Is stainless steel worth it?

[IRIS]

Hi everyone. I finished short vanilla campaign and I am looking to start new one. I would love to use mods that enhance main game, without adding too much stuff. Is stainless steel what TWM2 should have been from the start?

[chon]

Much more realism, historic accuracy and challenge comes with stainless steel, Don't expect an easy ride with that one.

[IRIS]

I just found about kingdoms grand campaign mode. Its pretty much all kingdoms map in one grand campaign map. Seems great.

[LSD]

Stainless Steel's more a conversion than an addon. It's definitely not "what M2TW should have been", though.
If you're looking just for add-ons that keep the vanilla experience, you'll want way smaller-scale things.
The retrofit mod (adds a small number of changes from Kingdoms to the base game) and the Grand Unit Addon[www.twcenter.net] (which adds units from Kingdoms to the base game) are decent choices for more variety.

[VictorBravo]

You should try RegionMod. Adds several new factions and gives the campaign a new flavour.

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?282072-RegionMod-3-0-Kingdoms-Version-and-Patches

[IRIS]

Thanks people. I will check that out :)

[Aquilifer]

Stainless Steel 6.4 is pretty awesome, with even better balance between factions. The campaign AI is also improved. I like to play with Byg's Grim Realism II and Gracul AI - Gracul AI is the most aggressive and backstabbing one but at the start of the game everyone is making alliances, probably so they can backstab each other.
There's also a Bugfix 1.27 for SS6.4. It does a few minor things, but the most important thing it does is that it reduces the end turn times.

[ikyu828]

imo it's worth it, i won't play older tw game w/o mods
rtw n mtw 2 w/o mods are horrible

[Aquilifer]

Originally posted by ikyu828:

imo it's worth it, i won't play older tw game w/o mods
rtw n mtw 2 w/o mods are horrible

How are they horrible without mods??!

[ikyu828]

Originally posted by Amazonite:

Originally posted by ikyu828:

imo it's worth it, i won't play older tw game w/o mods
rtw n mtw 2 w/o mods are horrible

How are they horrible without mods??!

for mtw 2
pike units r useless, since they keep changing the weapons once in melee
2 handed weapon r inferior to 1 handed weapon
in siege defense only archers r useful as ranged units, other ranged weapon can only fire few times then stopped firing

fro rtw
battle ai is very2 bad, it doesn't understand how to flank at all
unit variety are even worse

i haven't played those 2 in vanilla for a long time so i can't remember more, but i definitely won't play them w/o mods

[Aquilifer]

Originally posted by ikyu828:

Originally posted by Amazonite:

How are they horrible without mods??!

for mtw 2
pike units r useless, since they keep changing the weapons once in melee
2 handed weapon r inferior to 1 handed weapon
in siege defense only archers r useful as ranged units, other ranged weapon can only fire few times then stopped firing

fro rtw
battle ai is very2 bad, it doesn't understand how to flank at all
unit variety are even worse

i haven't played those 2 in vanilla for a long time so i can't remember more, but i definitely won't play them w/o mods

To be honest the AI is equally awful in both. The pikemen in Medieval II would only switch weapons if they were attacked when not ready or they were being overwhelmed.
The only bit I'm not sure what you're on about is the siege defence bit. It all depends who they are firing at and how far away and where they are. Decent crossbows are your best bet for missiles when defending.

[Rocket]

To me it's too big and crashes a lot. Used it for a while but I eventually went back to retrofit mod. It's a game I don't need 100% accurate maps and unit rosters, the extensiveness just sapped away the fun.

[Slinkerdeer]

I give it a negative. 1, it crashes frequently. 2, units with swords such as foot knights are ABYSMALY TERRIBLE. I watched a full unit of Norman Foot Knights (who are supposed to be the most renown knights in all of Europe) go against PEASANTS. And because they gave the peasants two handed "farming tools" and because of how ♥♥♥♥♥♥ the speed of two handed units are in the game (the mod switched the two handed glitch to now two handed units can out-speed one handed units in their animation, WTF IS THAT!?), the peasants can easily inflict MASSIVE damage on the knights, who cost roughly 5 times as much and cost 600 gold PER TURN for maintenance, meanwhile the peasants cost 90, you get two of those peasant units and the knights will lose. In vanilla I've watched a single unit of fully upgraded dismounted knights take on half an army (1000+ men) of Arabian peasants (their peasants are armed with knives, worse stats than European peasants, I did some trials to see the highest sheer number of kills the knights could get).

To then see the knights lose more than half their unit strength to a single unit of FREAKING PEASANTS, that was when my major doubts about this mod began. Long story short I exited the game and deleted the mod folder once I watched a highland spearman vs a Norman knight (with fresh stamina) STABSTABSTABSTABSTABSTAB about 20 times (no joke, it was like two dozen attack animations, one after the other bam-bam-bam) with a long ass ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ spear that stuck through the knight by about 2 and a half feet, and every time the knight tried to do anything his animation was interrupted, and thus, this knight, who was part of a unit costing me 600 gold per turn, died from a dozen stab wounds from a mere highlander who probably cost something like 150 gold per turn. It was like watching the two handed glitch, reversed and amped up to 100, AND used against what USED TO BE the best anti-infantry infantry unit in the game.

To sum that up in real life that spearmen would only be effective in a line formation with his buddies at his side, this spearman was on a castle wall in a higgeldy-piggeldy melee, something those knights should excel at. If it was IRL the knight would have either charged the spearmen and knocked his spear out of the way with either his shield or sword, and then either stabbed or shield bashed the guy to the ground, and that would be the fight concluded. Not standing still for 60+ seconds getting stabbed until FINALLY his health pool runs out and dies.

The original game fixed this by making the pikemen (whose animations and functions the highland spearmen use) draw out their swords when engaged in non-formation melee, not a perfect fix but its better than the units using a weapon which is 3 times longer than what you need for a close combat fight when someone coming at you with a sword, having the units continue to use the massive poles in close combat COMPLETLEY breaks the game and makes the units so overpowered you could pretty much put them in a doomstack and just have archers and them with nothing else.

After watching the train-wreck that was the highland spearmen vs Norman knight. I deleted the mod folder and any of its subsequent files, even removing it from my browsers download history, I will not be associated with a mod that turns an 18 year old game I've played and loved for so long, into a pile of ♥♥♥♥.

So yeah, ♥♥♥♥ THIS MOD.

(Don't get me wrong, this mod does so many things well that I was so happy to see, I preferred its recruitment system for example, but when mere peasants and lowly spearmen can kill dismounted knights so easily [especially when those knights cost 5x more money] I simply cannot play the mod with any level of enjoyment, and the length of this "review" shows how much I care about what the mod does right, and how saddened I am by the thing that ruins it.)

[Inardesco]

You dont undersfand that pikes have the most overpowered animation in the game.

Pikes with 1 attack and 1 defence will kill units far stronger than it for the simple reason that the enemy cant get close.

Its basically your own dam fault for sending a single unit to attack a pike-unit on walls and then raging that it lost. Pikes excel in places they cant be flanked.

Likewise, no army is made up out if 1 unit. So even if peasants trade well against infantry, they still die from a single charge or a couple of vollies from archers.

[Slinkerdeer]

Smh..... dude, try to read what people type a little more carefuly. I literally said "The original game fixed this by making the pikemen (whose animations and functions the highland spearmen use) draw out their swords when engaged in non-formation melee, not a perfect fix but its better than the units using a weapon which is 3 times longer than what you need for a close combat fight." The mod prevents the spearmen or "pikemen animated spearmen" from using swords, thus they end up using a weapon 3 times longer than the distance between them and the person trying to kill them with a sword, and beat them.

Your reply suggests that I should continue playing the game and "avoid" spearmen units or pikemen units that behave AS STATED IN THE ABOVE PARAGRAPH (I feel like I need to be extra clear about what I say, seeing the "effort" you read my post with). That is stupid, "oh, a unit in the game is broken and can defeat units 5 times their cost in the situation that unit excels at" (knights excel at close combat with swords)

I'll break it down..... pikemen/highland spearmen, whatever uses pikemen animations and has the secondary sword disabled, is a game-breaking unit. When you put them onto the battlefield, the sheer cost and waiting time for knights topped with the inadequacy to deal with cheaper, less valuable units makes the worthless and not worth recruiting at all. And if there is a medieval game I will never play, its one that turns the iconic medieval knight into something not even worth using.

A simple fix would be re-enable the function that original M2TW has which switches the pikemen to their secondary swords when they have to engage targets one on one rather than fighting in line formation, which BTW is how pikemen fought in real life, the spears were for stabbing at a distance and keeping the enemy at bay, and if they started to break your pike formation and get close enough to use swords then you took out your own sword for self-defense. So for a mod that has much more realism and historical accuracy, the whole pikemen animation thing is an abysmal failure.

I just found this, and its the perfect example of how pikemen should fight and DID fight (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-VGTLozlhn8) They use their spears to great effect at keeping the knights at bay and the individual pikeman gets out his sword if one of them gets too close, which is the correct way.

[Slinkerdeer]

And, regarding sending the knights to a wall. 2 units of Norman Foot Knights took a wall with 2 ladder slots (or 8 if you count each ladder). The units on the wall was 2 light militia units which caused very few casualties to the knights considering how high casualties for units using ladders normally are (so far so good, I had sent my 2 best infantry units to take the west wall of the castle I was attacking). Then a single unit of highland spearmen started coming from the other walls after the knights had wrestled control of the wall and lost around 40 men (20 each unit roughly, they had about 93 men each to start with). The first spearmen to get onto the wall were face-to-face with the knights, their pikes/spears sticking through the knights as if they were impaling them (but of course they weren't) and then they just jerked the pikes forward repeatedly with the spearhead sticking behind the knight by about 2 feet, and never touching him, and the knights lost over 100 men this way (units only had 12 and 18 men left when I got them on the ladders to prevent them being wiped out) while the spearmen lost around 8. And this was when they were coming from one doorway onto the wall with knights surrounding this doorway, so those spears were 3 times too long for the task at hand the second they came onto the wall, and they still won. Against units that cost me 1200 gold per turn just to maintain.

If you can't see the source of the problem by now then I give up, I'm done explaining