises, fiefs and Tourneys give significantly more Denars. Honestly, I can't think of a good reason to become a vassal unless your relations are high enough to become Marshal.
- The strongest fighter is without a doubt horse archer, but it starts to shine very late and has almost no other utility besides combat.
- My favourite build is starting with the strongest possible melee fighter that also happens to have the highest persuasion and leadership, and going for a mounted melee fighter. This has plenty of skill points to spare for persuasion, surgery, trainer etc. and is a utility powerhouse.
In the early game I do fighting bandits, selling loot, gearing up and leveling up. I also spam guild master quests, try to set up enterprises whenever possible and build the hideout. I try to get three qualis gems ASAP and drink the elixirs.
In the early mid game, I become a merc and go for tourneys, finish setting up the enterprises and improve my Noldor relations.
In the late mid game I become a vassal, join a KO, try to get 2-4 fiefs in the vicinity of Laria/Ethos, go for noldor tournaments, hunt unique spawns and acquire the best equip.
In the late game I go independent and start conquering the map but that's usually where I stop playing since it becomes boring.
I never create my custom KO because it is too slow and not worth it IMO. I just upgrade an existing KO (the new KO upgrade system is dope).
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The best way to improve your relations with a faction is to just be a member and fight battles against their enemies. They'll make you a marshall once you have high enough renown.
I have seen that horse whistle tweak and it looks dope but honestly I didn't find it worth the hassle.
Yeah honestly I always thought it was so weird that being a vassal made you poor because fiefs don't even give enough money to break even with the garrisons. It's not the case anymore, so becoming a vassal feels like a more natural progression.
Thanks and let me know what you think later down the road!
But without a high level unit to amass tons of prisoners it takes quite awhile to save enough denars for a KO upgrade. At some point you're spending 100k+ just for one stat increase. It's nuts.
In my playthroughs, that's pretty much the only good use I can find for cash, and with the new rent compensation system money should not be as hard to come by. For prisoner taking, I always use blunt melee weapons or the "use blunt weapons" command. In my third playthrough I even almost had the money to do the whole 10 levels on two KOs.
I never liked creating a CKO because it takes way too much time, especially if you are an experienced player and can get a lot of stuff done in a short amount of in-game days. I only created one in my first ever playthrough, and when it was ready all I had left to do was conquer a handful of remaining fiefs. I don't really see any value in doing it apart from the cool factor, since the late game heavily relies on marshaled stacks and using autocalc.
You spend 3 qualis gems into the potion on arkon right? How come you don't get the Janus one, for getting high ass surgery skill? what do you do after that? Seems to me like getting a large pouch of diamonds and using the funds to upgrade a KO is probably the best bang for buck once the glamour of Rune weapons fades. Using them to get Noldor troops really isn't that worth it either, apart from gambling :)
Also, I relate to quitting once you become a king, the game turns into long winded Native gameplay at that point.
Clarion call fully upgraded is nuts since they are on par with noldor nobles statwise, and the sargeants become ravenstern rangers on steroids. I also like to upgrade radiant cross since i'm an empire shill and they have the best gear. When fully upgraded they are pretty much iron circle centurions and the crossbowmen kick ass too. I like KOs with ranged sargeants. In general I like to upgrade 8/7 template KOs for maximum efficiency.
I never turn on advanced horse archer ai because it becomes very cheesable, they bump into the map borders and become useless.
My issues is Fieldsvain and Empire noble troops being rather pathetic due to lack of lance, I find mounted javelin rarely hitting enemy when used by AI and they're more likely to switch to melee weapon once they are within reach of throwing weapon unlike horse archer troops.
Maybe add a Elite Infantry for fieldsvain noble tree like you did for ravenstern? I don't know about empire though, I don't think it would be too out of place for them to use lance.
1. Fierdsvain having the weakest noble troops is in line with vanilla balancing, and they are still improved compared to vanilla. While generally (slightly) worse than their counterparts, Fierdsvain and Empire nobles are still good troops that can make short work of all common troops but the highest tiers, so I think they fit well in the overall picture.
2. Empire cavalry is the second weakest stats-wise, but they are good because of their spammability (they are the only nobles to level up from a lvl15 unit).
3. Having a lance is not always a good thing since the AI can fumble their weapon selection.
4. Giving a lance to empire knights would be inaccurate lore-wise, since the lance is a new custom for the pendorian people. I even removed it from the shadow centurions, since if you speak with their wandering knight he says exactly so. Lance on the common empire cavalry is justified since Marius wants to modernize the empire. An argument could definitely be made but I like to maintain the unit's identity and I don't want to give them both a lance and a ranged option. If you want lances, I encourage you to use more common empire cavalry since it is vastly improved compared to vanilla.
5. Adding a new troop for the Fierdsvain altogether (similar to the pendor rearmed wolf warriors) would require making extensive changes to a number of files. The new ravenstern noble unit is just a rebranded highlander, so I didn't have to edit anything except its stats and equip. I thought about rebranding the rogue knights (similar to pendor rearmed) but I also deemed that change too big for a number of reasons.
I hope the answer is satisfactory.
I'm a bit in a hurry atm but I will update the mod description talking about savefile incompatibility. Thanks.
EDIT: updated.