I really love this mod! Way more logical in terms of clothing and how the balance goes.
At the same time I have noticed some balance issues in my playthrough.
My main cocern is the Recruitment pool (for lords and players) in Villages. A good example is Empire. You have a bunch of noble units spawned to be rectuited. if there are 10 slots to recruit, 6 of them will easily be nobles, which become cartaphracts in the future.
As the result, I unintentionally ended up having an army of 100+ Cartaphracts, 30 inf, 30 arch at the tier 3 clan. Literally melting faces of ANY lord or a couple of them with no efforts (Everyone->Attack). Which was fun at first but then became boring as hell so I had to start a new game.
I expect an update where the rates are balanced towards the reduction of cavalry on the battlefield in general. Pike infantry is also somewhat rare, thus a rock paper scisors scenario didn't work for me. The cavalry just melts ALL and the fight comes down to who has more cav.
P.S. Empire cavalry is better than Vlandia. Which is a shame!
I'm having an issue as of today where all the troops that are added in this mod show up naked in the recruitment menu. I'm using a bunch of other mods but none of them add new troop trees. Some nobles also show up naked in the encyclopedia when I look them up. Is anyone else having this issue? Any possible fixes? Please and thank you. EDIT: I managed to fix it by moving my game files to a different folder, which reset the load order. If anyone else has the same issue, make sure your mods don't conflict with one another and try verifying game files and tweaking the load order.
Another balance issue I faced was the Crossbowmen. Yes, they are less effective than bows...as stated in the mod description. Yet, it is not mentioned that they are completely ineffective! Just try to playtest in a custom battle and see for yourself. -The Dmg output (per shot) is higher, but still needs a few hits to kill (just like a bow does, but the bow does it better. -Shorter engagement distance compared to he bows (which is logical) -Straight shooting arc (which is logical), but can't shoot from behind your own troops and AI doesn't take this into account (they often stand there and chill).
All in all In my tests the crossbowmen were just occupying my vital army slots, while being next to useless. Truth to be told, the top tier Empire crossbowmen Do get some kills, but still negligible.
I think that the crossbow dmg should be tweaked so it can one shot things, armored or not (just like in real life). It won't become IMBA, because they rarely hit shiet anyway. Or the Weapon skill of all crossbowmen could be improved across the board so they can actually hit something and shoot farer.
For now, I refrain from hiring crossbowmen at all.
Hi, thanks for feedback. Regarding your first point about villages, if I remember correctly (it's been over a year), I just simply replaced vanilla unit ID's for those first tiers, so any balance issues there are with the base game. I'll look into it still though. For the issue with crossbowmen and balance you are probably 100% correct. I did a huge amount of testing for this before release thinking Bannerlord version 1.0 would mean TaleWorlds were happy with all the stats. At that stage all the units worked well and the rock paper scissors balance I thought was great. Unfortunately TaleWorlds keep updating things and have made some significant changes to AI and balance. This is extremely frustrating and will require me to pretty much do all testing again. To do this I'm going to have to commit a lot of time to the game which I currently can't do. So not sure when I can address any issues sorry.
Hi. I know this might sound dumb but when you said NOT compatible with combat module, does this mean I should disable the combat module of RBM or are you pertaining to something else? thanks in advance!
-Don't mind this post. I have already seen the answers from other posts. Thanks for reading regardless!
Loving the Mod, makes Sturgia feel stronk, and not totally useless on the battlefield like in vanilla, however i do have 2.5 complaints
First being the shield health changes, it feels VERY low, as in a few arrows are breaking most of the shields in my shield wall before first contact, i doubt there's a way to single out arrows as a damage type in the projectiles to keep a decent resistance to them, but i'm going to look around and see if it can be tweaked on my end for me, but a MCM menu to tweak this would be awesome, or even just to turn that function off.
Secondly, mostly an aesthetic thing, but why does so much of the infantry have kite shields? Specifically their made for cavalry, it doesn't necessarily make sense for so many to be present in the infantry, especially Sturgia. It also seems very inconsistent in their troop trees too, the Jomsvikings in particular. They consistently have the staple norse style round shields all the way up to the Huskarls which, for whatever reason, are using kite shields. So are the normal footmen and pretty much everything above them are using mostly kites with a couple round shields sprinkled in the variants throughout but have a fairly low % compared to just not having a shield and having a kite over a norse style. Secondly-point5, i Don't know if its just me, a bug, or what, but i feel like i'm getting absolutely bent over by the RNG in the variants as well. It seems like less than 1/3 of my infantry ever get a shield outright, and i have a TON of two handers most of the time so i dont usually suffer too bad in a lot of circumstances but when i need a shield wall to walk up through a hail of arrows or bolts... kinda need them. So i feel like either the RNG is screwing me right now or something weird is happening with the weight of the random chance, if it uses such a system or whatever. Could also be going crazy. If a couple other people notice this as well ill make a bug report
Hi, thanks for the feedback :) I think I'll need to jump back into the game and do some serious testing to confirm everything is working as intended from the initial release since the Bannerlord updates may have changed some stats (why 1.0 not 1.0 TaleWorlds! sigh). Before release I did very in-depth testing to get the best results and balance. With shield strength, if I remember correctly, the stats I gave them are a baseline and then the game adds some rng on top of that. So some may explode in a few arrows, while others take many. I'll have to do testing when I have time to make sure it feels right and that the rock/paper/scissors balance is working.
Again, with the caveat of me having to double check by in-depth testing, the number of shields was also a deliberate decision and was tested for best rock/paper/scissors balance. Unless an update has changed it the shields always formed at the very front of a formation when asked to go into shield wall. There shouldn't be too much rng involved in how many units get a shield or not. All units have different ratios for different reasons, so some like you mentioned might actually be deliberately low in shield numbers while other will have much higher numbers. It's been over a year since I made all these decisions so I can't remember the specific details, but I did put a lot of thought into it at the time. If you are up for some small xml tweaks it should be pretty easy to adjust them to your own preference (just make sure you have them in the same weapon slot or else units will carry two shields with no weapon haha). Cheers
Have a few questions to see if anyone can help me out a little. I know you need to disable the RBM combat module, but there is another option called troop overhaul do you want that enabled (recommended) or disabled? One other question is with the RBM AI settings. Is it okay to disable the posture system since I am not a fan of it. Thanks again to anyone who can answer my questions.
Hi, all that matters is that the very top option for the "RBM Combat Module" section is set to disabled. If so all other options inside that section, including "troop overhaul", are not implemented. Yes, that's all good to disable posture system. I believe I did original balance testing without it as well. Cheers :)
Thank you so much for the quick response. You did a great job on the mod and I support what you been doing. Another quick question, it pertains to bandit group size. I was thinking about using a mod called Dangerous Bandit Parties, it has options were it basically increases the bandit party size by a certain percentage. Do you think your mod would conflict with it in any way, thanks again you're awesome.
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Do you plan to update it so we can have the default faction colours on the latest patch with the crash fix?
Edit: Nvm, figured out how to disable the colour changes myself
At the same time I have noticed some balance issues in my playthrough.
My main cocern is the Recruitment pool (for lords and players) in Villages. A good example is Empire. You have a bunch of noble units spawned to be rectuited. if there are 10 slots to recruit, 6 of them will easily be nobles, which become cartaphracts in the future.
As the result, I unintentionally ended up having an army of 100+ Cartaphracts, 30 inf, 30 arch at the tier 3 clan.
Literally melting faces of ANY lord or a couple of them with no efforts (Everyone->Attack). Which was fun at first but then became boring as hell so I had to start a new game.
I expect an update where the rates are balanced towards the reduction of cavalry on the battlefield in general.
Pike infantry is also somewhat rare, thus a rock paper scisors scenario didn't work for me. The cavalry just melts ALL and the fight comes down to who has more cav.
P.S. Empire cavalry is better than Vlandia. Which is a shame!
EDIT: I managed to fix it by moving my game files to a different folder, which reset the load order. If anyone else has the same issue, make sure your mods don't conflict with one another and try verifying game files and tweaking the load order.
Yes, they are less effective than bows...as stated in the mod description. Yet, it is not mentioned that they are completely ineffective! Just try to playtest in a custom battle and see for yourself.
-The Dmg output (per shot) is higher, but still needs a few hits to kill (just like a bow does, but the bow does it better.
-Shorter engagement distance compared to he bows (which is logical)
-Straight shooting arc (which is logical), but can't shoot from behind your own troops and AI doesn't take this into account (they often stand there and chill).
All in all In my tests the crossbowmen were just occupying my vital army slots, while being next to useless.
Truth to be told, the top tier Empire crossbowmen Do get some kills, but still negligible.
I think that the crossbow dmg should be tweaked so it can one shot things, armored or not (just like in real life). It won't become IMBA, because they rarely hit shiet anyway.
Or the Weapon skill of all crossbowmen could be improved across the board so they can actually hit something and shoot farer.
For now, I refrain from hiring crossbowmen at all.
For the issue with crossbowmen and balance you are probably 100% correct. I did a huge amount of testing for this before release thinking Bannerlord version 1.0 would mean TaleWorlds were happy with all the stats. At that stage all the units worked well and the rock paper scissors balance I thought was great. Unfortunately TaleWorlds keep updating things and have made some significant changes to AI and balance. This is extremely frustrating and will require me to pretty much do all testing again. To do this I'm going to have to commit a lot of time to the game which I currently can't do. So not sure when I can address any issues sorry.
Hopefully, one day then... *sighs*
-Don't mind this post. I have already seen the answers from other posts. Thanks for reading regardless!
First being the shield health changes, it feels VERY low, as in a few arrows are breaking most of the shields in my shield wall before first contact, i doubt there's a way to single out arrows as a damage type in the projectiles to keep a decent resistance to them, but i'm going to look around and see if it can be tweaked on my end for me, but a MCM menu to tweak this would be awesome, or even just to turn that function off.
Secondly, mostly an aesthetic thing, but why does so much of the infantry have kite shields? Specifically their made for cavalry, it doesn't necessarily make sense for so many to be present in the infantry, especially Sturgia. It also seems very inconsistent in their troop trees too, the Jomsvikings in particular. They consistently have the staple norse style round shields all the way up to the Huskarls which, for whatever reason, are using kite shields. So are the normal footmen and pretty much everything above them are using mostly kites with a couple round shields sprinkled in the variants throughout but have a fairly low % compared to just not having a shield and having a kite over a norse style.
Secondly-point5, i Don't know if its just me, a bug, or what, but i feel like i'm getting absolutely bent over by the RNG in the variants as well. It seems like less than 1/3 of my infantry ever get a shield outright, and i have a TON of two handers most of the time so i dont usually suffer too bad in a lot of circumstances but when i need a shield wall to walk up through a hail of arrows or bolts... kinda need them. So i feel like either the RNG is screwing me right now or something weird is happening with the weight of the random chance, if it uses such a system or whatever. Could also be going crazy. If a couple other people notice this as well ill make a bug report
I think I'll need to jump back into the game and do some serious testing to confirm everything is working as intended from the initial release since the Bannerlord updates may have changed some stats (why 1.0 not 1.0 TaleWorlds! sigh).
Before release I did very in-depth testing to get the best results and balance. With shield strength, if I remember correctly, the stats I gave them are a baseline and then the game adds some rng on top of that. So some may explode in a few arrows, while others take many. I'll have to do testing when I have time to make sure it feels right and that the rock/paper/scissors balance is working.
Again, with the caveat of me having to double check by in-depth testing, the number of shields was also a deliberate decision and was tested for best rock/paper/scissors balance. Unless an update has changed it the shields always formed at the very front of a formation when asked to go into shield wall. There shouldn't be too much rng involved in how many units get a shield or not. All units have different ratios for different reasons, so some like you mentioned might actually be deliberately low in shield numbers while other will have much higher numbers. It's been over a year since I made all these decisions so I can't remember the specific details, but I did put a lot of thought into it at the time.
If you are up for some small xml tweaks it should be pretty easy to adjust them to your own preference (just make sure you have them in the same weapon slot or else units will carry two shields with no weapon haha).
Cheers
Yes, that's all good to disable posture system. I believe I did original balance testing without it as well.
Cheers :)