The mod is not working? If you have the latest version of the game, subscribed to the mod, enabled it in the launcher and my mods are below the native modules and you don't crash, the mod is working.
My units don't have the [Bard] prefix as in the screenshots? Yes, that is how it's intended to be. I use that prefix for my own testing in my own game, but when I upload to the Steam Workshop I remove it. In your game, the units WILL NOT have the [Bard] prefix
Help, I crashed? If you think you crashed because of my mod, send me the crash report so I can take a look at it. Otherwise I have no way of knowing why you crashed.
Is it compatible with X, Y or Z I created this with maximum compatibility in mind, but I can't make it compatible and test it with every mod out there. Please try it out before asking.
Is it compatible with RBM? Yes, with caveats. It is compatible with their AI and Arena modules. It is NOT compatible with their Troop Overhaul (for obvious reasons) and only semi-compatible with the Combat Module. I would recommend sticking with only AI and Arena. Also, see above.
Balance seems off? While I do my best to test units one on one to make sure nothing roflstomps other units, I'm just one man, and can't test every unit against every other unit in thousands of scenarios, so I might have missed something. If you think a unit is OP, or a faction's combined arms power is way too strong let me know. Please send me a detailed list of army compositions so I can test that scenario and see what I can do about it.
X unit should use this or that, could you change it? Please provide your reasoning in the comments, with historical sources if possible, and I'll consider the change if it makes sense.
How did you make your shields look like that? It's a mod called Simple Shield Patterns. It's available on the Nexus. Head over there and say hi to the mod author.
This mod sucks, I hate it? That's ok, I can't make it appeal to everyone. No hard feelings.
Hello, not sure if you are still actively modding but I wanted to share something I noticed about this mod. The mounted man-at arms and mounted sergeants are supposed to be a mounted skirmisher troop I take it but these troops do not have any throwing weapons equipped. However, the troop that precedes them, the light cavalry, does have your custom western javelins equipped. If you are still maintaining this mod, could javelins be added to those two units?
Mod is pretty cool, but it's ridiculous that you removed all the spears. Like if you are gonna remove them at least keep the pikeman line. There's no reason to get rid of the spears on sergeants. I would have kept a pikeman line if you wanted to make sergeants exclusively close quarters.
Shame I have to pass because of that.
My suggestion is give back the sergeant's long fine steel spear and give the seasoned footman the tall tipped long spear.
They are needed and they look good with vlandia with the banners on the spears.
The ideal solution is to have the men at arms and the Sergeants as pure close quarters infantry (if that's what you want).
Then have a separate pike unit that upgrades from the seasoned footman that has a nice pike and some pretty good armor. So it's a different specialized unit in contrast to the volgue, which has light armor and a deadly weapon.
Seasoned footmen should get the tall tipped long spear regardless.
Just my two denars.
Why do you have the upgraded volgue unit commented out in your code?
Why do you have the upgraded volgue unit commented out in your code?
The first version of the mod had a Voulgier Sergeant in it but it was so powerful, I decided to not use that unit for the time being. It was simply way too OP, and while I'm ok with Vlandia having a strong shock trooper (along with it's intentionally weaker infantry lines), I didn't want them to be the best at this. If you want to use that unit, just uncomment it and it should work, but then balance might be off in your campaigns.
I'm assuming you balance this for native. When you use RBM AI, things really get different. Like removing spears might make the Sergeants performance in native better, but they use spears very competently with rbm.
The upgraded Falxmen for instance do better than the regular Falxmen with rbm, when compared to native, they just handle the long weapons better. Everything gets kinda weird because they behave differently.
Either way, appreciate your work, plz add a nice pikeman unit!
Yes, I balanced this with vanilla AI as I didn't want to have dependencies on other modders. More often than not, modders lose interest/move on to other things/or otherwise have to deal with life, and I didn't want my mods to go dead just because that happens.
And yes, in vanilla, units do much better with shorter and faster weapons, while with RBM AI, it's actually the opposite.
I haven't tested my units as extensively with RBM as I did with vanilla, but using all my overhauls together, I found that most units performed very similarly to my tests in vanilla. Mix and matching will probably yield weird results, but I obviously cannot balance for every possible scenario out there, so at this point, I'm working on creating an All-in-One mod, as it's easier to maintain, and I can balance it more easily. Maintaining six mods like this in both Nexus and Steam has become an almost full time job at this point.
And yes, I''m going to start testing a pikeman unit in that version, and I'll start backporting to the individual mods soon after. My vision for the Vlandians was that they can counter cavalry with their own cavalry, and do quite well in that task, considering they have the best heavy cavalry in my mods (and even their regular cavalry line pack quite a punch), so the need for a dedicated pikeman was a moot point. In my current playthrough, Vlandia is pretty strong already and I'm finding it very difficult to win field battles against them, even with Sturgia (and all their infantry have spears), so I think my theory is working pretty well from the large battles I've seen so far.
I have a question. On occasion, I run across a few troops that, I'm guessing, are vanilla ones. They usually only have very limited or, at times, no upgrade path at all. Vlandian Pikemen, for example. Or Banner Knights that don't stack with others since they're functionally different. Usually happens when rescuing them from another faction or bandits, so I'm guessing they've been spawned into some caravan's or lord's retinue and ended up being captured at some point.
My question is - if they don't have a linked upgrade path, is there some way to 'turn' them into BARD troops?
//Addendum - I'm also using RBM (without the Troop Overhaul), in case it's item changes could be the thing causing that.
Regrettably, I can't do anything against that. As far as I'm aware, there is no actual replacer for troops, so you could end up in situations where they spawn in low numbers somewhere. This can also happen if you apply the mod on an ongoing save. I would say just sell them into slavery or dismiss them if they annoy you and add a normal BARD troop through console.
I love this mod, it is great. Thank you for creating it!
Looking forward it would be awesome if you did similar work to the minor clans, mercenaries, and militia troops too! Thanks again for all the work you put in modding.
After troubleshooting this with at least a dozen other people on Steam who said the mod is working, it turned out that every single time, they thought they are playing vanilla, but the mod was actually working, they just thought that the [Bard] prefix should be visible as in the screenshots. I've addressed this in the FAQ.
These troop overhauls look great. I really enjoy the more historical approach than other troop overhauls that seem to just want everyone in plate asap.
I see you recomend RBM but I also see you say you've added some items as well. Are these balanced for RBM? Or will they be weak/have problems when using it?
I recommend it for the AI part, but recently have been finding that in RBM longer weapons win the day, while in vanilla it's the opposite. Considering that TW have started implementing stuff from RBM, I might just recommend not using it for the AI only.
When doing the balancing I focus on vanilla, but try most of the units with RBM AI too. Hope that makes sense.
I see, from what I've seen RBMs AI module has begun to have issues without its combat module active as well. May just be an issue that will be fixed soon, but just an FYI.
27 comments
Mount and Blade 2 Bannerlord - B.A.R.D. - Vlandian Army Overhaul Showcase
The mod is not working?
If you have the latest version of the game, subscribed to the mod, enabled it in the launcher and my mods are below the native modules and you don't crash, the mod is working.
My units don't have the [Bard] prefix as in the screenshots?
Yes, that is how it's intended to be. I use that prefix for my own testing in my own game, but when I upload to the Steam Workshop I remove it. In your game, the units WILL NOT have the [Bard] prefix
Help, I crashed?
If you think you crashed because of my mod, send me the crash report so I can take a look at it. Otherwise I have no way of knowing why you crashed.
Is it compatible with X, Y or Z
I created this with maximum compatibility in mind, but I can't make it compatible and test it with every mod out there. Please try it out before asking.
Is it compatible with RBM?
Yes, with caveats. It is compatible with their AI and Arena modules. It is NOT compatible with their Troop Overhaul (for obvious reasons) and only semi-compatible with the Combat Module. I would recommend sticking with only AI and Arena. Also, see above.
Balance seems off?
While I do my best to test units one on one to make sure nothing roflstomps other units, I'm just one man, and can't test every unit against every other unit in thousands of scenarios, so I might have missed something. If you think a unit is OP, or a faction's combined arms power is way too strong let me know. Please send me a detailed list of army compositions so I can test that scenario and see what I can do about it.
X unit should use this or that, could you change it?
Please provide your reasoning in the comments, with historical sources if possible, and I'll consider the change if it makes sense.
How did you make your shields look like that?
It's a mod called Simple Shield Patterns. It's available on the Nexus. Head over there and say hi to the mod author.
This mod sucks, I hate it?
That's ok, I can't make it appeal to everyone. No hard feelings.
Je n'ai pas changé la couleur du royaume, j'ai juste utilisé l'éditeur de bannières en jeu pour mon personnage principal.
Shame I have to pass because of that.
My suggestion is give back the sergeant's long fine steel spear and give the seasoned footman the tall tipped long spear.
They are needed and they look good with vlandia with the banners on the spears.
Then have a separate pike unit that upgrades from the seasoned footman that has a nice pike and some pretty good armor. So it's a different specialized unit in contrast to the volgue, which has light armor and a deadly weapon.
Seasoned footmen should get the tall tipped long spear regardless.
Just my two denars.
Why do you have the upgraded volgue unit commented out in your code?
The first version of the mod had a Voulgier Sergeant in it but it was so powerful, I decided to not use that unit for the time being. It was simply way too OP, and while I'm ok with Vlandia having a strong shock trooper (along with it's intentionally weaker infantry lines), I didn't want them to be the best at this.
If you want to use that unit, just uncomment it and it should work, but then balance might be off in your campaigns.
The upgraded Falxmen for instance do better than the regular Falxmen with rbm, when compared to native, they just handle the long weapons better. Everything gets kinda weird because they behave differently.
Either way, appreciate your work, plz add a nice pikeman unit!
And yes, in vanilla, units do much better with shorter and faster weapons, while with RBM AI, it's actually the opposite.
I haven't tested my units as extensively with RBM as I did with vanilla, but using all my overhauls together, I found that most units performed very similarly to my tests in vanilla. Mix and matching will probably yield weird results, but I obviously cannot balance for every possible scenario out there, so at this point, I'm working on creating an All-in-One mod, as it's easier to maintain, and I can balance it more easily. Maintaining six mods like this in both Nexus and Steam has become an almost full time job at this point.
And yes, I''m going to start testing a pikeman unit in that version, and I'll start backporting to the individual mods soon after.
My vision for the Vlandians was that they can counter cavalry with their own cavalry, and do quite well in that task, considering they have the best heavy cavalry in my mods (and even their regular cavalry line pack quite a punch), so the need for a dedicated pikeman was a moot point. In my current playthrough, Vlandia is pretty strong already and I'm finding it very difficult to win field battles against them, even with Sturgia (and all their infantry have spears), so I think my theory is working pretty well from the large battles I've seen so far.
at times, no upgrade path at all. Vlandian Pikemen, for example. Or Banner Knights that don't stack with others since they're functionally different.
Usually happens when rescuing them from another faction or bandits, so I'm guessing they've been spawned into some caravan's or lord's retinue and ended up being captured at some point.
My question is - if they don't have a linked upgrade path, is there some way to 'turn' them into BARD troops?
//Addendum - I'm also using RBM (without the Troop Overhaul), in case it's item changes could be the thing causing that.
Looking forward it would be awesome if you did similar work to the minor clans, mercenaries, and militia troops too!
Thanks again for all the work you put in modding.
I see you recomend RBM but I also see you say you've added some items as well. Are these balanced for RBM? Or will they be weak/have problems when using it?
When doing the balancing I focus on vanilla, but try most of the units with RBM AI too. Hope that makes sense.