[MOD] Medieval: Conquests

[Kailric]

I haven't played this mod much but it looks promising.

One thing I did notice in my rudimentary game was that the AI Vikings, although having the invader trait, founded a city before conquering one. (In fact they founded several cities before doing any conquest...)

Is this working as designed? It meant that they got a huge start on everyone else since they had units to found a bunch of cities.

At the moment the AI does not have to conquer a city first only the Player. I'll have to program the AI to do that at a later date. Civs who do not start on water though do however gain immigrants faster as they do not have to "sail to europe" each time to pick up cargo so there is a little balance there. This mod is huge and I have to tackle aspects of it one at a time. Right now I am focused on the land starting European Civs but I hope to flesh out the rest of them in the future.

 

[feelotraveller]

Ah, okay.

It would make the Mongols the worst opponents. Though that's sort of nice...

Would a quick fix - for playability balance - of removing the extra units (or most of them) when invaders are AI controlled be possible? Just a thought, although if it's a lot of work then forget it.

 

[Kailric]

Ah, okay.

It would make the Mongols the worst opponents. Though that's sort of nice...

Would a quick fix - for playability balance - of removing the extra units (or most of them) when invaders are AI controlled be possible? Just a thought, although if it's a lot of work then forget it.

This wouldn't be a hard fix at all... I'll do this on next update.

 

[Kailric]

Just letting all know that I am still working on this next update... its major. Coming soon...

• The afore mentioned Trade Points Tree and perks
  
• The tech tree has been over hauled with new attributes for the techs such as increasing the speed you can chop trees or build specific improvements, free unit for first to research, new stone-paved roads, and more.
  
• Vassals and Alliances, if a native Civ decides to give you a city you now have a choice to appoint a Vassal Governor or level the city. Vassal Governors adds a new player to the game that joins your team. You can still interact, trade and such with Vassal Cities. Also, you can form Alliances with native Civs and they will join your team as a Vassal as well.
  
• New Tax Collector profession that will Collect taxes from your Vassals
  
• Master and Expert Units such as Master Groomsman, can "Build Homes" in your cities instantly adding a new building instead of having to construct all new buildings.
  
• For European Civs who answer to the Papacy, "Boston Tea Parties" no longer happen instead if you upset the Papacy he will invoke Censures on your Realm for several turns. There will be several types...
  
• Excommunication: You can no longer Appoint priests or build religious buildings
• Interdict: Fealty(Bells) and Religion (Crosses) production is cut by 50%
• Anathema: Religious production is stopped completely, can't appoint Priests or build religious buildings
  
  Two others I am thinking on that may or may not make it in next update
  
• Lay Vesture Revoked: can't appoint Priest, Papacy allows only Parish Priests
• Crusade: Player is forced into war with another Civ, must capture a city or something along those lines

Tons of stuff. I hope to have this uploaded in the next week or two.

 

[Willi_Tell]

Tons of stuff. I hope to have this uploaded in the next week or two.

Just amazing, Kailric...

It's very nice to see this gem of a mod still going on in development.

 

[orlanth]

That sounds excellent! Will the Papal Censures occur when you get to the max negative relationship with the Pope? I've always wanted to have something like that, so there's consequence for letting King relations get too bad.

Another cool Pope effect could be to let the Papacy ban certain Techs as Heretical. Then any civs answering to the Pope must give up that Tech or take a relations hit. Also a bonus for reaching max good relations with the Pope, such as getting a religious building or unit then adjusting relation downward a bit.

 

[Kailric]

That sounds excellent! Will the Papal Censures occur when you get to the max negative relationship with the Pope? I've always wanted to have something like that, so there's consequence for letting King relations get too bad.

Another cool Pope effect could be to let the Papacy ban certain Techs as Heretical. Then any civs answering to the Pope must give up that Tech or take a relations hit. Also a bonus for reaching max good relations with the Pope, such as getting a religious building or unit then adjusting relation downward a bit.

Those are all good ideas. Right now I am still debating on just when to inpose Papal Censures. Currently they start when he wants to raise your tithe, but I like how you suggest about the negative relationship triggering a Censure. The whole Tea Party bit just doesn't fit with the King Vs Pope scenerio so I definalely want that part out. I do like the ban certain Techs Idea. Actually, the Popes did ban certain ideas or techs back in those days. They banned Crossbows at one point and even War on sundays and other days as well.

Thanks for the input!

 

[Nightinggale]

They banned Crossbows at one point and even War on sundays and other days as well.

Muslim invader: we should attack tomorrow. It's sunday. They will not fight back.

Seriously such restrictions have always been exploited by the enemy. Reminds me of the ancient Egyptians. They were once attacked by.... somebody from Iraq, Lebanon or something (forgot who). The attacking soldiers carried cats because they were holy animals to the Egyptians. As a result the Egyptians couldn't fire their bows because they risked going to hell for hitting a cat.

And what's the point in banning crossbows? That would make attacking castles much easier if they weren't allowed to shoot armor piercing bolts, but maybe that was the point.

 

[Kailric]

Muslim invader: we should attack tomorrow. It's sunday. They will not fight back.

Seriously such restrictions have always been exploited by the enemy. Reminds me of the ancient Egyptians. They were once attacked by.... somebody from Iraq, Lebanon or something (forgot who). The attacking soldiers carried cats because they were holy animals to the Egyptians. As a result the Egyptians couldn't fire their bows because they risked going to hell for hitting a cat.

And what's the point in banning crossbows? That would make attacking castles much easier if they weren't allowed to shoot armor piercing bolts, but maybe that was the point.

We should ban cats then Here is a snipet from some website about the banning of crossbows...

Back in the 12th Century it was considered to be a weapon of mass destruction. It was feared and hated not just because it was capable of killing anyone on the battlefield from great distances, but because it allowed any lowly peasant to defeat a high-born professional knight – something that many feared could overturn the natural order of society. As a result: the highest authority of the day, the church, banned its use. Violating the decree could lead to excommunication, or worse: maybe even damnation of the soul. Of corse we’re talking about the crossbow and in the Middle Ages it was considered by many to be one of the most destabilizing weapons in existence.

more History here...

 

[Lib.Spi't]

they were only banned in christendom, it was still considered acceptable to use a crossbow on an infidel in the holy land, just not against good christian men.

Another interesting banning was that of forks in christendom, they were deemed the devil's utensil, if God wanted men to use forks he would not have given them hands!

 

[mastrude]

Hi, Kailric! Great to hear from you again--I just heard about this mod on Friday and I've been playing ever since. I love it. Congratulations to you and your group.

In the short time I've played this mod, the game has dropped persistently three or four times. I'm sending you the most recent saved game that fails. What I did to make it fail was just to move my infantryman three moves northeast, and tell my worker to fortify.

I still love your privateer mod. I was playing it just today. I will post some comments in that forum, not here to not muddy this one up with irrelevancies.

 

[mastrude]

Here's another failing game. Just hit the enter key and it failed. I was 250 moves in, too.

 

[Kailric]

Here's another failing game. Just hit the enter key and it failed. I was 250 moves in, too.

Thanks, mastrude, I'll check this out for sure. I have a huge update coming soon that may have addressed the issue already but regardless I need to check this out just in case. Thanks for the bug report.

 

[Kailric]

mastrude, do you have the patch 1.5a applied? I am trying to get your save to load but having troubles. I have moved my files around so much that I may not have the exact configuration I did for the version you have.

 

[mastrude]

mastrude, do you have the patch 1.5a applied? I am trying to get your save to load but having troubles. I have moved my files around so much that I may not have the exact configuration I did for the version you have.

I think I do. It's odd: I downloaded the patch 1.5 and unzipped it. The patch was found in "...\Medieval FF Patch 1.5a\Medieval FF Patch 1.0". I think I moved the assets file in that directory over the mod. But why is this subfolder named "Patch 1.0".

It would be logical to assume that I may have made a mistake since I don't see other users reporting crashes. I will reinstall and see whether I can replicate my crashes. (Edit: They still crash.)

About when will your next version be out? It would be simplest for me to just move to that.

Congratulations again on a very rich game. I'd like to get to know you a little. Is it possible I could email you my phone number and hear from you?

 

[mastrude]

Quick question: Since the starting archer is more powerful than the infantry, why don't you have the starting military unit be an archer.

He starts as infantry, and I guess he can't change to being an archer, either, until you found your first settlement.

The game is HARD to win, even at the lowest difficulty setting. Is this your intent? What would you say your intended win/loss ratio is for a good player. At present mine is 0/all.

 

[Kailric]

Quick question: Since the starting archer is more powerful than the infantry, why don't you have the starting military unit be an archer.

He starts as infantry, and I guess he can't change to being an archer, either, until you found your first settlement.

The game is HARD to win, even at the lowest difficulty setting. Is this your intent? What would you say your intended win/loss ratio is for a good player. At present mine is 0/all.

Some civs could start with an Archer, the ones that are more aggresive as Archers are for offensive and infantry are for defence. Yeah, I would suggest just waiting till the next update. Its pretty big and going to need some testing. I have added in lots of options to help balance out the difficulty at the start to get your empire going. I should have next update done this weekend I hope. You can click on my name to send me an email, I don't know about phone calls though.. I barely call my mom

 

[Nightinggale]

Since the starting archer is more powerful than the infantry, why don't you have the starting military unit be an archer.

It brings up an even more interesting issue. Why are archers more powerful than infantry? If two units costs the same, then surely they should be different in a way other than "A is always just as good or better than B" because then B is pointless.

Maybe make archers really poor against units using horses or something. That would make units kind of like rock-paper-scissors as you need the good unit against the kind of unit the enemy is using.

Another option would be the Civ5 approach where archers can bombard other tiles and stay unharmed themselves, but really suck if attacked by a melee unit.

I'm not sure what would be best, but clearly it leaves room for improvement when it ends up as "always pick this unit".

 

[Kailric]

kind of like rock-paper-scissors as you need the good unit against the kind of unit the enemy is using.

Right, that's what's going on in Medieval, or what my plan is. Yes, Archers need to be made even with Infantry actually and should not be more powerful unless the situation calls for a bonus so I will give them both 3 str as that's what I intended. I want the Infantry class used against mounted units on defense, Skirmisher Vs Melee, and Archers used as General Defensive units. It, however, needs an overhaul to add more diversity and strategy.


At the moment here's what we have..

Infantry, Heavy Infantry, Pikeman: +25% Vs Mounted
Archer, Crossbowman, Longbowman: +1 FirstStrike (Good for Defense)
Skirmisher, Heavy Skirmisher: +25% vs Melee
Calvary, Heavy Calvalry: Damage Units
Knights, Heavy Knights: Heavy Damage Units, +50% Vs Siege

Any suggestions on changes? I actually want to add in somekind of "training" units have to undertake especialy for professions such as Longbowman which actually does take a whole lot of training.

 

[Nightinggale]

Any suggestions on changes?

How about terrain affecting strength? Cavalry is worse in forests than in open land and archers prefers standing on a hilltop and so on. Possibly archers shouldn't get crossing river penalty. It might even be beneficial if they can shoot at melee units, which is slowed by the river (read: extra first strike when attacked from across a river).
Terrain can really affect a lot when you start to think about it and it would clearly get away from "unit x is always the best one. No need to pick any other".

I actually want to add in somekind of "training" units have to undertake especialy for professions such as Longbowman which actually does take a whole lot of training.

It took two years to train a man to use a Welsh (English) longbow and that couldn't be rushed because he needed to build up muscles to draw the bow. Makes me wonder if "veteran soldier" should be split into different categories. After all a swordsman wouldn't have trained the muscles for drawing bows and vice versa.

Historical facts (not directly game related):
Historical records states this and says musketmen can be trained in 3 months (or something like that). This is likely a reason why muskets became more common even through the bows had longer range and higher accuracy. Another reason is likely that yew grows slowly and they were cutting them down faster than they grew. Lack of quality wood for bows naturally limits the number used.
The problem here is that the front of a bow needs to stretch and the back compress. Yew is the only plant with both abilities while non-yew bows are two different plants put together. Such a joint is weaker than if it could be made out of just one piece of wood.
I specifically said plant and not wood because Asia used a lot of bamboo in bows.

Game related again
I'm not sure if this should be implemented in the game. Maybe weapons should be multiple yields, but if bows just use wood then it defeats the purpose of getting rare slow growing trees. Still the concept of "I actually want unit A but I have to use unit B because of the needed resources to make them" would be a nice addition.