Shadow

[Shadow]

As a Veteran player, I’d say the system could still use a boost, if the devs won’t rein in the number of high end enemies the player faces by the endgame. Fighting outnumbered 2:1 by equal or superior foes just isn’t sustainable and eventually your company’s ground to dust.

How else could we face those odds without constant pyrrhic victories (at best) that leave the company decimated, if not by allowing brothers to become stronger?

It probably shouldn’t be treated like a normal level up, but just a +1 seems too little. Perhaps it could be governed by potential, and allow greater single increases. Just one or two increases per level, but potentially deeper ones.

[Shadow]

PsenBattle wrote:

Hey Shadow,
I don’t have the the time to create proper templates, so you’ll have to work with the original files.
I never work in black and white, so all of the banners are colored already. Nevertheless it should be possible to create new banners with the provided assets.
The files may be a bit crowded at first glance, but I’m sure you’ll figure them out :)

Cheers!

Player Banners

Wow, I had totally underestimated the level of craftsmanship! Such supreme attention to detail!

But with enough digging and tinkering, I suppose I could produce something template-like, more universal and perhaps more editable by those of us who are less enlightened. :P

[Shadow]

The Emperor’s armour looks positively godly! Fantastic work.

Now, I’ve a question, which might be a bit of a stretch, Paul. Assuming you have the working PSDs (if you use Photoshop for the final instance of your work) of the company banners, could you eventually provide all the existing default banner designs but in plain white, say, in PNG? I mean, all the standards with shaded cloth and grime but on a white flag, in all the various shapes you’ve devised.

This would be for modding purposes, given anyone with some GIMP/Photoshop knowledge would be able to use said files as a template to generate more banners with different heraldric art.

[Shadow]

There’s also the fact one thing is Normal and another entirely is Veteran, which seems to have a number of balancing issues with challenge progression, and there’s a marked difference between the early game and the mid-late game.

[Shadow]

I don’t think any extensively save-scummed (be it to get the “perfect starting roster” or ensure flawless victories) game can or should be used as a parameter for game balance adjustments. There’s no point in trying to balance a game whose mechanics the player will be constantly fudging in order to get the best possible result. It’s tantamount to cheating, and it’s not the game’s responsibility if the resulting experience feels too easy.

It’s fair to say the game should be primarily balanced around Veteran, and the assumption that players accept their losses and roll with the punches, so to speak.

[Shadow]

Kuroi_Kaze wrote:

I had same experience in Undead Scourge. Contract to destroy two locations. First was 6 Honor Guards and 15 Legionnaires, I lost 4 men there and went to second, there were 6 ghosts, 5 Fallen Heroes and 19 armored zombies, 30 in total, so my party was almost wiped out, I retreated and abandoned the contract. Yep, it’s a bit unfair but that’s more of balance issue, not gameplay.

The mid to late game and crises balance has a lot of issues indeed. I wonder what the solution would be.

Perhaps the primary thing to consider is making mercs stronger, since clearly they’re not significantly tougher than any single lategame enemy, and the game throws hordes of them at you by the end, as if they were supposed to be manageable without brutal losses. Balancing this is probably no easy task. The early game feels fine overall (talking from a Veteran perspective), but difficulty seems to ramp up too quickly, with most companies ending up underpowered and undergeared to face contemporary opposition after a couple of game months or so.

There’s several factors that need to be tinkered with, most likely. Since the early game feels fine, one variable to tackle is mercenary growth curves, so that early levels work more or less like they do now, but the upper ones represent larger improvements, possibly increasing the number of points and/or stats you can improve per later level up. An alternative is to make experiance gain faster, and raise the level cap so that the average player company reaches the lategame with several more levels under their belt.

Another aspect which needs revision is higher-end recruits. They need to be more reliable, or at the very least the player should be shown more information about the candidates they’re about to shell out serious sums for. Currently, they’re too expensive and too random, as money isn’t exactly easy to come by after a certain point, and you might end up spending your entire savings on a supposed professional who turns out to be not that significantly better than a good farmhand.

Mid to late game contract profitability is perhaps another variable to tweak, but it might not be necessary to do so if mercenaries reach this stage stronger, and able to reliably complete missions without excessive losses.

As for endgame crises, I suppose enemy numbers could be thinned out, but a) that’s not very thematic for a civilization-threatening event, and b) if other factors are revised, it might not be necessary to weaken endgame forces.

[Shadow]

It does invariably take up at least one hand, unless banners were strapped to people’s backs like samurai did.

So without considering that, the current implementation is better than the alternative, which would be to take up a merc hand with something that has little purpose in combat other than to provide a minor morale boost.

[Shadow]

It seems the 0.9.0.21 update tackled at least part of the aforementioned issue:

“Fixed issue with escorted caravans sometimes being destroyed without the player getting a chance to defend them.”

[Shadow]

A very welcome change in this regard, from the brand-new Beta Update 0.9.0.22:

“Changed ambitions so that they no longer come with a time limit, but can be aborted by right-clicking the ambition panel, which, after a confirmation prompt, will trigger the previous failure dialog and penalty to mood.”

[Shadow]

Personally, I failed the ambition to bring the company to 12 men early on, not knowing there was a time limit, but later got the opportunity to pick it again. So I doubt failed ambitions (and their rewards) are lost forever.

[Shadow]

Anonymous wrote:

I’ve done some further testing and can now confirm that if you have one of your brothers standing in front of the intended target of a ranged attack and the shot decides to hit the blocker instead of the intended target then the ranged defense of the brother actually being hit IS COMPLETELY IGNORED.

There must be some quirk with that test (perhaps 1000 is too much for a stat), because I clearly remember purposefully firing on clusters of enemies in the current beta (not necessarily the latest build) and having the arrow/bolt hit the shield of someone in front. Perhaps a very recent change broke something?

[Shadow]

Perhaps the recently increased effect of obstacles (50% -> 75%) on ranged combat should help with this to some extent.

[Author]

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