Install Steam
login
|
language
简体中文 (Simplified Chinese)
繁體中文 (Traditional Chinese)
日本語 (Japanese)
한국어 (Korean)
ไทย (Thai)
Български (Bulgarian)
Čeština (Czech)
Dansk (Danish)
Deutsch (German)
Español - España (Spanish - Spain)
Español - Latinoamérica (Spanish - Latin America)
Ελληνικά (Greek)
Français (French)
Italiano (Italian)
Bahasa Indonesia (Indonesian)
Magyar (Hungarian)
Nederlands (Dutch)
Norsk (Norwegian)
Polski (Polish)
Português (Portuguese - Portugal)
Português - Brasil (Portuguese - Brazil)
Română (Romanian)
Русский (Russian)
Suomi (Finnish)
Svenska (Swedish)
Türkçe (Turkish)
Tiếng Việt (Vietnamese)
Українська (Ukrainian)
Report a translation problem
This topic has been pinned, so it's probably important 
Discussions Rules and Guidelines
42 
Report this post
The big 3 changes:
1) High level unit loot is no longer crowded out of the lootbox by peasant gear, as looting low level units is capped. Kill enemies in any order you like, even if peasants die first you will still get the good loot.
2) "First claim on all loot" option now actually does that, you see all the loot exactly as if you fought solo. Before it just gave 4x standard loot, which made no sense and alternated between magically creating more loot than would have existed solo and giving far less than it should.
3) Bandit party spawns no longer depend on player army strength. This means that Ireland won't have tiny 3 member bands just because 4 weeks ago you left your army in a troop camp in Norway for awhile. The old system rivals Oblivion as a nonsensical leveled world, except at least in Oblivion the leveling generally happened when you met the spawn, and didn't jump backwards and forwards constantly. Bandit spawn settings from camp options and campaign AI setting still influence their size (if providing feedback on bandit strength, please report your settings for those options). Thanks to Reddit user LordIronToe for discussing the leveled world issues with me a week or so back.
And the rest:
4) Ship Captains now count as sailors for the sailing speed bonus. (companions with sailing skills will be added in later version)
5) Tournament rewards are more consistent and reasonable (smaller town relationship boost, but now can increase relationship past 30, more lasting small renown boosts rather than going to +0 by mid game, culture-generic mail armor rather than every town giving Norse armor)
6) Train peasants quest temporarily set to 1 hour per training cycle, balancing with small rewards, lower training cap of 5 in VC, and need to kill bandits yourself. Dialogue statements not updated (so will still report 10 hours or so, but it will only take 1), as this is temporary until the quest can be properly updated to involve training shielded militia units that might actually help against bandits.
7) Some minor loot changes (no more 1/3 loot penalty when party is below 40 men, too binary, and companion loot shares change from 3 to 1, since player has to equip them out of his loot anyway. Mostly relevant in the early game, and counteracts the occasional early game times when the new loot caps might reduce loot a bit)
8) Bandit spawn frequency increases by 50% to adjust for a VC system where spawns are capped earlier when large, and so adapt to the new random spawn sizes from the deleveled world
- Given the complexity of this round of changes, tweaks are now incorporated into the mod full install. If you would like to use your own tweaks, look for the optional Module installation download in the nexus files page, and you will find instructions within.
- The included tweaks from the tweaks tool are: keep morrigan in party, battle continuation after KO, (EDIT: included in 2.0 modify lord gear from dialogue option removed in 3.1), 0 relation loss if you refuse most quests from lord, no troops stealing from you (ie, ale, jewelry), no marshall levying your troops, bandit lairs visible from twice as far away as normal, 99% ship capture in battle, random captured ship HP, prisoner hire waiting period of 6 hours, disable stat loss from long games, use horse in town scenes.
- Thank you to all contributors of past tweaks to VC, and in particular Kalarhan and Kraggrim for their work on the tweaks tool.
- Some personal tweaks of my own are also included: edit wife dress/hat from dialogue option, keep horse in docinga defense and farmland scene, keep your normal equipment when sneaking into towns and castles (instead of pilgrim robes and staff, which seems so much more suspicious than just wearing armor, especially in a Norse town).
- If you prefer the much lower default VC ship capture chance, an optional file is included to restore it on the nexus files page. Just download and copy it into your VC folder after installing the main install. Thanks to Reddit user BunnyPoopCereal for conferring on this and other release issues.
As always, fully save compatible with vanilla VC campaigns. Please report any feedback!
Changelog 1.2 (as always, save compatible--full release version, no need to install prior versions first):
1) A pictish normal clothing item that incorrectly gave the ritual skill bonus for naked tattoo armor has been removed from units, pending locating the source of the bug. EDIT: found and fixed the bug in 4.0, it was from the tweaks tool using some incorrect code.
2) Veteran mercs given the standard tier IV spearmen melee item upgrade from the mod's 1.0 changes, as well as the glove chance given to all units with mail armor. Thanks to Reddit User Mathias_Bianchi for convincing me to include them.
Changelog 1.1 (as always, save compatible--full release version, no need to install prior versions first):
- Quality wrapping boots that weigh 2.0 now have +1 armor when compared to those that weigh 1.5. Special thanks to Reddit user EricAKAPode for suggesting this.
Changelog, 1.0 (save compatible with vanilla VC saved games):
Troops:
1) Angle Bodyguards now have the sword selection of Saxon/Norse Bodyguards. Before, they had only the worst swords in their inventory, which makes no sense given the faction balance/stats, where angles are supposed to have better swordsmen than the saxons, and is otherwise unheard of for a max tier faction swordsman unit.
2) Chance of leather gloves added to frankish horsemen, storyline only heavily armored mercs, and any faction unit with mail body armor.
3) Old captains lose the seaxes, gain some spears. Their swords are too short to be spearless while mounted, the AI can't handle the 81 length swords from horseback.
4)Tier V bodyguards/champion swordsmen lose the langseaxes, broadseaxes, and knives, and now all have swords.
5) Hunting knives and plain little seaxes removed from tier III and IV swordsmen line units. They now all have the decent broadseaxes, langseaxes, axes, and such.
6) Angle tier IV swordsmen have their broadseaxes replaced by longseaxes. Tier III angle swordsmen have these, it made little sense to downgrade on advancing tier.
7) Knives and plain little seaxes removed from units provided they have alternative close combat weapons in their inventory, or need the space for missles (if also having a good spear and mounted). A noble with fine mail armor can afford something a little better, at least a broadseax, for goodness sake. And a couple of the skirmisher cavalry now has a better chance to function in that role--the additional missles are much better for them, they didn't need a little seax in case their horse dies AND their spear breaks, at that point it wasn't doing them any good anyway.
Little knives still widely used by tier III spearmen. This change didn't add weapons to units (see below for the few limited related changes that did), it just removed the knife option when they already had better stuff available.
8) Tier IV spearmen get upgraded from plain little seax/hunting knife to basic axes or broadseax. Frisian max tier (tier III) spearmen also received this, as their level and proficincies approaches the tier above them.
This not being the case was partly why Norse Tier IV spearmen were oddly often better than saxons--the saxon tier IV was previously forced to rely on nothing more than a tiny little plain seax. That made little sense for the unit, and threw off faction balance.
9) Several high tier skirmishers get a second quiver of missile weapons, of the variety they previously lacked (both the 12 ammo horsemen javilins and the 8 ammo heavy javilins have good points, with the higher damage on the latter). Since change 7 removed the tiny seax from a few of these if mounted and having a good spear, they now have space for that second quiver, making them better skirmishers, and giving skirmisher cavalry a better chance at viably functioning.
10) Pictish crossbowmen type units give up their javilins and shields, hopefully to get more room for bolts. Seriously, you shouldn't be sending these guys into melee much anyway, their shields were terrible and couldn't be used with the crossbows, their javilins don't compare to their crosssbows...any commander would just order them to carry an extra quiver.
Items:
1) club now has +1 damage, giving it some reason for existing alongside the less expensive, longer reach tree branch. They both are terrible of course, but the balance between them previously made little sense.
2) basic low tier swords (swords, 2 types, short swords, 2 types) have +4 slashing damage. They were absurdly underpowered before, and generally inferior to axes, when in the Viking Age swords were immensely valued and treasured family heirlooms.
None of the swords players themselves tend to use are affected--these are only the most common, lowest level swords. As a side effect, this also greatly helps faction balance among units, given their seemingly random assignment of these previously trash swords among units vs the actually viable swords and axes.
Briton swords now also have something of a rival in early game--trade a bit of length vs a bit of damage on cuts and more on stabs. The similar pricing of these swords to the briton sword is now sensible (the difference in thrust damage alone never justified it, as thrust damage isn't as relevant to combat performance)
Irish short swords also given +4 slashing, though they were already great, in the hands of a player who only stabbed, but the AI being what it is a 13 slashing damage rating was inexcusable even given the great stabbing damage. They need to be able to at least disrupt the attack of someone they are hitting if swung. So, they get the +4 slashing as well, up to a whopping 17c now.
3) Two unique swords, draguandil and blynjubtir, have +4 slashing damage. Now, you might actually want to use one of these special swords. Perhaps not, though, as they are still often worse than easily available alternatives, because their length is significantly shorter than alternatives. But at least now special unique swords aren't trash weapons and have a chance at seeing use. Why create unique special swords that are inferior to everything?
The false Ulfberts also get +2 slashing. They are special and rare enough to be a bit better than plain briton swords, especially given their appearance on top tier units.
4) Orm's Lorrica nerfed to be comparable to a bear lorrica. It was an overpowered to the point of being a cheat item before, and only available in storyline--two fatal flaws. If you disagree, you can easily use winmerge to remove this change.
It remains an incredible armor even with the nerf to the level of bear lorrica (1 more leg armor, 1 less head, rather than the previous +10 body, +2 leg, and much lighter), which is an amazing and incredibly hard to get item anyway. Indeed, Orm's is much, much easier to get than a bear lorrica, so getting it in the storyline is still a wonderful event.
5) One norse light armor and one norse long cloth armor get a +1 or +2 armor, bringing them equal to saxon and angle equivalents. Now, if the player wishes to go the light and medium armor route, he can choose to dress either in the anglo-saxon or norse styles with no loss of performance.
6) Gloves are now +2 armor rather than +6. It was far too high at +6, little gloves could be made hardened and obtained for around 150 gold that dwarfed the contribution of much more expensive armor, it generally acted only to favor the player (since only they and companions would be wearing gloves mostly, as many troops lacked them most of the time), and created a nonsensical differentiation among troops (ie, your veteran warrior can afford expensive mail armor, but not spend a trifling amount on gloves that would hugely increase their armor?).
7) A saxon light armor changed from +19 leg to +10 leg. This was an obvious typo by the VC devs, no light armor goes that high, and the fix brings it to be equivalent to other armors of which it is graphically identical but with a color change.
8) A pictish light armor has it's head armor rating reduced to 0 from +8. Another clear error--it lacked a hood or any basis for head armor.
Credits:
Credit to tweaks and the use of the VC Tweaks Tool from the taleworlds forums, and its creators Kalarhan and Kraggrim, who generously grant permission for use of their tool in other mods. Find their wonderful VC Tweaks Tool here: Forums.taleworlds.com
Credit to EvilSquid for all his great bugfixes, included in Balance Mod with permission, permission granted via both email and personal message at Taleworlds forums.
Credit to Philippe at Bay for his wonderful Dark Age Village Name mod, permission to include in Balance Mod granted here: Steamcommunity.com
Credit to Diplomacy mod and Taleworlds users Waihti and zParsifal, for several incorporated changes, including horse slowing with damage. Diplomacy mod page and use permission: Forums.taleworlds.com
Credit to the team of Brytenwalda for horse models and throwing axes (and, of course, VC itself)
Credit to Brujoloco for his custom sails. Check out his mods at: https://www.nexusmods.com/mbwarband/mods/6095/
Credit to Kauna for her visual modifications, including shield textures, banners, and ships
Two things I'm considering to change in my current save:
1- Removing the block for courting a lady if the player isn't of the same faction. If the lord doesn't have a bad personality type and the relationship with him is good enough, there shouldn't be a hard limit just because.
2- Blocking peasant gear from crowding the lootbox. It doesn't happen frequently with lord's armies but, still.
I know how to make changes to the code, if that's what need to be done. I just need to know which lines I have to change and how.
- Marry lady of other factions: module_dialogs.py
- Peasant gear doesn't crowd out better loot: module_scripts.py
Using winmerge it should be easy to find the relevant code differences and copy them over. The module files are an optional download at nexus for modders to use in compiling their own version. It is possible you could reproduce them with direct text edits, but that might be tricky, as the final text files aren't easily readable to us humans and some other things could have changed in how those parts are written.
If creating your own mod with pieces of this, I'd suggest you at least also copy over the below additional changes from my mod:
- EvilSquid bug fixes for vanilla VC bugs. Without them, feasts and surrenders don't work correctly.
- Inventory changes for the Angle Bodyguards. Without the fixes to their sword selection from this mod, they are a terrible unit, completely unable to compete with the other Tier 5 swordsmen.
I never used winmerge but it shouldn't take too long to learn the basics. The only thing I didn't understand is the process for going from the modules to the changes in the game.
I go to the nexus, download the parts I'm interested in, use winmerge to merge them and then I "install" the resulting file as if it was a "normal" mod?
Creating your own personal mod is a bit more complicated than that (changing numbers in the text files like you did before is easier, but in large complicated mods like this too much changes and trying to just copy a single function over into a vanilla file causes problems). You would go to the Viking Conquest website and download the module files for modders. Then download the optional files for modders from my nexus modpage. Winmerge in the changes you like from my mod into the vanilla modules (it is all very readable in the original files, you can tell what does what). Then follow this tutorial to recompile the files into a bunch of text files the game uses: https://forums.taleworlds.com/index.php?topic=240255.0
For anyone reading this: The full install option for VC Balance Mod 4.1 is just a simple unzip into the Viking Conquest folder, takes 10 seconds--the above details are just for Windrider to create his own mod out of selected pieces of this one.
Steam users Windrider and Pode for consultation on second outfit vanilla VC bug
Steam user Adabr Brcol for bringing my attention to the vanilla VC bug with Odin's cave and high athletics
Taleworlds user Zeqe for requesting village defense changes
Talewords and Reddit user Maluxorath for reporting the vanilla VC bug about hardcore finance and suggesting giving Norse Bodyguards guaranteed helmets
Reddit user EricAKAPode for frequent consultations on a range of topics, including throwing weapons
Taleworlds user Cokjan, Reddit user Peppiping, and Steam user Windrider for discusion on archer issues.
Steam user Tuidjy for lending his expertise as both a real-world and in-game archer to the bow rebalance
Taleworlds user EvilSquid for Vikingr upgrading to danish and norwegion elites
Taleworlds users Scar1981 and EvilSquid for ideas for proposing upgrade path for Svear Warriors
Reddit user EricAKAPode for suggesting upgrade defenders for peasant trading parties
- Improved reinforcement templates for NPC Lords. Vanilla VC captured the historical feeling by having NPC lords walk around with tons of tier I peasants. The problem is the player doesn't generally do that. And the NPC lords suffer hugely for it. We don't have to have an army of elites for NPC lords, but we can and should shift their recruiting to better resemble what the player gets--Much less Tier I, more Tier II and III units. Elites remain rare, but competent fighters for the npc lord shieldwall are now the general rule, with a few skirmisher peasants in much lower numbers. The historical feeling of mixed peasant armies is still present, but with the greater number of tier II and III the ai lords will pose a much better chance of challanging players and their more elite armies. It will take awhile for current saved games to adjust to this, as the lords need time to recruit under the new templates as they lose and hire troops.
- Norse recruiting templates made generally more elite than other cultures. Few basic recruits, more swordsmen, but still keeping an eye on financial pressures. Let's make them feared, as they were at the time. All AI lord recruiting templates given upgrades, but less powerful than the Norse. a) Christian factions recruit 50% or less the peasants they previously did, and replace these with spearmen (third tier, the first one after branching off with swordsmen). Those spearmen are now the dominant part of their armies. Should improve their shield walls while retaining the historical feeling of levied armies. b) The Northymbrians and Frisians get the Elite Norse list for their medium and high recruitment levels, but have a mix of angles or frisians at their basic recruitment level (which is called more often than the others). This represents their nature as factions that would have a smaller population of norse, but those would in turn be more likely to be warriors, than the native Norse nations. Basically, they are nations of norse warriors + conquered levies, vs the Norse list, which draws more broadly from Norse society.
- Slightly altered the conversion balance in favor of christians. They already get the occasional bonus from close by monasteries, but I think I will increase their conversion effect form buildings to happen a bit more frequently than pagan shrines. It is pretty clear that Christianity is much more effective at spreading itself than Norse paganism in the real world. I'll start with a very small +0-1 increase in Christian conversion building effects, and that might be all that is needed. Conversions from Christian to pagan much less common for lords than the reverse--I don't know that we even have many examples of that occurring. Combined with the army template changes to make the Norse more fierce, should lead to an interesting and realistic dynamic--feared pagan armies but a Christian religion that can potentially conquer them even as they conquer Christian lands. Specifically, Random lord conversion chance reduced. Now upstanding and martial lords will not randomly convert away from their kingdom's religion. A Christian kingdom will convert its lords to christianity twice as effectively as a pagan kingdom does the opposite
- should now be possible to actually engage in sustained religious conversion. If you have either a mead hall (village) or a prisoner tower (town) the symbols of your authority are now strong enough that the villagers will not tear down your temple (they block the rioting from occurring). There really needed to be a way of doing this--building temples had turned into nothing more than a path to ruining relations with a fief.
- Chance of riots destroying religious building minimum faith now equalized to level AI lords had. Before, player needed a 55-45 majority of their faith to prevent riots. AI lords needed only a 30-70 minority to prevent them. The AI number was the sensible one--30 is the level at which you get the message _____ are accepted here. So now that is the new cutoff for the player as well. Should lead to less riots. Of course the above buildings now prevent them entirely too.
- "first claim on all loot" (which as of Balance Mod 2.0 actually does exactly that, instead of magically multiplying loot by 4), now has an instant morale penalty of -20, instead of -2, but you can take up to a 1/2 share without further penalty (instead of prior 1/6). This frontloads half the -40 vanilla penalty for taking everything to the initial viewing, but allows you to make part of it back pretty easily, and achieves better results scaling with the size of the loot pile. Most importantly, this balances the option against the way players actually use it--to save inventory space or grab the top gear for themselves, leaving their men with a mountain of bad stuff that while technically valuable in the aggregate, is a pain to haul and of little use to them. Now, if you want to always take the only actual great stuff from every loot pile, leaving the rejects and trash for your men, you will pay a little bit of morale for it, as you should. Should make the decision tree more complex than pretty much doing it in every decent battle.
- masterless men parties free XP on creation divided by 20 from vanilla VC values. This means it is no longer possible to find 30+ member tier IV masterless men parties. This made no sense previously--even lords seldom have that many of a tier IV unit. It also encourages much more variety--you will find very small bands of high level units, or mid-sized bands of a mix of two different tiers of units. Much more fun. And less unbalancing to recruit such bands as well--no more getting tons of Tier IV units too easy.
- train units lord quest now requires tier IV units be trained (Vanilla VC used to always ask for tier V, because player level was added to random roll and vanilla VC required level 35 to do the quest, rendering the random check in the code irrelevant. Quest available via EvilSquid fix earlier in Balance Mod, but still basically always asked for tier V in practical circumstances). Much more reasonable to obtain Tier IV and measured against rewards of the quest (they are great, huge relations boost, but tier V units can be nearly impossible to train on many settings and the idea of training a raw recruit into it strains belief).
- The system for random bandit spawns added by Balance Mod 2.0 now rolls numbers over a wider range, but has checks that heavily weight the results to the low end. Combined with the preexisting vanilla system that blocks larger spawns when spawns already exist, this should result in a world with a bit more of the small parties, while adding a very rare chance of seeing the super massive spawns as well.
- crossbows made cutting damage instead of piercing, to balance with bows. Pictish elites have 200 WP and do 56-60 base damage, while the best archers in the mod only have 120-160 WP and do around 32-45 damage after powerdraw bonus. Having the crossbow do piercing while the bows do cutting made the crossbow a super weapon, probably unjustified by the kinds of crossbows the Picts were using, and at any rate doesn't fit with the balance of maintaining focus on the shieldwall. See more explanation here: https://steamcommunity.com/app/48700/discussions/6/1699415798772769131/ At 56-60c damage, the Pictish crossbowmen remain the best missle units in the mod, but they no longer shoot shields to kindling quite as fast while laughing at their poor archer counterparts.
- Irish short swords can now be used to parry. No reason for them to not be able to--hand axes and normal short swords can block in VC, the Irish shortsword treatment was inconsistent. However, seaxes still can't block, based on price, looks, and rarity the Irish shortswords are likely of better quality.
- Laufi made a bit better, +4 slashing, to account for by the time you could get it you could get widowmaker anyway, and give it some chance of being used.
- Ulfberht sword given +1 slashing. It is probably one of the hardest swords to acquire, after all, certainly harder than widowmaker or the unique swords, and the high thrust damage didn't quite make it competitive with the other swords. A little boost brings it into better line with the other top swords and it becomes the viable alternative it should be.
- Disable second outfits affecting skill modifiers. They were bugged in Vanilla VC, with reversed modifiers (ie, if using a second outift, then when wearing the second outfit you would get the skill changes from the primary, and when wearing primary you would get skill changes from second outfit). This led to exploits, like you could put the pict ritual stuff in second outfit and get the skill boosts when wearing primary. This bug triggered upon entering a town: https://steamcommunity.com/app/48700/discussions/6/1699415798756888368/
- Powerdraw no longer reduced by helmets. This was creating a weird affect of harming the higher level archer units, and it really doesn't make that much sense. You can handle the same drawweight with a helmet on. Instead, helmet now reduces athletics by 1. Should give some balance for norse bodyguards sometimes lacking a helmet actually, but mostly just fits with the theme of reducing better armored unit mobility. Powerdraw no longer reduced from having shield on back. Again, unit balance.
- Spotting boost from scouts or on water reduced from +4 to +2. The prior implementation was encouraging the player to not progress past 6 in the skill.
- Missle and melee speed damage exponent now reverted to logical 2.0 (ie, squared). Little effect in most circumstances, but better to match real world physics.
- Damage to interrupt attacks increased, more enemies will power through very light damage (now 6 instead of 3)
- Ammo amounts for normal sling rocks tripled. They are rocks--not too hard to find I think. This should make it impossible to really wait out slingers running out of ammo in most circumstances, and let them baically harrass a shieldwall with little fear of ammo loss. Sling lead amounts doubled (high level slingers could use the boost, given they don't have a skill to differentiate damage). Military slings given a damage boost (+2). They need to be susbtantially stronger because a major source of damage difference present among low and high tier archers (powerdraw) does not apply to slings. Accuracy also boosted for all one handed slings (+3). Staff sling accuracy nerfed (-5). So normal slings 95 accuracy, staff slings 85. Military and normal sling accuracy and speed differences brought into good consistent order (speed reduction for military versions resulted). military one hand sling shot speed slightly increased. General reload speed reduction (-20 one handed, -30 staff). Military versions get +10 speed (often will be using lead not rocks). Military versions get +2 accuracy.
- Throwing weapon changes to make more throwing weapons (especially spears) a viable tactical choice, as well as bring weights and ammo amounts into consistent relationship. Also make irish/pict versions only slightly better, so they don’t appear to be some kind of alien technology in their superiority. All weights are per projectile, with bundle weight following in parenthesis. Shot speed listed, hidden stat, very important for effectiveness.
- Throwing spears, 2 ammo, 40 damage (+13), 18 speed, 1 weight (2 bundle)
- Javilins, 4 ammo, 24 damage (+8), 28 speed, .375 weight (1.5 bundle) (weight x1.5 )
- Skirmish Javilins, 6 ammo, 20 damage (+2), 30 (+2) speed , .333 weight (2 bundle)
- Heavy Javilins, 8 ammo, 22 damage (+2), 28 speed, .375 weight (3 bundle)
- Horsemen javilins, 12 ammo, 18 damage (unchanged), 30 (+2) speed, .333 weight (4 bundle)
- Against the heaviest armored opponents, throwing spears are best if at close range. At medium range, heavy javilins are probably your best bet, though horsemen javilins huge ammo increase will make them deal similar total damage over an entire quiver. Against lightly armored opponents, horsemen javilins are best. In the hands of the AI, the higher ammo amounts are generally always better, as they often waste their initial throws, and the throwing spears with the huge damage increase somewhat makes up for the AI's trouble using them correctly.
- Speeds of missles and weights now line up more logically. Damage amounts mostly track along weight, with the heavy and horsemen assumed less bulky and suffering a tiny bit in damage for it. In player hands, the horsemen and heavy javilins are especially potent with balanced modifiers, but large bag of throwing spears works well for a player that likes to fight very close.
- Partially to compensate for earlier changes to rationalize the velocity exponent for kinetic energy of melee weapons to real-world physics of 2.0, spears buffed in damage (+4). Should also help the tier II units compete better against the higher ones (assisting lord armies performance), help the mid range spearmen compete better against their swordsmen counterparts, ensuring the spear has its intended role in warfare.
- Lord train unit quest range of target amount soldiers narrowed to high end (7-8) to balance against high rewards in relationship and make more consistent
- Berserker recruiting now requires 1000 renown (was 150), but is significantly buffed. 70% chance 2 berserkers, 25% chance 1 berserker. Should be worth a trip now and then to a hoff, but only for famous people.
- Pagans can now interact with monasteries more, including giving them money. Monks aren't so picky when you come offering gold, and pagans needed a way to donate to placate christians. Christians can now donate to hoffs as well.
- Prebattle duals improved (no more battles to the death between NPCs who don't exist and don't actually die, instead only the player has a chance of dualing, and no free cheat health added to player)
- Event in town for getting +1 strength and intelligence no longer requires any gold--you can choose "build both" for free, and recieve both bonuses. Why? Because it was a trap for new players. Experienced players would just walk around with gold, guaranteeing themselves +2 total attributes. New players might not, and happen to be carrying too little gold, guaranteeing a permanently weaker character. I don't agree with that sort of game design, where players who don't look things up can end up permanently weaker for no real purpose. So assume you fund the buildings from general funds or collection--a few coins is far less important than not locking players out of +2 attributes. Combined with the druid changes, all players are now guranteed access to the +4 attribute points available within a game, no more randomness and accidents permanently making your character worse.
- Strong shield taunt reduced to changing enemy damage to 97% instead of 95%. This balances its generally stronger power than inspiring (given likely armor values) and ability to overwrite the AI lord warcry damage bonus in many of the most important battles.
- Sneaking skill is now capped at for 2 for most unique locations,instead of being equal to athletics with no cap. Three reasons: 1) A vanilla VC bug resulted from high athletics in Odin's cave: https://forums.taleworlds.com/index.php/topic,348857.msg8354788.html#msg8354788
2) It made 0 logical sense that you being 'sneaky' could work once the first enemy started shouting AARRRRGG and swinging his sword at you
3) many of these locations should be difficult as they provide very powerful unique items
- Odin's cave is capped at 0 instead of 2 to make absolutely sure the above vanilla bug doesn't arise.
- A few left uncapped: the exceptions is the mercian forest infiltration and the ambush siege warfare missions. Given the nature of those, basically had to keep it for them, even given the flaws.
- Mercenaries now cost 2x wages normal value, instead of 1.2x, in upkeep. Should encourage their more time limited and targeted use. And if you want camp follower women to improve morale, you will have to pay for it more now, as seems right
- Mounted troops cost 1.5x instead of vanilla 1.25x wages. Should be one of the most effective ways of encouraging players to rely on infantry, and reflects the care and maintenance of the horse (or, given the way some players hurl their mounted troops around, the purchasing of very expensive replacement mounts). Despite rumors to the contrary, VC has extremely powerful cavalry, lets make them expensive to keep them on the periphery.
- With the above two changes, Frankish horsemen should no longer be the instant cheap powerful army they were. Instead, you'll have to think about whether you can afford it. Also, will do a great deal to improve the viability of strategic alternatives in several troops trees with mounted units (briton horsemen vs archers, frisian horsemen vs warriors, etc)
- Lvl 26 moved to 27 as cutoff for midrange wages. Vanila cutoff created illogical jump in some faction troop trees with a favored lvl 27 unit (ie, saxon tier IV spearmen vs swordsmen, Norse the reverse). Though the later Tier V units have quality differences, those don’t exist at Tier IV, so no point in having such a cost jump. Later changes to recruiting mechanics will be enough to encourage reliance on home troops.
- Very minor shift, but Tier IV and V wages increased by 4, ensuring linear increase difference with tier III at least covers persuasion difference given only to them, keeping the multiplied the ultimate determiner of difference (beyond level itself).
- Defender accuracy boosts in sieges reduced from crazy magical heatseeking javilin 300% vanilla values to a believable 150% reflecting knowledge of home terrain to judge distance, see: https://www.reddit.com/r/mountandblade/comments/7uoduo/infantry_focused_mods/dtn5oz9/
- No more immersion breaking 50% accuracy for attackers in siege. Let the walls and battles speak for themselves.
- Featured Longbow is enabled for shop sales.
- Begin town recruiting nerfs starting here:
- a modifier to number of recruits if the 3rd tier is rolled, based on relationship. So now, you will either get a large number of lower level troops, or a smaller number of higher level troops, with the reduction based on how high your relationship is.
- Recruits start lower in number
- Min result is now 0 troops instead of 1
- smaller growth from renown
- prosperity provides a boost to the random roll, not absolute amount, and is adjusted by religion, but the boost is slightly higher
- Charisma and leadership boosts are adjusted by religion
- Begin town recruiting buffs here:
- High center relations provides double the number of bonus recruits as before
- chance of negative relations blocking normal recruiting lowered to 90% from 100%
- Much higher bonus for being lord of the town (x5 vanilla value, 0-10 extra instead of 0-2 extra, and applies after religious modifier, meaning a lord can recruit well even if he doesn't share the town's region)
- As a whole, this should result in a much more logical recruiting structure, and make relations much more important in getting high level troops (rather than having a hard cap of 30 after which it doesn't matter) The value of higher relations and being a lord to recruiting has increased substantially. This is realistic, and encourages developing good core recruiting centers, rather than around-the-world type circuits of recruiting.
- A tournament balancing change--ponies instead of horses as a reward. This is the same issue as the earlier switch for norse armor to a generic armor--many cultures in Viking Conquest do not use the full-sized horses, and would not give them as rewards (not even their lords have them). With this, tournament rewards should now be balanced--a reasonably expensive and useful sword, armor, mount, and the useful cow--but not the potentially best armor in the game and a full horse, right from the beginning, as a skilled player can win tournaments with a starting character.
- Merc changes begin here:
- Dorested now gets full chance of all mercs for tavern recruits. The limitied list seemed motivated by storyline, but wasn't limitied to it, and wasn't needed in any event. Norse towns can now attract the full range of recruits, including frankish cavalry.
- Sailors no longer appear as tavern mercs. They were 10x too expensive (over 400 vs 40 from old captain by docks), and they are now replaced by spearmen, making spearmen more common than the fancier mercs (as is realistic)
- Meanwhile, frankish cavalry is now 1/4 as common as other mercs. and is otherwise replaced with the spearmen.
- So we have Spearmen, 2.75x as common as other mercs; Frankish cavalry, 0.25x as common as other mercs. Should be a more sensible system, better fitting the rarity of high level cavalry in VC. Combined with the merc wage changes especially, it no longer strains belief all the AI lords aren't running around with frankish cavalry as well, and no more instant, cheap 300WP player armies wearing heavy mail.
- Player leadership skill no longer magically makes more mercs available in tavern. Instead, they simply roll over a larger random range. (ie, rather than 3-9+ leadership, it rolls 3-19, giving same avg results as 5 leadership)
- Village recruitment changes begin here:
- doubled growth by relations, halved growth by renown. Villagers care more about your local rep, they don't read newspapers.
- charisma and leadership bonus now are modified by faith
- charisma and leadership are now about 2.5x as effective at increasing recruits
- base recruits start lower
- Rolling a tier II recruiting session now gives about 1/2 as many total recruits. Vanilla was about 3/4. They don't have many experienced men--but a lot of men you can train.
- Higher tier recruits become available for a player much earlier, 30 rather than 60, but have a 50 percent fail rate on that (they still get another check after though)
- Being lord of a village gives +0-60 extra recruits, not reduced by religious diffeences,. Vanilla was basically +0-2 extra guys. The lord now has a 70% chance of upgraded tier even if the peasants dislike him
- So there is a serious advantage to keeping a village under your control--huge numbers of men can be pressed into your service rapidly. May be a viable strategic choice despite the lower money now.
- Per Zeqe's request, some faction troops will now defend villages. It will be about 1/3 each of basic farmers and 2 kinds better troops. Also changed how number of defenders are determined, instead of adding a number to low prosperity (which in vanilla meant you would get a discrete cutoff where increasing prosperity suddenly dropped number of defenders by 20), a min is just set.
- fix for vanilla VC bug reported by Maluxorath--hardcore finance used to actually reduce upgrade costs compared to normal. Now hardcore is the same as normal. Now, hardcore is +25% normal costs.
- The final tier is no longer such a huge discrete jump in upgrade costs, instead is just a 1.5x modifier over normal cost from being the final tier. The old huge jump was making it a seriously questionable move to upgrade to the last tier--they were stronger, but not quite warranting the close to 2-3000 peningas it could get to, especially when top tier mercs hire for much less, prisoners hire for much less, etc, and you are essentially paying 2500 pengingas + a tier IV unit in exchange for a tier 5.
- Major change to upgrade costs for mounted units. If the prior troop is level 23 or below, ie you are upgrading to a tier IV or below mounted unit, the cost is now 2x normal price. Why? First, because of realism--horses and ponies cost a lot in VC. Second, because of troop tree strategic alternatives. Most mounted units of a low level compete with a very underwhelming, low level unit for upgrades (briton horsemen vs briton archers, frisian horsemen vs frisian warriors, etc). The mounted line often has much better skils, equipment, everything. So let's make it cost something to pursue that line.
- However--if the troop is upgrading to a final tier horsemen, then the cost is only increased by 25% (less than vanilla VC 33% increase). This is because final upgrades are already very expensive, and frankly the horse units at the tops of those tiers are not really that much better, or better at all, than the extremely well equipped foot top tier units. If you decided to forgo just hiring frankish cavalry and train your own, no need to punish you with a huge cost increase. It isn't justified by realism much anyway, as if you look at the equipment upgrades hapening along those lines, even with the mount included there isn't much of a difference in tier iv to tier v jump compared to some f the infantry lines of other factions. Note that since base upgrade costs are doubled here and level is higher, often you will end up paying around the same premium as at lower tiers.
- Some very slight reductions in ai lord troop wages at the high end, and additional 500 penningas per week given to npc lords as part of their base income
- AI Kings now get 2000 instead of 1000 additional base income, which should be closer to matching what the player can achieve from a midsized kingdom tribute. AI marshalls no longer receive free money.
- No more cheating in favor of player marshalls on normal difficulty, forcing AI lords to join their campaigns even if they wouldn't have joined an NPC martial. The prior script to do this was justified by this comment to the code: "#Because players become confused when they see very less participation from AI lords to their campaigns." I will leave it on for "easy", but if you are playing "normal" I assume you want a fair game and won't be confused when things don't go your way.
- tax efficiency no longer has a maximum. No more gamey keep taking centers until you hit the limit--this is the dark ages, you are a feudal lord, not an emperor. Well, it will cap at 99, but that won't help you.
- merc contracts now pay about 6 times as much (should cover close to your wages plus some profit). I didn't have time to deal with the relationship issues of all your faction enemies hating you after contract concludes yet, but at least you'll be sufficiently compensated if you decide to explore this oft-neglected aspect of Viking Conquest.
- Special tournament participant chance of joining reduced. They were traveling the world just a little too fast at 50%
- No more "camp defender" female npc tournament participants. Hordes of female tournament fighters never fit into the spirit of a realistic look at the dark ages. What was worse is that the camp defenders had terrible stats, so Vanilla VC wasn't throwing great female fighters into the mix, it was instead using them as low-skilled filler troops to be soundly beaten by the male troops tournament after tournament. Female heroes should be special in the 9th century--rare, but very powerful. As they were in the sagas, and as represented by Brunhild, Solveig, the female tournament special fighter "the pict", and the female player character.
- Slightly less reductions to tax inefficiency available. In vanilla VC, you could get bonuses to fiefs without inefficiency really easily--+2 if your minister likes you, +6 for hiring tax collectors, meaning even on the hardest difficulty you could have 10 center points without inefficiency. So 5 towns or 10 castles without any tax inefficiency on the hardest difficulty in vanilla. They in combination would also reduce inefficiency rate to (x-2)/2, meaning you could get it a point below native. The end result was far less inefficiency than other mods, and the costs of increasing relationship with minister and hiring the tax collectors wasn't really high enough to justify this, especially in a player kingdom (where the tax collectors also double tribute)
- So, let's separate it out both game mechanics wise and conceptually. The tax collectors already double tribute, so let's make them have the scaling effect only here as well, leaving in place them multiplying inefficiency by 1/2, while reducing their straight bonus down to 2/3 the vanilla value, making it +4 center points. The minister liking you bonus one can understand as them not skimming off the top from wherever they happen to be located, probably a town, worth 2 center points. So let's leave them with their vanilla +2 to center points without inefficiency. Now the player can get +6 center points, and subtract 2 and then divide his inefficiency by 2 (bringing it down 1 below native rate).
- That means with both the player can hold 3 towns and 1 village and 1 castle without any inefficiency on the hardest difficulty level, which basically entails controlling a region of the game. That seems about as powerful as these should be (remember, in a player kingdom , the tax collectors fee will be in large part covered by the doubling of tribute payments as the kingdom gets larger---and the hiring decision should require weighing some things). This may still be too powerful. Let me know if you think so, and we can examine nerfing it further.
- Player religion no longer reduces tax income. I can think of a number of ways a pagan lord could ensure his christian subjects pay their taxes, and in-game dialogue from Frisia seems to confirm this is the general order of things. Besides, it only applied to the player, which is the sort of mechanic best removed.
- Campaign ai setting no longer reduces tax income. Too important to keep it as a balanced source of income vs other sources.
- finished getting all town, castle, and village recruiting code consistent to the above described changes
- Normal Campaign AI will have the tax inefficiency limit of Hard (base 2 points). Even with the nerfs I did to vanilla VC "minister likes you" and "tax collectors" mechanics, you will still get +6 from those, and be able to have 4 towns or 8 castles with 0 inefficiency, and only minor growth in inefficiency after that. 4 towns is plenty rule yourself.
- All ways the game cheats in favor of the player on Normal Campaign AI are removed.
- Many changes have occurred to allow the AI lords to compete on a more even footing with the player, including increases to their base finances, increased king simulated tribute to match what the player gets, and much better army templates.
- scriptorium now grants rent bonus (400, half the boost of the slave market) and very small prosperity boost (0-2) occasionally. The prior renown bonus was worthless--by the time a player had a town to build one, they would often never get a single point of renown from it.
- schools also give a small 0-1 prosperity boost. Same for mead halls.
- religious buildings have their bonus to prosperity reduced to keep overall bonuses around equal
- added upgrade from basic Vikingr to danish and Norwegian elites (thanks to EvilSquid for contributing this)
- Bandit XP required to promote changed for easy and normal leveling to 3/2, from vanilla 2/3. I think the 2/3 was probably a typo in vanilla VC. Hardcore leveling has a 2x modifier for bandit leveling, and while easy and normal should be lower, they shouldn't reverse the trend entirely and make it easier to level bandits. So 3/2 is probably what was intended in the first place.
- PD -1 penalty from medium armor, increased penalty from heavy armor to -2. I removed the penalties from helmets to protect units like the briton archer, but the light armor/medium armor divide is a useful way to present some tradeoffs to the norse warrior archer's heavier gear, and seems realistic enough. Basic longbow +1 PD requirement. Dodging the debate of whether higher tech bows arrive with the norse, the other kingdoms can at least make approrpiate drawweights for their worse bows. (This couples with changes to the PD skills of units)
- Angle and Saxon horsemen now are tier III units upgrading from the archer, similar to the briton horsemen, irish horsemen, and pictish horsemen. As with the britons, picts, and irish, this is a bit odd, but let's face it--the player was basically never going to upgrade into them otherwise. Limit of 2 upgrade paths prevents placing them where most logical, in the swordsmen line.
- standard bearers can now upgrade to top tier units. If you use them and one survives long enough, seems fitting.
- Irish horsemen can now upgrade to irish mounted bodyguards. Their skillset fits, and they need something to compensate for being tier IV (compared to the briton skirmishr cav) and only having ponies (compared to both pictish and briton versions)
- Norse warrior archers can now upgrade to tier IV sworsdman Veterans. There is a historically accurate transition among norse from using bow to greater status as a melee fighter, so it makes sense to give that chance, especially given their skillset fits. Being lvl 26 themselves, means it will take a LOT more to get them ready to upgrade than a normal tier III swordsman.
- Briton horsemen can now upgrade to briton tier IV units. The briton line could use some additional potential anyway, and their skillset fits well. As a level 26 unit, it will take forerver to upgrade them anyway.
- Absurdly high pictish veteran 1 handed skill dropped 30 points
- Absurdly low Irish champion 2 handed skill raised 50 points. Then its crazy high irrelevant WP lowered.
- norse bodyguards guarantee helments
- frank horsemen, old captains, irish bodyguard, storyline heavies, pictish noble guarantee gloves
- svear mercs, storyline heavies guarantee helmet
- merc skirmisher cav level lowered to 24 (will make cheaper, especially given mercs and cav are both more expensive in 5.0, and they aren't that good--I never thought they were worth hiring even in vanilla costs)
- All tier II archer units get powerdraw +2, tier III get +3. For most archers with basic bows, this will increase their damage by about 7-10 points. They remain cutting, limiting effectivness against armoed opponents.
- All archers get +40 WP.
- saxon and angle arches get additional +10 WP
- Finn archers get powerdraw +4, +25 bow proficincy above 40 already granted, only use featured longbows. level raised to 24 (archers getting more powerful), puts them over cut off point of lvl 23 making wages more expensive. They will be over twice previous wage cost now, and almost twice as expensive as norse elite archers to maintain, but about their equal in pure archery (with more arrows and a bit more powerdraw because no armor or shield)
- Briton archers get an additional +30 archery proficicncy, putting them just under the skill of the top norse by only 10 less (but with worse bows). They are a tier III unit competing with excelent horsemen skirmisher cavalry.
- Camp Defender archery not buffed (would be silly, none of the previous iterations of the unit have any archery skill, so she would go from no skill to amazing in one upgrade). Instead, general level reductions for the line of unit, to make upgrades easier and units cheaper.
- Frisian horsemen reduced to be more like an actual tier II unit. They are now fairly comparable to the Frisian Warrior they compete with for upgrades--lvl 21, 170 wp instead of 210, -1 to most skills, etc. It was crazy before--they were matched to the veteran that the warrior upgrades into, which made no sense. I have enabled them upgrading into the Veteran though, so if you train them up they can get there.
- frankish horsemen lvl increase to 33, old captain to 38, storyline special heavy units to 38
- standard bearers get guarnteed gloves. they need all the help they can get, and have top armor anyway.
- top tier units have base of level 30 (+1) , better aligns with their value for wages and autocalc.
- Norse noble significantly buffed and then made lvl 33.
- top of the line tier Vs like Norse bodyguard and Saxon noble level increas to 35. (to reflect top of the top in their class, and get a bit more wages and higher autocalc)
- Better but not absolute best like angle bodyguard to 33, same reason
- Ok but not top like angle noble to 32.
- lvl 27 tier IV units given between 20-30 extra WP to their primary weapon, to account for wage increase and displayed potential in promotion. (handling the promotion potential fiancnail issue with level differences at tier V, while still having current wages reflect current abilities)
- Briton tier IV and V units given +10 WP. Let's make them just a little better, and not so clearly the trash faction troop tree.
- Briton tier V noble two handed skill buffed to match one handed
- Svear Warrior upgrades to Svear Elite Vikingr (given the level this will take as much XP as a Tier V unit, so very very rare). Thanks Scar and EvilSquid for this idea!
- Angle and saxon horsemen now upgrade to banner carriers. Will be very rare though given their level, as rare as a normal tier V upgrade. Briton horsemen upgrade switched to banner carriers, same added for briton archer.
- Basically, banner carriers are the pesumptive update for a tier III unit lacking another path now. They distinguished themselves in combat, and earned the honor of carrying the standard. Should encourage use of these units, since you don't have to always sacrifice another good upgrade for them, as before.
- Banner carriers now upgrade back to same unit line they split off from, ie either noble or bodyguard depending on where the banner carrier is in that particular faction troop tree.
- Guarantee helmets for Frisian veteran.
- Gurantee helmets for Elite bandits (all 3 elite vikingr, ship captain, bandit leader)
- Distinguish touurnament heroes. Uhtred is now the best overall fighter among them, while Nial is a bit more skilled with swords/axes and Anchorect with spears.
- Character creation stat boosts rebalanced. For those upgrading current saves, here are the detailed character creation changes, so you can see if you are entitled to extra import/export points:
- Generally, all character creation choices now get the same total stat points (the one exception being age--being the normal adult age is still superior to being very young or very old, as makes sense). However, skill point differences remain, as they aren't so critical and precious in VC compared to stats.
- Female PCs now have the same base stats as males (+2 strength/agility, -2 charisma/intelligence, instead of the reverse from Vanilla VC). I understand why the VC devs reduced starting female PC strength. but the female PC is by her nature an exceptional being--she should be able to defy the normal averages if she wishes. Second, vanilla VC female PCs having higher intelligence/charisma (+4 relative to males) doesn't fit the functions of these stats--charisma is often troops or nobles responding to someone as a leader or fellow lord, and intelligence is basically education--if anything females at this time would have a harder time obtaining both. Third, the player has stat points to distribute as she wishes--let her decide what kind of game she wants, rather than pushing her towards a non-melee player. Given the other stat boosts in creation available for intelligence and charisma, and the need for a minimum of strength and agility, this ensures maximum flexibility for everyone to create the kind of character they want.
- Sandbox starts now get the same +1 Seaking skill that storyline starts get
- All personality choices now equalized to the stat points of choleric. This means that:
- sanguine, phlegmatic (+2 stat points relative to vanilla); melancholic (+1 stat point relative to vanilla)
- Virtue choices equalized in stats to vanilla Justice, and skill boosts removed. This means: wisdom: gains 1 stat point; fortitude: gains 1 stat point, loses 1 skill point; temperance: gains 1 stat point, loses 1 skill point
- Player now starts at 1 renown, instead of 60. Giving the player 60 free renown at character creation cheapened the beginning part of the game.
- Village defender changes altered a bit to better adjust to current saves (will still take a while to upgrade, and may need to be looted once, to replace most of the defenders with the new better-equiped ones) (this reminder needs credit attributed to a user when making final log, will do so in a few days)
- Farmers taking their goods to market will now have a few hired spearmen along to defend them. (Thanks EricAKAPode for coming up with this idea)
If you do choose Hard campaign AI, you will have: faster replenishment of defeated AI lords and weaker player kingdom vassal lords.
Map travel speeds reduced to 50% of vanilla VC values, to achieve realistic travel times based on:
- mounted travel times between London and York vs speeds achieved in the Tevis cup
- sea travel speeds from Ribe to London vs historical guesses at longboat speeds
- historical records of roman army marching speeds (couldn't find anything closer)
It should now take realistic times to travel between most cities (the few exceptions are areas where the map is condensed, possibly in the North Sea or Frisia, but even there the speed reduction should make things much more realistic). Tested and AI seems to be doing fine conducting sieges and defending their territory with the slower speeds, outside of the trouble they always have.
Alternate download for vanilla faster than realistic map speeds available at nexus, if you dislike this change.
Player no longer has a lower ship speed multiplier than AI. change of random speed adjustments to -2 to 2 rather than to 3. Proportionally balanced speed adjustments to new base multiplier values.
Frisian lords now recruit Frankish Cavalry mercs as part of their elite roster, and recruit frisian cavalry in greater numbers (A chance for a little anti-cavalry combat if the player likes, though of course they are still overwhelmingly foot troops)
Battle renown gain capped at base 30 per battle, to limit the renown advantage of farming bandits as a solo player for crazy high renown gains, and put winning big battles as a commander in not so disadvantaged a position for growing fame.
Renown reduction for troop join cost now more limited.
Tournament renown gain slightly increased
War trophy renown gains increased moderately
free renown when storyline jarl asks you to recruit men reduced from +18 to +2, and for reporting back from +9 to +2
free renown on recruiting companions changed from +10 to +1. Companion hiring is no longer easy renown gain.
Renown bonus from completing grand conquests changed from +60 to 4x+30 (so 120 total to make much more rewarding overall for such a great achievment, but also allow to be reduced a bit more by existing renown)
(minor changes that will only show up in new games):
removed lady headgear
Some stat changes for Lords
Sigurd snake in the eye-+4 Int, +2 leadership, +2 training
Helgi Hvasi- +10 strength
Ubbe/Hubbi--+30 strength, +80 WP, +2 PS, +2 Ironflesh (heed Ravn's warning regarding fighting Ubbe)
Ketill Bjornson--+2 charisma, +2 strength, +20 WP
Alfred the Great- +7 Int, -2 strength, -2 agility (total of 7 points distributed scross leadership, surgery, spotting, pathfinding
Wulfhere-- +2 int, +2 tactics
Ceowulf--+2 int, +2 leadership
Egbert-- -2 int, -2 charisma, -2 leadership
The following lords now have set reputations:
WESSEX
Aelfred the Great--upstanding
Wulfhere--cunning
NORWAY (we can't recreate Harald's conquest of Norway, but this should create some internal conflict between loyalists and the others)
Guttorm--upstanding (loyal regent)
Ketil---upstanding
Bjorn Ketilson--martial
(Ketilsdottir made moralist to fit in with the family)
King Erik--quarlsome
Kjvoti--debauched
LAITHLAND
Ketilson--upstanding
NORTHYMBRIA
Egbert--cunning
Ubbe/Hubbi--martial
Divourced Thorunn Ketillsdottir from Kjvoti, to leave a Norway player with another spouse option (Gyda being the famed love of Fairhair)
Family relationships added:
Ketilson in Ireland now has proper Norwegion parents assigned
Guttorm (Fairhair's regent) age reduced
Frisian Haraldson lords now assigned as sons of Frisian Harald lord. Ages adjusted accordingly.
Egbert the 2nd made son of the 1st
AI Lords will no longer court women who are 35 years or older (This is to protect Aslaug and Rhodri's wife from getting courted. Sure, the player can still court the wives of kings, but at least the player has to opt-in to such silly behavior, and the AI should leave them alone)
Ketil given Rogeland
Guttorm give Skirringsalr (the castle close to Tunsberg, him being Harald's regent)
Some minor tweaks to difficulty settings
Assigned Tiarna_Cummascach_mac_Cathalan son of Mael_Cathalan_mac_Indrechtaig (didn't assign wife as mom, was significantly younger, figured some amount of lords should have second marriages from initial wife dying in childbirth)
Assigned sidroc the young as son of sidroc the elder (not sure if that is true really, but we need some more complicated family structures, too many simple lone lords right now, and the ages match
Assigned Tiern_Brochwael_map_Meurig son of Guledic_Meurig_map_Arthfael. increased age of father to compensate, decreased age of son
3 lords (all mac conchobar) made son of Mael_Conchobar_mac_Taidg_Mor and his wife, age adjustments accordingly
A couple of lords with father/son names (in mide and glyswing I think) left without relationship, because graphics and other relations made adding father/son relationship seem like a bad idea.
Ketil's wife slightly increased in age
Harald (Frisian) age increased to give more leeway to new sons with children. His wife also increased in age for same reason.
Gotrik haraldon's daughter decreased in age, wife moved up in age
Both haraldsons moved back up in age slightly (still younger than before
added mother relationship for the haraldsons
2 goidelic newly defined as mother ladies slightly increased in age
And Lynxbucklers suggestions: Dyfnwal map Rhun (and his brother Echou) sons of Rhun map Arthgal, Ages adjusted accordingly, Alanorous map Eliud son of Eliud map Eferferdyn
Credits list:
Reddit user D_Pear and BallioLeno for discussions regarding siege accuracy mechanics (fogot to include this credit in 5.0 so putting it here)
Reddit user Lynxbuckler for suggesting several missing family relationships
Slower travel increases the significance of both troop wages and income from fiefs, as those will stay constant, while the rate of looting will go down. This improves the AI lords, and gives a bit more of an economic challenge to the player, who now will be more likely to see his fiefs as an important means of supporting his army. Keeping a vast army in the field indefinitely will also challenge food provisions more. The player will be more likely to keep their army garrisoned when not campaigning, both to reduce the wages and food issues, which seems realistic, and focus more on developing his fiefs as a source of income.
Suggested houserules for a more challenging play through:
1) Don't reload ammo in the inventory chest more than at most a couple of times per battle if you are mounted (otherwise, it becomes just as easy as other mods to solo enemy armies at range)
2) Don't use the much higher than normal equipment sale prices at the refuge smith (it makes the economy much easier) (bandit camp sales are a little more justifiable--at least there, you are paying a tradeoff with the penalties of low rep--though those should probably be limited as well)
3) Don't drop recruited prisoner stacks into camps before the first nightfall (the check to remove a percentage from escaped prisoners happens during the first night, so dropping them into camps for that night escapes the check, making it far too easy to obtain large amounts of high level prisoners)
4) Don't get a tree branch, mount a horse, and club all the elite bandits unconscious for recruiting (same as above, too many easy high level units)
5) Don't join into lord battles that have little to do with you just for the free prisoners or captured ships (unless you are willing to lose men and actually participate)
6) Don't purposefully lose tournaments to pump up the renown of your kingdom's lords (obviously fine for them to get the boost for legitimate wins, just don't take a fall to milk feasts and their multiple tournaments a day to make all your lords capable of commanding huge armies)
Credits added:
Reddit user Joaquin823 for suggesting rebellion changes in optional add-on
Taleworlds user Kalarhan for suggesting changes to timescale in optional add-on
Full Changelog:
As always, save compatible--full release version, no need to install prior versions first
refined fix for vanilla Warband glitch that sometimes made low level troop gear fill up the loot buffer and crowd out better items, unless the player killed enemies in an unlikely order (now Balance Mod sorts killed enemies by descending level prior to looting, ensuring player always gets the loot they deserve no matter what order they kill the enemies. Earlier Balance Mod versions used caps for low level troop loot as a workaround.) See complete details here: https://www.reddit.com/r/mountandblade/comments/8p48ge/kill_order_effect_on_looting_and_mod_solutions/
Removed the crazy high sale prices for equipment in refuge/bandit camps (now they pay reasonable amounts). The prior prices effectively broke the economy for anyone who sold heavily in bandit camps.
Companions now slightly easier to keep in party (grievances go down faster)
Repurposed Norse standard bearer into 2 handed Dane axe (using troll axe as it fits well) wielding troops. Norse tree could use additional unit variety given the enhanced effect of religion on recruiting. Name staying same for now to avoid having to test saved game compatibility issues (haven't tried to see if it would actually create problems to change name, just for now playing it safe making 100% sure it will work fine with current saves), so for now they serve both roles, presumably carrying the standard outside of combat (they still have the trophies for looting purposes). This gives an option for players who want some dane axe troops, even if a bit early historically, and varies up the troop types a bit. Changed upgrade paths around. Gave helmets. All changes fully save compatible (no troop stats modified to preserve save game compatibility, the standard carriers already had good 2 handed skill, that’s largely why they were picked).
lowered troll axe strength requirement to 18
removed stabbing animation (now swing only), reduced cost
Increased berserkers and repurposed standard bearer/dane axe wielders in pure norse recruiting templates (danish, Norwegian).
Increased discount for goods at production centers (timber camps, stone quarries, salt mines)
Increased most quest alloted times by 2x (some by 1.5x or other values). Earlier quest timers were fine even for the new realistic travel speeds in almost all cases, but good deliveries could be too tight on time with the flat 7 days regardless of distance, so to avoid any issues easiest to just double almost all the times. Haven't changed the conversation dialogue descriptions to match the new days yet.
Increased gold rewards dramatically (4x) for caravan and cattle escort quests. Increased gold rewards for some delivery quests by around 2x. These paid far too little previously.
Rearranged foot armor assignment (giving top tier spear units from saxons, angles, frisians, and britons better boots, as opposed to vanilla VC where they are downgrading leg armor by going from boots to shoes when upgraded Tier IV ---> V). Also improved Old Captain and Frankish horsemen boot selection
Increased price of leather gloves (partly to reflect value of leather and distribution on non elite units, but also to reduce their spam into loot, since low value items loot so much more frequently)
Rearranged some color schemes of footwear assignment
Lowered leg armor on all footwear to better reflect unprotected legs (both matching what is sensible given the items and the historical reality of less leg protection in the time).
Adjusted bandit spawn, lair respawn, and book reading times
Implemented DeSoto's suggestion to remove throwing weapons from tournaments
Switched out the "practice lance" (worse version of the tournament spear) with the better version, and made 1/2handed axe a bit more common.
disabled keep horse in town tweak
Slight difficulty level tweaks (hard difficulty no longer gets reduced tariffs, normal gets same AI target evaluation treatment as hard)
Gloves no longer can be improved in quality. Since the AI didn’t get the benefit, it was too cheap easy one-sided armor boost for player and companions to just harden gloves.
Caio changed to pagan to reflect conflict with Beda, as well as provide an additional pagan companion
Some stroyline vanilla vc set personalities not working fixed by making them always occur (it seems the storyline condition wasn't registering when lord personalities were set--Hrodulf Haraldson was supposed to always be cunning in storyline for example, but it wasn't occurring)
a slight slowing of player relative to ai on water restored, easily dwarfed by likely player advantages in navigation, ship type, or sailor unit mechanics
Rebellion changes: No cap to charisma reducing rebellion chance, and relation drop changed from -30 to -5 (should make rebellions from happy lords only 1/6th as frequent or less).
Changes to relations penalty for granting fiefs (primarily to make AI kingdoms more cohesive)--base drop reduced from 2 to 1, drop for bad relations between AI lords only half as high. Before -24 relations already got the max drop, now generally relations drops will be less severe and responsive to truly terrible relations.The player could counter these drops easily enough, by either focussing carefully on the best personality lords, or tediously going around requesting people's input into fief granting decisions (which gives a bonus), but the AI couldn't, and there was a ton of treachery in AI kingdoms late game as a result. This serves mainly to make the AI bad personality lords less often end up in a spiral of treachery, and to close the gap just a bit between personality desirability, since the player is the only one in a position to carefully select. It also allows retaining the day-to-day behavior of vanilla VC bad personality weighted AI lords, when they make strategic decisions or interact with the player, while keeping total treachery and instability to something closer to what the Vanilla warband martial weighted personalities might display.
Finetuned all AI party templates for greater variety and better match to faction background (similar to the 5.0 Balance Mod more elite templates in overall challenge). For example, Northymbria is the principal employer of the new dane axe wielding troops, Frisia has large numbers of hired frankish cavalry mercs, the pure norse factions (danmark and northvegr) have larger numbers of berserkers, etc. Should give more variety when fighting the various factions
Changed tutorial battle axe to better fit new tournament templates (allowed use on horseback, removed thrusts)
Added and removed some upgrade paths
Added special pictish hornmen unit into the pictish upgrade tree, and gave it better javilins while removing knife to reflect tier. Previously it was very hard for the player to obtain this unit.
Adjusted AI lord recruiting speed
Tournaments vary by faction, including horses in Pict/Briton lands and throwing weapons only in certain factions
7.0 Special Thanks:
Reddit user Joaquin823 for suggesting changes to rebellions
Taleworlds user Rubik for making his Custom Commander code available for all to reference
Talewords user DeSoto for suggesting changes to tournaments
Reddit user Syn7axError for suggesting lowering leg armor strength (way back in the 1.0 release thread)
Nexus user Karth Galin for suggesting changes to quest timers
Reddit user D0UB1EA for also suggesting quest timing issue