Messages

Alright I tinkered around with some things but I didn't get too far. Just played with wood elves basically, because with no modder experience, I had to start a new game, recruit, run around and find a properly sized enemy force of the right kind of opponent, fight the battle, then go back and make adjustments and start it all over again   kinda blew. But it did give me some decent ideas to work with.

In addition to what I stated before, I found that "glade guard" and other spear and shield troops were horribly worthless. Horribly. This is by no means your fault, it is game mechanics. If the spear is long, you can use it to lance on horseback and to jab down cav on foot, but you are fully screwed when fighting other infantry. Too short, and you are just screwed period.

For one fix, by playing with the primary/secondary of the weapon stats, I think you can get a troop to carry both a spear and a sword. I'm just not sure they are smart enough to use them in the right circumstances however. But to try to get them to work, I even went as far as allowing troops to swing certain spears while carrying a shield. It looks kinda dumb, but it was the only way to make them remotely effective. This way, they can still defend themselves from infantry even with longer spears. They still are weak though.

When it comes to troops with additional attacks or higher initiative, most of that is going to come from items rather than the stats. I have looked into dual wielding for M&B as I'm sure you have as well, and it just isn't really possible from the discussions I've seen on the forums. However, you can kinda give the 'feel' of a troop with two attacks by playing with the weapon speeds. For example, for my own poorly done version of a wardancer and for the "eternal guards" i made, I found making a sword and a spear exclusive to these two that had a speed rating of 150, this did a good job of giving the multiple attacks, high Initiative feel. If you go much higher than this, it starts jacking up the damage and starts becoming extremely weak. But seeing a wardancer without crazy hair and only a single weapon was depressing. For the eternal guard, it was rather satisfying results-wise.

For any single attack troops, giving slightly higher or lower speed to a weapon specifically for that "initiative" bracket did well to see who usually got the first strikes in a way that more accurately portrayed the warhammer world.

As for the horseys, I made changes which reflected more with my previous post. Pistoliers were given "Hunter" horses, due to the high maneuverability, as well as adding a bit of speed. I hocked up the courser horse to a whopping speed 48 and maneuver in the low 40's. In all honesty, it seemed to give the right feel and didn't seem out of line for a fast cav elven steed  

For Movement 5 troops, they got athletics 10. Toughness 4 troops, Iron Skin/Flesh 10. Strength 4 troops, power strike 10. All "typical" stat troops, like strength/toughness 3, movement 4, etc would get few to no points in these fields. It seemed about right. Also played around with troop trees a bit but not too sure how great that turned out anyway.

Oh and here is a post I found with alot of really handy links to what look like great kits/additions:

http://forums.taleworlds.com/index.php/topic,78411.msg2032612.html#msg2032612

Unfortunately, in my complete absence of modding experience, I couldn't get a single one to work for me    but if you can figure them out and incorporate them, several of them would be fantastic for this mod.

I can only hope that at least a bit of my input was useful, and if not, sorry for eating up your bandwidth  :$

So excited about the start of this mod! Thanks Del.

There has been some good feedback about nice features to add to the game. I'm sure you had plans for all that stuff anyway, so I wanted to talk about troop balancing.

Not sure how familiar you are with the tabletop game, but wanted to throw in some ideas on how to keep the army style "authentic".

I'm thinking it could be a matter of converting the 'stats' from the tabletop game to the stats of the troops. Example: WS(weapon skill) BS(ballistic skill) S(trength) T(oughness) etc.

After checking some of the already existing troops from native, I'm thinking somewhere around 30-40pts of a weapon proficiency from M&B would be about 1pt of WS or BS from warhammer. Only messing with the wood elves, it seems to work pretty well, although with them they have special rules for their archery so I had to fudge it a bit.

Also things like armor. I'm thinking somewhere around 20 armor in M&B = +1 armor in warhammer. So light armor maybe a lil over 20, heavy armor around 40, and the full plate of the empire would be closing in on 60 like lordly plate from native. Or maybe it should be more like 30-45-60.

Then we have movement speed. Movement of humans is 4, elves 5, and some skaven are even 6! You can get respective increases by playing with agility and athletics.

And the mounts. Sorry to say it, but I think you overkilled the cold ones lol  :$
They have movement 7 as well as the boars, so boar and cold one should share similar speeds, which should only be a bit more than certain very fast skaven units! However, the charge of the cold one is about right, but the boar should possibly get an even bigger boost (tusk charge rule). And elven steeds should be the fastest thing you are going to find around. Fast Cavalry special rule could come in the form of very high riding ability as well as very high maneuverability of a specific steed assigned as fast cav.

Also, trying to give it a more authentic feel beyond just stat points. Example, taking the "Forest Guard" and turning them into "Eternal Guard" from the actual wood elf rulebook. I think it involved giving them only an elven spear and upping their wep proficiency a fair bit. Dropping the shield made them very vulnerable to ranged attacks, but in a way this is a good thing. It makes you play them more like you would on the tabletop! You now have a reason to employ some more advanced tacs and screen them with some Glade Guard    or use terrain to your advantage to avoid archer fire.

And the dirty horrible skaven  -_- lol you did good work on them, but I'm wondering if there is a way to balance them to have more the feel of the ranged troops from the books. Jazziels, tone down accuracy but greatly increase damage. Ratlings, extreme rate of fire, low accuracy. Problem with this is, it leaves them open to run out of ammo before you even get close enough to their lines for their shots to be effective since AI is retarded. Not sure if there is a work around. Maybe just giving them tons of ammo?

Anyway, just some ideas to work with that I think could make it more satisfying to a warhammer player. I will test things alot more and give more feedback on what I find.

Again, thanks for this mod!

(Added another idea) Forgive me because for all I know you already did this, but if there is a way to make the lords of a race/faction/army/whatever to diversify. Like some lords tend to go range heavy, some melee infantry heavy, some cav heavy, some an even mix, etc. That would not only give alot of variety in fighting the AI, but it would give each lord more character too