V1.21 Rebuild-ProblemFixer BETA testing thread

[Rozanov]

OK.

downloaded the fix for the patch and installed - no probs.

It doesn't work on saved games - I presume loading the saved game overwrites what the patch does? (or in other words I loaded an autosave of the game just prior to the Mongol CTD and the game still crashed at the end of the turn.)

SO I started a Danish campaign from scratch.

Oh we get Oslo and Stockholm - not sure if the human needs them (but maybe that's to force the AI to take Hamburg?)

Jack up the taxes, clump forces together and its off to Hamburg, which we besiege and wait until the AI sallies out at half strength where we defeat it.

Rinse and repeat for Stettin, Thorn, Antwerp, Bruges and Riga in that order. Preferably waiting a wee while to see if the nobles will give us some dosh for doing so. A couple of merchants north of Arhus, a couple of priests to convert the heathen. Princess goes on long trip westward to get trade, map and alliances with England, Scotland, France, Spain, Portugal, Moors, Sicily, Pope (oh yes an alliance with the Pope!), Venice. (Milan gets to me first!) Diplomat heads east to does necessary deals with Poles, Russians, Hungarians etc etc. (ends up outside jerusalem.) neat everyone onside.

Crusades. Aha the fun begins. First Crusade - build army - mix of spears, archers and mercs, head off to the balkans, get ship, board ship, sail ship to coast of Holy land, disembark. march army to Jerusalem. Damn- we're first (again!) so have to face the mighty 3 gold chevron army. Quivering in my boots I am approached by human being (3rd class) Baldrick who tells me of his CUNNING PLAN.

Next turn the AI garrison sallies forth (as expected) (pre-battle screen suggests it's 2:1 on winning). I deliberately don't build siege equipment so re-ordering the line-up is a bit easier. Infantry to front, archers to rear, cavalry to flanks, his nibs hiding behind everyone else.

The AI attacks, my infantry slug it out, the archers fire at the AI archers, my cavalry destroy the AI cavalry (crusader knights - very handy), then they take out the AI archers, apart from "Baldrick's surprise" - a complete unit of cavalry charges round the flanks of the AI army and into the undefended gateway of jerusalem and captures the central plaza unopposed. The remaining bits of cavalry run down any routing AI infantry,the Danish infantry hold firm long enough for the 3 minutes to come up.

Victory - giving the Jerusalem garrison such overpowered units has failed to stop me.

Sadly I lost Jerusalem a couple of turns later - no priests, no time to build a chapel, and the army is given The Order of the Boot. So I disband some merc units, sail back to Rhodes and capture that.

Second Crusade I use a fresh army from Denmark, recruit a priest or two on Rhodes and sail them over beforehand, and recruit another army using one of my generals on Rhodes so I end at Jerusalem with 2 full-stack crusader armies AND a full-stack Hungarian army (allies!!) Three powerful armies surround Jerusalem. The garrison is a hodge podge of mediocre units. "Nothing can stop us now!" The AI doesn't sally forth so I go on the attack. Surely three full-stack armies can take Jerusalem by assault.

Er, no. I had forgotten about the uber archer towers, manned by anachronistic machine gunners. Not to mention the daft rule whereby towers can continue firing even after you've captured the wall, if there's a defending unit somewhere in the vicinity. Net result all my infantry got mown down on the walls before causing hardly any casualties. The cavalry stood around outside waiting in vain for a gate to be opened and the Hungarians, wisely stood their ground.

So I loaded the autosave and then continued by playing the waiting game. Which netted me the city in due course. And which I duly got ejected from soon after.

I then took Acre, easily, from the rebels, and sent the remnants of the two armies to take Antioch, which fell and promptly got up again. At which point I cut my losses (the treaury was 15,000 in the red - no money made from sacking doesn't help ()) sacked all my mercs and built up Acre.

Round about 1150 I got a message saying there was trouble brewing in the east (Mongols) but even by 1170 they had yet to put in an appearance.

Game came to an unexpected halt when I was defending Thorn - pretty much untakeable by assault now, due to the overpowerful archer towers - who needs to upgrade to ballistas!!). The Russian infantry having been destroyed by the tower archers and the cavalry having turned and fled, my general saddled up and set off to run down some routers. At which point the game crashed - and it being half five in the morning I decided to call it a night.

So - archers towers need toning right down, we need more money from sacking. Alliances seem to work OK - Russians have no penalty from attacking Catholics after all (and vice versa.). Extended movement for agents is good (and ships)

I'd probably have done a lot better, not to have relied on mercs for crusading - but my castles and settlements were so slow to build decent units I had no option.

Oh and Stockholm suffered from Zagreb Syndrome. The village grew but I never had the choice of putting a pallisade round it - but it was happy if I converted it to a castle, and then it grew properly. (You can then convert it back to a town.)

[Carl]

Game came to an unexpected halt when I was defending Thorn - pretty much untakeable by assault now, due to the overpowerful archer towers - who needs to upgrade to ballistas!!). The Russian infantry having been destroyed by the tower archers and the cavalry having turned and fled, my general saddled up and set off to run down some routers. At which point the game crashed - and it being half five in the morning I decided to call it a night.

I've seen this myself, i'm not sure whats causing it, it's rare but seems to specifically effect castles of various kinds. I'm not sure why though, it always seems to happen when the enemy turns to flee and you click continue the battle.

Er, no. I had forgotten about the uber archer towers, manned by anachronistic machine gunners. Not to mention the daft rule whereby towers can continue firing even after you've captured the wall, if there's a defending unit somewhere in the vicinity. Net result all my infantry got mown down on the walls before causing hardly any casualties. The cavalry stood around outside waiting in vain for a gate to be opened and the Hungarians, wisely stood their ground.

EDIT: See Bob the Insanes post directly below this one, It gives a MUCH better anwser than the one I had in here beforhand.

...we need more money from sacking.

I'm going to add a hidden trait so the more sacking and exterminating you do the more money you get in future with that particular general. That DOES mean you'll need t do some sacking and exterminating at the really low level to begin with, but over time you'll build him up and start getting major income again. On the flip side it kills your rep which is going to really hurt alliances.

In effect you'll either have to chose a chivalrous strategy in which you get Little money from sacking, but good economic growth and strong alliances, or a dreadful one in which you get lots of money from sacking but poor economic growth and poor alliances.

Oh we get Oslo and Stockholm - not sure if the human needs them (but maybe that's to force the AI to take Hamburg?)

Nobody but the Danes ever grabs them and if they don't start with them they spend 30+ turns grabbing them after getting hamburg, rather than expanding onto the mainland.

Round about 1150 I got a message saying there was trouble brewing in the east (Mongols) but even by 1170 they had yet to put in an appearance.

Thats weird, has anyone else playing with the fix got to the Mongols to show up yet?

It doesn't work on saved games - I presume loading the saved game overwrites what the patch does? (or in other words I loaded an autosave of the game just prior to the Mongol CTD and the game still crashed at the end of the turn.)

The game only loads the fixed file when it starts the campaign, their no way to make it save game compatible.

But don't know how much more I'll play this version with 1.2 close. Be nice to lose SOME bugs.

Could you at least get the Mongols to show up for you please. They do for me but I want to check with Rozanov's experience.

Just just can't seem to get passed Mixed with the Poles... Need that cash too much...

Reputation isn't' effected by cash or bribes. All you can do is occupy a lot, sign lots of trade agreements and alliances and try not to step onto neutral territory too much as that hits rep hard.

I am definitely hobbled by my cash flow, it was fine at first, but even with one army on crusade once I started building up the second army and I got past my second level structures, and the buildings start to get expensive, my cash flow started to dwindle. The war with the HRE, my major trading partner is another problem. However the situation is far from lost, even if I continue into negative figures, I have forces in the field, I am besieging one city and shortly about to attack another. I think I am going to have to stop pussyfooting around with the chivalrous path thing and go all Dread and lay a big can of whoop-ass down on the HRE and show these Western Europeans that then aren't so very Holy... If they are willing to betray me they deserve it...

That probably explains why the poles do so well as an AI faction. The money script cuts their money issues down a fair bit.

However I am having problems growing my cities, even with a decent governor and all the buildings constructed, Krakow has not yet grown to the next level.

Growth is getting changed don't worry.

Oh and Stockholm suffered from Zagreb Syndrome. The village grew but I never had the choice of putting a palisade round it - but it was happy if I converted it to a castle, and then it grew properly. (You can then convert it back to a town.)

My fault, the settlement level is lower than the level of walls in the Descr_Strat file. I've already fixed it. Hope they hurry up with the patch and release it Thursday morning, as a few changes I've got ready for V1.24 will really help the AI I think and fix a number of minor bugs that crept into V1.23

[Bob the Insane]

That sounds pretty cool...

I am not sure about toning the towers down, but I agree about them stopping firing when you capture them, that would be nice...

However I quite like the volumn of fire from them. The point is that:

A. to assault a settlement without some form of catapult(s) to take out the towers is going to by massively expensive in man power.

B. defended your settlements against the AI when it is not got catapults is possible even for small garrisons.

However when the AI does have catapult is very predicatable what it will do, namely destroy the gate towers and then the towers either side of that and if there is ammo left start knocking holes in the walls.

Carl's challenge is ensuring the AI builds and brings an appropriate amount of catapults to a siege.

[Carl]

I am not sure about toning the towers down, but I agree about them stopping firing when you capture them, that would be nice...

I've tried re-implementing the RTW method but it won't have it i'm afraid. Believe me I preferred that way myself.

Carl's challenge is ensuring the AI builds and brings an appropriate amount of catapults to a siege.

a very major problem thats driving me slightly mad LOL.

Thanks for a MUCH clearer explanation than the one I gave in my last post.

[vonsch]

Hmm, vanilla bug? Suddenly my merchants trained in Antwerp (with merchant guild) aren't getting the boost I'd been seeing. Or is that just a random thing and my luck was bad this turn? Had one born at 1 skill, the other at 2. Turn before they were 3 and 4 respectively. I was thinking there would be a guild-trained trait, but maybe that's not a merchant thing. One just has "Good with Money" and the other has that and "Legal Nouse" (Town Hall in place too.)

Still 22 turns from 1150 and Mongol notice. Aside from taking Tunis from the Moors and beating up on their fleets, just keeping my head pulled in. Milan decided it wants to fight Venice and HRE (and the Moors!) at the same time. It has a crusade stack parked at Venice. I guess it's hoping Venice will get excommed, but more likely that Milan will at this rate. HRE is in the Pope's good graces too, for once. I'm a bit surprised that Milan hasn't dropped more in the Pope's estimation. Heh, maybe I should dump that alliance so they don't get the boost from being friends with me.

Did it, dropped me from Immaculate to Very Trustworthy. But I was allied with HRE and Venice too, can't have that! Now I can be a good ally to the others. That still leaves me with 12 alliances. Heh, here comes Milan, stacks inbound to Rheim and Bern it appears. Ouch, someone just assassinated Henry, who was being groomed to be the next great population boom-maker. Philippe finally died, so no more 10 chivalry governor. Louis just isn't cut out for that role. He is at 1 chivalry now, but not gonna hit 10 this century, if ever. Bloody past.

Heh, I think Milan overreached. They failed at Venice and Bologne, and while they were doing that, Venice grabbed Milan. The Milanese stacks are shrinking. They shuffled back away from me. Spain in grinding down the Moors in Iberia. Only Granada to go. Portugal is stuck with their starting two regions still. That division kills them.

May be wrong about Louis. As King he's picking up chivalry fast. Probably too fast. I think that can use some toning down. Not sure how you're triggering it, but he went from 1 to 5 chivalry in about 3 turns. Meanwhile HRE, has decided to start a war over Antwerp. At least they picked a good target. Not that they have the chance of a snowflake in hell. The standing garrison is double what they are using, and it has stone walls. The garrison is joking about how they'll taste with butter since they look like snails in their funny helmets from above, and they move like snails, and they are dumber than snails. Escargot home! Silly Huns. Ooo, Portugal wants to play too. Silly boys. And to think I was gonna take Granada and give it to them. They, um, blockaded a port (what else?) Heh, PS declared on both. I predict the PS will own Bologne inside 10 turns. Oh! That was fast, HRE and Portugal both Excommed too. I think I'll start with... Pamplona! Nice developed Fortress. (Toulouse just started building citadel this turn too, had FH there boosting growth.)

Heh, just saw the Danes try Jerusalem and get bounced. Oops, Spain talked Portugal out of their folly, for now (enforced truce with me, darn.) But HRE is still begging to lose a city. Stauffen has one whole unit in residence and it's close to Bern . Well, okay, it's a fortress. Bah, the Germans sicced a heretic on Bern! Lutheran scum! Since Portugal went to ceasefire, I guess this stack aboard ship will have to take Algiers from the Moors. They must have Tripoli too. I see a half stack moving up to Tunis from there. Too late.

HRE besieging Rheims now too. While fighting with the Danes. They are frisky. Must be stored up resentment at the greatness of Fwance! Heh, Milan wants 24k a turn for two turns or they attack. Bring it on! They can join the crew of infidels! With Portugal! Back blockading Bordeaux again. Darn, spies (two of them!) missed the gates at Stauffen. Next turn unless HRE finds some reinforcements fast. Darn, Moors have a stack just outside Algiers. No cheap steal there . Let's see if it moves... hmm, baiting might work. Let's see: Antwerp and Rheims besieged, and I'm besieging Stauffen and trying to block potential reinforcements with a sacrifice spear militia. Meanwhile, stack moving north to Rheims to lift that siege if they don't assault. And the same for Antwerp. Scouting Pamplona and building a stack at Toulouse. Looks like general and two small units in Pamplona. But it's several moves for siege gear. Be hard to pull off without it being reinforced. Can't get to it by sea yet. Need to deal with Portuguese navy first and it's large. The stack of HRE at Rheims is actually fairly tough. But no siege gear and too much horse. Be a tough field battle, but it's only got one zwaeihander for tackling walls and it's a stone wall. 4 militia xbows and 2 peasant archers too. Nothing really good to deal with the DIK and ZH though. If they get on top of the wall. But crossbows can deal with them from other walls, I hope. Oh, cat coming up in one more turn too. Hmm. And my relief force is two turns out. Interesting.

Staufen is mine. HRE still besieging Antwerp and Rheims. No assaults. Milan down to Dijon and Genoa and Genoa has a 1 general garrison again, despite about 3 Milanese stacks around. Silly bug. Hope that one is fixed. Makes this a little TOO easy. Very tempting. Fleet closing on it . It would effectively kill Milan, even if I just take it and destroy all the buildings and let it revolt. Suspect I can hold it though. Nice walls.

HRE has not brought reinforcements to Rheims siege, so think it will hold fine. I distracted them with my move on Staufen. Heh. They should have been there and assaulted last turn. One stack may be in the trees somewhere though. Aha, here we go, assault on Antwerp, 1:1 odds. No chance. Thought they would try to starve me out. Took them 3 turns to assault. Maybe they were gonna reinforce, but plans changed. No sweat. Heroic victory. Yeah. Sure. Lots of archers and crossbows, and nice little arrow towers. Tower burned, ram burned, ladders repulsed by one town militia unit. But only a merc xbow came up them.

Okay, now they want to die at Rheims too. This time at least a couple decent units, if they use them right. 8:7 odds my favor though. Too much cav in there for them. They needed those reinforcements and that cat to have a chance. 2 towers, 2 ladders and ram. Mx handled the ladders with no problem. Armored sergeants on those. One town has DIKs. Other is AS again. Towers dealt with. Big gate brawl, but not a problem. Lost some spears from the gate fighting, but not a whole unit's worth. They just didn't achieve critical mass.

Another stack forming to come to Antwerp already. They are slow learners. Oh, and here comes Milan to Marseille. Goodie. Portugal moving on Bordeaux with a shortish stack too. PS at war with Milan now too. And Milan is, of course, excommed.

My only complaint with the silly Fwench is no decent melee unit yet. But the plain crossbows aren't bad in a wallholding role. Now that I can make them. Aha, voulges on the way in the large cities (like Antwerp). But a ways off still, especially if I'm fending off sieges. Both of those cities are great because the ones right behind them can swap garrisons and repair them while the frontline city is under attack again too. Marseille, in contrast, is hung out there. Bern and Staufen are well placed to support each other too. Keeping both castles until things calm down though. Nice forward build centers.

Well, that was very nice. My first real set piece battle with Fwance. 6 Armored Spears line, 4 xbows tucked just in front, off skirmish. 3 peasant archers behind shooting fire. 2 mailed knights and 1 mounted sergeant on each wing, general behind the line. Milan got rolled. The cav did most of the killing, but the line accepted the charge and did a perfect anvil. I could get used to this. Let this be known as the Battle of Dijon! Milanese made mustard! Nice to eliminate that salient into my nice neat front. Besieging the remnants now. That leaves Genoa. Two turns if no one beats me there. Fleet still more than one move out. Darned ballista!

Heh, Milan backed off Marseille and Portugal backed off Bordeaux. My move on Pamplona got spotted. That Portuguese force moved back into Plamplona. And the Milanese headed to Dijon. Too late. And Genoa now has a large garrison for some reason. Last stand for Milan. They still have two full stacks over near Florence though. Heh, now they want a ceasefire. I guess I can do that. Since Milan is garrisoned now. Oh, well, they aren't willing to pay indemnity, so I guess no peace. So they came back to Marseille! Silly dogs.

With Master Merchant Guild I get "Financial Training" on merchant. Maybe I was just confused on what level that appeared.

More seige defenses, more battles... nothing exciting. Trying to get to the Mongol warning. Heh, Portugal has a half stack afleet. Not sure where they were planning on invading, but I'm hounding them now. They are making Portuguese knights and pavise crossbow, so time to get rid of Pamplona. Wow, took four fleet actions to sink that fleet (and army!)

Moors assaulting Tunis. Oops, they brought two cats. But I had some mounted sergeants. No more cats. Both towers burning nicely too. Ladders abandoned. Ram burnt. Wow, on a roll. Oops, another units grabbed ladders. Not that that will help much. Yep, all routing. If I hadn't had cav that time, the cats might have made a difference. But I've learned.

Field battle with Portugal. Should be a real battle. They didn't like me nearing Pamplona and came out to meet me. Crossbows routed the jinetes. Shook them up a bit, their formation just went to pieces. But they have reinforcements incoming and I don't. And I like my position, so not moving. They keep moving to flank my right and I keep pivoting. So far. Too much and I open my left to the incoming. Interesting maneuvering on AI part though. Weird, they set their pavise xbows in enfilade to me. Bloody, but whipped first wave. Waiting for second to arrive. First had 2 Portuguese knights and 2 D Knights of some sort. Plus the usual, 1 jinettes, 3 pavise, some spears. The second bunch is smaller, and doesn't seem to want to come fight. Hmm, they are fiddling around at the entry point, not approaching. So just resting my troops. Time is on my side. And it's gonna run out for them. Yep. Oh, it was 3 DFKs, 3 pavise, 2 PK and 1 jinettes. I had 2 PA, 2 PX, 1 X, 5 AS, 2 MK and general. They had quality but didn't execute well. My right wing got beat up though. 3 DFKs is hard on spears. Had to chase off the knights before I could charge the rear. Then they all routed nicely. Now to besiege it and cut off reinforcements until I can get some up.

Metz is mine. Staufen still besieged. HRE not assaulting. Will lift that next. They are on bridge, so need to go way around. Pamplona fell. Tricky spy got the gates for me, not that it mattered, ballista arrived too. Oh, that did in Portugal. Someone snuck Lisbon out from under me.

And here comes Milan again, at Marseille. They will run out of stacks sooner or later. But they have a darned spy inside, have my own one turn out but they can't get it now.

Oops, there's Mongol notice. Turn is 65.

Hmm, why is military academy city-only if it gives a bonus to cav? Can only build merchant and gendarmes in cities. Or is it universal? If it's not, it really should be a castle building. It's useless in cities. Well, except for Crusader guilds. Forgot those. So not useless, just a bit... off point.

Are Scots Guards gone from France? Don't see them in any building.




The End of Portugal: Waiting for the Second Wave

If I could totally eliminate that HUD, that would be a very nice scenic shot.

Let me try to just fast forward a bit, see if Mongols turn up. all these sieges and battles sure slow me down. Grr, Milan storming Marseille. Can't autoresolve and expect to win that one. Odds in their favor, it thinks. Tough wall fight, but only because of that spy! Everyone gets to the fight winded! (I do miss naffas...) That was another heroic. Heroic race from one end of the city to the other, I guess.

Oh well, dealt with Portugal and now Spain wants in. And it's excommed, of course. Moors are coming back, with more siege gear, so they at least seem to know what it's for. And I am training more horsies, if they're gonna play this way.

Wow, Byz is rolling, up to 12 regions. Denmark is third, but slipped back one from its high of 9. Poland and Spain have 7, but Spain will soon have 5, I think. Or 4. Too easy to hit them from the sea. Turn 67. Early for Mongols yet. Milan back AGAIN. But it's a half stack and mostly Carroccio standards now. Spain besieging Pamplona. But I'm about to hit Valencia and Lisbon to distract them a bit. Nuremburg is Fwench. HRE forgot to garrison it. It's infested with heretics! No wonder!

Ok, got the Mongol video. Don't know where they are though. Turn 69.

Just noticed Knights Hospitalier don't have shield fix in. But moot in another day.

[Bob the Insane]

If I could totally eliminate that HUD, that would be a very nice scenic shot.

Apologes if I am saying somthing obvious but you can control the visibility of the 3 UI elements in the minimal UI with the F5, F6 and F7 keys...

[Carl]

Hmm, vanilla bug? Suddenly my merchants trained in Antwerp (with merchant guild) aren't getting the boost I'd been seeing. Or is that just a random thing and my luck was bad this turn? Had one born at 1 skill, the other at 2. Turn before they were 3 and 4 respectively. I was thinking there would be a guild-trained trait, but maybe that's not a merchant thing. One just has "Good with Money" and the other has that and "Legal Nouse" (Town Hall in place too.)

I've noticed a similar thing, l;et me check the triggers. to be sure, but also remember that their starting skill even without a guild can be anywhere from 1-5 (ignoring the religious merchant line that can take away from your skill).

OK, got the Mongol video. Don't know where they are though. Turn 69.

If you read the text of the Mongol video it will tell you near the bottom of the text, that piece of text just isn't spoken out loud, (or use toggle_fow to see where they are, thats what i do).

May be wrong about Louis. As King he's picking up chivalry fast. Probably too fast. I think that can use some toning down. Not sure how you're triggering it, but he went from 1 to 5 chivalry in about 3 turns.

That will be a combination of Strat Chiv, Honest Ruler, and some side effect of good rep talking.

Basically the Honest ruler line gives Chiv for having a good rep, if you have Very Trustworthy then you should have the fourth level which is +4. in addition it (over a few turns), removes a number of the major dread giving traits from the individual so that would have raised his Chiv anyway. In addition, he could have picked up some Strat Chiv too, depending on the tax rate. Within 5-6 turns he could easily have picked up, (between lost dread and gained Chiv from various sources), almost a 10 point shift in his Chiv/Dread score with a Little effort, so even if he had 5 dread before that would put him at 5 Chiv now.

My only complaint with the silly Fwench is no decent melee unit yet. But the plain crossbows aren't bad in a wallholding role. Now that I can make them. Aha, Voulgeirs on the way in the large cities (like Antwerp).

, same problem afflicts HRE not a single really useful city based melee unit for a very long time, not to mention that Militia Crossbows can't compare well with the missile units of surrounding factions.

(Crossbows are very poor missile units in general as their fire rate leaves them extremely vulnerable to a player who simply closes with them quickly, the higher fire rate or longer range of surround factions missile units makes them markedly Superior).

The end result of these two factors is that both HRE and France struggle without castles to a degree that the surrounding factions, (with their better city units), do not, which is probably part of the reason they do so poorly as AI factions.

I'm having some success getting France and HRE moving, but it has been limited, for one Poland is WAY too OTT ATM. It's even got most of the steppes and it's not even turn 25 in my current campaign, (another Byzantine one, and a change or two here and their has made them infinitely more interesting although they still make crazy amounts of money, (over 40K to spare by turn 25 and it's mostly been normal tax rate)).

The biggest issue seems to be an annoying habit of HRE/France to just have stacks standing around. Right now England, Scotland, France, AND Denmark all have stack in Antwerp Province Strong enough to take it and their just sitting their glowering at each other. Likewise France and HRE have 3-4 full stacks each siting around doing nothing. And when I say full stacks I don't mean lots of quarter stacks totaling full stacks, i mean actual full stacks full of troops, plus probably another 2-3 stacks worth of troops scattered about in part stacks. HRE could have Prague, and Braslue with ease and Venice could have had Zagreb, (2 full stacks on the border for Venice, 4 units of half strength troops for the rebels). France could likewise have grabbed Antwerp and Rennes by now. I wish i knew why they where doing it as if they would actually put those stacks to use they might be dangerous.

Field battle with Portugal. Should be a real battle. They didn't like me nearing Pamplona and came out to meet me. Crossbows routed the Jinettes. Shook them up a bit, their formation just went to pieces. But they have reinforcements incoming and I don't. And I like my position, so not moving. They keep moving to flank my right and I keep pivoting. So far. Too much and I open my left to the incoming. Interesting maneuvering on AI part though. Weird, they set their pavise xbows in enfilade to me. Bloody, but whipped first wave. Waiting for second to arrive. First had 2 Portuguese knights and 2 D Knights of some sort. Plus the usual, 1 jinettes, 3 pavise, some spears. The second bunch is smaller, and doesn't seem to want to come fight. Hmm, they are fiddling around at the entry point, not approaching. So just resting my troops. Time is on my side. And it's gonna run out for them. Yep. Oh, it was 3 DFKs, 3 pavise, 2 PK and 1 jinettes. I had 2 PA, 2 PX, 1 X, 5 AS, 2 MK and general. They had quality but didn't execute well. My right wing got beat up though. 3 DFKs is hard on spears. Had to chase off the knights before I could charge the rear. Then they all routed nicely.

I'm working on this issue myself, the AI does a good job of bringing quality to battle, but it just doesn't use it well enough.

Hmm, why is military academy city-only if it gives a bonus to Cav? Can only build merchant and gendarmes in cities. Or is it universal? If it's not, it really should be a castle building. It's useless in cities. Well, except for Crusader guilds. Forgot those. So not useless, just a bit... off point.

Partly it's because of how rearranged the tech trees. I put the Cav bonus in before I moved everything around as much. I'll try to think up a new function for it, (although it already gives generals good traits too BTW).

Are Scots Guards gone from France? Don't see them in any building.

My mistake, they ARE supposed to be present but I missed putting them somwhere somehow. One of the Little bugs mentioned although this ones probably been present since day one.

Wow, Byz is rolling, up to 12 regions. Denmark is third, but slipped back one from its high of 9. Poland and Spain have 7, but Spain will soon have 5, I think. Or 4. Too easy to hit them from the sea. Turn 67. Early for Mongols yet. Milan back AGAIN. But it's a half stack and mostly Carroccio standards now. Spain besieging Pamplona. But I'm about to hit Valencia and Lisbon to distract them a bit. Nuremberg is Fwench. HRE forgot to garrison it. It's infested with heretics! No wonder!

Watch out for the Carroccio Standards, they have Lock Morale and papal Guard type stats. SO they'll fight as well as papal Guard and will not rout under ANY circumstances.

Just noticed Knights Hospitalier don't have shield fix in. But moot in another day.

Blame Foz, not me.

[vonsch]

Apologes if I am saying somthing obvious but you can control the visibility of the 3 UI elements in the minimal UI with the F5, F6 and F7 keys...

No need to apologise! I didn't know about those

Watch out for the Carroccio Standards, they have Lock Morale and papal Guard type stats. SO they'll fight as well as papal Guard and will not rout under ANY circumstances.

Yes, nasty, but until the patch they can't assault cities. They just stand there. Missiles wear them down nicely. Never ever get in range with cav unless they are pinned. Even then it can smart.

Ok, Mongol advance guard entering on the southern shore of the Caspian. It's only 1.25 stacks though.

Wow, England has pushed the Scots back some. Scots only have Dublin and their two starting cities now. England the rest. Correction, Dublin is rebel. Original garrison. Me beating up on England early, and throwing them off the continent, helped them focus . Fwance, acting its proper historical role, just centuries early. Just in test mode, but Moors brought two stacks with siege gear to Tunis this time. Almost two whole stacks. Much better. On autoresolve I suspect they can take it. But it's a fortress and the garrison is proper, so if I fight it, they will lose.

Russia hasn't done a lot this game. Poland's fault, probably. Poland has Kiev, which I suspect they grabbed early. That really hurts Russia. And Riga is Dane, though Russia besieging it now. Turks are in trouble. Byz pressuring Yerevan. Tbilisi is farthest north Turks went. Moors grabbed Baghdad on jihad. Heh, but lost it to a rebellion, it seems. Egypt has made NO ground in the Holy Land. Hungary hanging in there. Byz and them have swapped a couple of cities. Byz has Sophia, Hungary has Thess. The only real superpower is Fwance. Spain now has the Iberian penninsula except Pamplona. It's trying to move north. Bad idea. It will lose LIsbon and Valencia as soon as I play again. Fleets ready to land stacks at each, and 1-2 unit garrisons. Cordoba vulnerable too, once Lisbon is taken. And Toledo, if I can get there fast enough. Granada is too. Still one part Moor stack around though. Oh, Triploi still rebel. Guess that Moor stack aborted an attempt to come back to beat up on me. Egypt has a part stack there. That's a BAD Egyptian move. Maybe they are fixating west this game. It take like 20 turns to walk there. Oh, they managed Aleppo. Somehow. They have Dongola and Jedda. Byz has Antioch and Damascus. Bypassed central Turkey. Probably landed from Nicosia. They took Iconium from Turks though. Turks took Adana, Edessa and Treb.

There are more Mongols. 3 full stacks just east of Yerevan now, other side of mountains from advance party. That's turn 71. Maybe the farther north they enter, the earier they appear? And farther south is later?

If the patch teaches the AI to garrison better (use all free slots!) this will be a much more challenging game for me, I suspect. As a long-time student of B Liddell Hart, I can't resist the indirect approach.

[Carl]

Me eithier for that matter...

p.s. thier IS a bug in merchant guilds BTW. the basic Merchant Guild gives no increase. Thats allready been fixed for 1.24.

[vonsch]

Me eithier for that matter...

p.s. thier IS a bug in merchant guilds BTW. the basic Merchant Guild gives no increase. Thats allready been fixed for 1.24.

Oh, good. Found a couple more then!

Now back to getting my head beat in with EB.

[Rozanov]

Had another long sesh last night as Poland (I play at night coz electricity is cheaper for me then)

I've not played Poland before so don't know how different it is from vanilla.

basically knowing how the problemFixer makes assaulting settlements and castles a near impossibility, I just go up to them, don't bother with siege equipement and wait for them to come out and fight. Which they do and then I beat them. Dull.

As for the AI bringing along enough siege equipment - someone seems to have forgotten to tell them, as all the castle defences I played (in this campaign) (up to 1170) the AI has never brought up any thing except infantry and cavalry and then built siege equipment on-site. The infantry then gets slaughtered, the cavalry run away.

For me the extreme rate of fire of towers makes the game unplayable, it restricts the human players choice of how they are going to play the game.

Correct me if I'm wrong but the radius of influence for defending units has increased as well. In eastern castles (the first level of stone castles) I can put 1 unit of peasants 1/3 way between the gateway and the plaza and they can happily keep 6 towers firing until the enemy can somehow neutralise the unit. (Added bonus - move back to the plaza and see all the towers behind it become active!) Realistically archer towers should have 1 bowman firing at a steady rate from each arrow slit. This would force the defender to either have men on walls or a stronger ground level defence.

Managed another couple of crusades. Pulled off the "baldrick's surprise" manouver the second time, much closer run thing - the defending general nearly got back to the central plaza before the 3 minutes were up.

But the army was so severely mauled it lost control of jerusalem before it could rebuild etc.

The second crusade was a success though - led by the same general (by now KING!) who had got stuck in a mountain pass in northern Italy - trapped by HRE and venetian armies (luckily both allies!) so it was an easy matter to get him to jerusalem - once he'd recruited enough troops for the crusade and this time not only the assault succeed (the rebel garrison having been reduced by unsuccesssful Egyptian attacks) but there was enough troops left to hang on, build churches, priests etc. King (by 1170) now has max loyalty, dread, command and piety and an awesome retinue. I hate to think what's going to happen when he dies.

Mongols have been reported (apparently at war with the Turks) but I sent a diplomat to mosul and baghdad to check out their progress and found no sign of them - mind you diplomats do a have limited LoS. Not around Antioch either as I have 2 merchants there - very profitable.

Elsewhere well, I'm at war with Russia (but have taken Helsinki and Novgorad from them - well if you will start wars with people), The Danes have been held in check and I've taken Stockholm - still a village in 1150 (but I've noticed your comments above); and now I have Milan trying to taken Magdeburg from me.

All in all I have Krackow, Halych, Stettin, Riga, Vilnius, Thorn, Breslau, Magdeburg, Stockholm, Helsinki, Novgorad and Jerusalem (apologies for any spelling errors) So not going too badly. The Hungarians - allies - have kept themselves out of my lands pretty much; HRE have been destroyed (not by me - we were allies); I have an alliance with the Pope - does help if the Pope is Polish half the time, the other factions don't seem to be building many priests! (noticed this in previous campaign too.) Ventians / Hungarians and the Byzzies are having their usual bun fight in the Balkans - also noticed a huge rebel army outside Sofia and soon after got a request to blockade the port (so either the rebel army took Sofia or one of my enemies did.)

Also noticed the Inquisitors are pretty rubbish - have they been nerfed? Or do they take time to build up their "strength"?

------------------

Will give this a rest now - I have to wait for someone to send me the big 1.2 patch (I don't have broadband), try that out and then get back to you, once I've played that a while, and you've seen what needs fixing in it!

[Bob the Insane]

Well life for the Polish under the Player's control is certainly a little harder...

It is around 1150 (the Mongols turned up in 1148!)...

We have taken Vienna from the HRE and Budapest from the Hungarians...

Fortunately after my capture of Vienna the Pope finally intervened to stop the fighting and the HRE stacks skulked off back to there own lands. The Hungarians have besieged Krakow so they are now formally on my list. They have discovered thet sending units of heavy knights into our open lands simply makes them fodder for the Polish nobles...

I did see something really interesting, I have a large stack approaching Budapest which had a half stack of defenders plus a full stack stood outside. I was trying to bait this full stack into attacking me when a venetian (my allies) diplomat wandered to the full stack, did a little dance and it simply disappeared! Bribed, great...

The battle for Jerusalim was great, even though I lost, and a testimate that the the AI can take a settlement on the battlemap if it has some artillery. A large Egyptian army turned up with a couple of Balista units...

Unlike what I stated before, they did not attack the towers, but rather they attacked the walls either side of the towers first. They knocked a hole in one side and got the other down to 60% before the missiles ran out...

They had one tower, one set of ladders and two rams (the rams where never used). The tower caught alight as it docked against the wall. I posted one unit of Spear Militia above the spot where the ladder was used and with the aid of the towers either side easily defended their section of wall. But even with the towers still working the breach by the gate made all the difference. They got troops in and my mix of Spear Militia, Town Militia and peasants (plus a general) where not really up to holding the line. Don't get me wrong, they fought well and long, and the towers took a devestating toll on the attackers, but once engaged with my troops there was a lot of friendly fire from the towers too... In the end I have a couple of depleted peasant units and a couple of other guys trying to hold the square. All that was left of the attackers were a few Marmaluk horse archers adn their general. Their general had long since lost the rest of his guards but was always in the thick of the battle and must have killed 10's of men (if not more) by himself... Once the fighting in the square was done and the enemy general dragged down and butchered, all I had left were the two peasant units containing two men each... But the battle did not finish, the enemy balista crews where still out there and not moving. I tried tempting them closer to the walls but then my remaining four guys spontaniously routed and the battle, and the city, was lost...

Part of the reason for this loss was that the orginal crusader army was away taking Demascus at the time. I took it but could not hold it (so i gave it to my closest ally, the Danes ), and asked the Pope for another crusade to Jerusalim. This was granted and it is under siege by good Polish christians again...

Finally the Russian have attacked us, from nowhere... The Dread path thing really is full of fighting... They started with a blockade, but a large army has also turned up on our borders... We shall see how they deal with polish nobles and spearmen...

Interesting to see two persepctives on the same faction... I really do not know what I did to provoke the HRE into attacking me, but the loss of the trade income and the need to maintain a defensive force (plus the crusade) has robbed me of the ability to expand east...

[Carl]

Unlike what I stated before, they did not attack the towers, but rather they attacked the walls either side of the towers first. They knocked a hole in one side and got the other down to 60% before the missiles ran out...

Thats weird as Ballista shouldn't even be able to damage towers strictly speaking.

They had one tower, one set of ladders and two rams (the rams where never used). The tower caught alight as it docked against the wall. I posted one unit of Spear Militia above the spot where the ladder was used and with the aid of the towers either side easily defended their section of wall. But even with the towers still working the breach by the gate made all the difference. They got troops in and my mix of Spear Militia, Town Militia and peasants (plus a general) where not really up to holding the line. Don't get me wrong, they fought well and long, and the towers took a devastating toll on the attackers, but once engaged with my troops there was a lot of friendly fire from the towers too... In the end I have a couple of depleted peasant units and a couple of other guys trying to hold the square. All that was left of the attackers were a few Marmaluk horse archers adn their general. Their general had long since lost the rest of his guards but was always in the thick of the battle and must have killed 10's of men (if not more) by himself... Once the fighting in the square was done and the enemy general dragged down and butchered, all I had left were the two peasant units containing two men each... But the battle did not finish, the enemy Ballista crews where still out there and not moving. I tried tempting them closer to the walls but then my remaining four guys spontaneously routed and the battle, and the city, was lost...

Thats the kind of siege battles I wanted to see. Vastly outnumbered and outclassed forces holding the enemy to a Pyhrric Victory.

Well life for the Polish under the Player's control is certainly a little harder...

Good to hear, can you spot any obvious ways to make it harder off the top of your head, (apart from the obvious better AI opponents)?

As for the AI bringing along enough siege equipment - someone seems to have forgotten to tell them, as all the castle defenses I played (in this campaign) (up to 1170) the AI has never brought up any thing except infantry and cavalry and then built siege equipment on-site. The infantry then gets slaughtered, the cavalry run away.

I know, thats why I've mentioned it's a problem ATM. The AI isn't using ANYWHERE near enough siege equipment ATM and it's really hurting their performance IMHO. It's an issue i'm working on but we have to be careful that we don't have the AI building stacks entirely of artillery, (which it will if you give it enough artillery to recruit).

For me the extreme rate of fire of towers makes the game unplayable, it restricts the human players choice of how they are going to play the game.

It's SUPPOSED to restrict your choices. I'm trying to put a complete stop to the vanilla situation where you could build a ram and a couple of ladders and take an entire settlement with no more than a couple of hundred losses even if the AI Garrison was as strong as your force. Frankly you SHOULD need to outnumber the enemy Garrison 3 and 4 to one with similar quality troops if your going to attempt to assault over the walls, rather than knock them down. Historically speaking even besieging forces 10 times the size of the defending force suffered horrendous losses taking a fortified position. Rebuild ProblemFixers Fortifications are quite mild by comparison to the real thing.

Correct me if I'm wrong but the radius of influence for defending units has increased as well. In eastern castles (the first level of stone castles) I can put 1 unit of peasants 1/3 way between the gateway and the plaza and they can happily keep 6 towers firing until the enemy can somehow neutralize the unit. (Added bonus - move back to the plaza and see all the towers behind it become active!)

It's because of stupid AI again, they don't spread their forces out on the walls enough and as a result a lot of the towers that should be firing in vanilla don't have anyone near them to activate them. To try and cure this i increased the activation radius, although 6 towers sounds excessive to me, It shouldn't be more than 2 in that situation as the activation radius is a Little over the distance between 2 towers.

Realistically archer towers should have 1 bowman firing at a steady rate from each arrow slit. This would force the defender to either have men on walls or a stronger ground level defense.

The problem with those statements is that realistically speaking, (even taking into account the smaller number of men per unit when compared to reality, and thus the smaller size of the fortifications when compared to the real thing), not only should you armies be bigger, (even on huge unit sizes it's impossibbile to defend more than half the walls in most forms of settlement), in terms of numbers of units. The walls are currently too big for the unit scales.

In addition the towers are a fraction the size they should be when compared to the walls, and both the walls and towers should have dozens of extra arrow slits in them per section of wall/per tower.

Lastly, Historically speaking having less men available WAS NOT a disadvantage for the defender, (at least not compared to in an open Field battle or what you are suggesting). The entire POINT of my changes is that having more men as the attacker IS NOT an automatic victory or even a near automatic victory. Sieges where historically meat grinders that cost the lives of 1000's.


Thats precisely what Rebuild ProblemFixer is trying to achieve. i'm not necessarily doing it JUST for the historical accuracy, thats just an extra reason. The big point is that it makes it impossibbile to quickly and easily take settlements. Even if you have vastly overwhelming forces with lots of siege gear, (4-5 towers and 4-5 ladders plus 2-3 rams are advised per army attacking if you don't bring anything to knock down the walls), you can and will suffer 100's, (even 1000's, at higher wall levels), in dead.


To explain how all the above interfaces with your statement. My point is that YES the arrow towers do fire unrealistically high numbers of arrows from each slot. but thats because each slot is having to fire arrows for all the dozens of arrow slots that aren't present on the walls, they are also having to make up for all the missing units that should be present defending the walls and the total uselessness of most crossbow and Gunpowder units when on walls.

Managed another couple of crusades. Pulled off the "baldrick's surprise" maneuver the second time, much closer run thing - the defending general nearly got back to the central plaza before the 3 minutes were up.

But the army was so severely mauled it lost control of Jerusalem before it could rebuild etc.

The second crusade was a success though - led by the same general (by now KING!) who had got stuck in a mountain pass in northern Italy - trapped by HRE and venetian armies (luckily both allies!) so it was an easy matter to get him to Jerusalem - once he'd recruited enough troops for the crusade and this time not only the assault succeed (the rebel garrison having been reduced by unsuccessful Egyptian attacks) but there was enough troops left to hang on, build churches, priests etc. King (by 1170) now has max loyalty, dread, command and piety and an awesome retinue. I hate to think what's going to happen when he dies.

I find it's best to send the priests ahead of the Crusade and convert everyone first, otherwise holding the holy land is outright impossibbile.

OK, Mongol advance guard entering on the southern shore of the Caspian. It's only 1.25 stacks though.

That always spawns their regardless and actually spawns at the same time as you get the warning about the Mongols being sighted, (i.e. the one you get BEFORE the video warning turns up, hope I've been clear enough?).

There are more Mongols. 3 full stacks just east of Yerevan now, other side of mountains from advance party. That's turn 71. Maybe the farther north they enter, the earlier they appear? And farther south is later?

Nahh, thats the invasion the Video talks about.

Wow, England has pushed the Scots back some. Scots only have Dublin and their two starting cities now. England the rest. Correction, Dublin is rebel. Original garrison. Me beating up on England early, and throwing them off the continent, helped them focus .

Sadly that almost always happen in my experience as soon as turn 30 goes past. The Scots just can't seem to beat the English in an actual fight. Not sure why though.

If the patch teaches the AI to garrison better (use all free slots!) this will be a much more challenging game for me, I suspect. As a long-time student of B Liddell Hart, I can't resist the indirect approach.

The sooner they fix that and other hard-coded AI decisions the better.


To give you an idea of how good REAL defenses where, the walls of Pontfract Castle, (I live near the ruins), where, (including the earth berm they where built on), 1 MILE from top to bottom. That was so High that the mortars of the Parliamentarian Forces in the English Civil War COULD NOT fire their projectiles high enough to get over the walls. If you where to walk around the outer walls all the way you would have walked a distance of 15 miles. The walls where so think than even Cannon could not bring them down and the castle was besieged constantly for nearly the entirety of the Civil War, surrendering only when the rest of the Royalist forces did. AT which point the Parliamentarian Leader (forget his name i'm afraid), had the castle totally demolished with gunpowder. Today only a few stones and some of the earthworks remain.


To put the height into perspective. The walls where, (approximately), 1.5 times as high as the Twin Towers when they where standing or TWICE the height of the Empire State Building.

[Bob the Insane]

You mean this castle??




A mile high?? Are you sure...

[Carl]

A mile high?? Are you sure...

Thats what the Historians at the last Fair, (they have a fair every few years/every year their that is about the old castle) I went to their said and the same info was on a TV documentary a few weeks later.

Remember, it's earthworks+walls for the full mile. the walls themselves where probably only a fraction of that height, (they must have been pretty thick to withstand cannon fire and if they where thick they where probably tall though, so probably taller than your average wall). I can't tell you how authentic that picture is BTW as naturally the castle is no longer standing.

EDIT: the Wikipedia entry is very incomplete. Their isn't enough stone left of it to build a small house, the Fair is traditionally held next to the ruins that are left. Calling it dilapidated is like saying the Richstag was merely scorched by fire when Hitler had it burnt to the ground.

The only part worth mentioning is whats left of the Dungeons.

Here's an Aeriel Pic of all thats left of Pontefract Castle:

here

The Clearing in the Upper Center surrounded by trees.

[Rozanov]

Re: castles.

Pontefract is pretty much an exception in terms of its height.

In both my test campaigns I was defending / attacking level 1 stone castle, with a single tier of defences, 12th century pre-gunpowder.

So they're not mega citadels.

I've been through some of my collection of castle guide books (I've been visiting them (castles not the guide books) in England and wales since i was nipper - (ie many years)) and I can assure you most castles similar in design to level 1 stone castles would not have a vast number of arrow slots in either the towers or the walls. Given the level 1 walls are only a 2 stories high and the towers 3 (unimproved) you simply won't have space to put more than a couple of arrow slots in the walls and a couple in the towers - walls would have no more than 1 slot per 10 feet (3m).

Ok about needing to have the rate of fire upped to compensate for lack of firing positions in vanilla, I suppose it depends on whether you see the towers and walls as being the garrison, with anything extra as a supplement or whether the visible user controlled troops are the garrison with the walls and towers as a supplement. (I tend to the latter, the Problemfixer to the former?)

(Re the activating 6 towers thing - it's partly down to the excellent design of the approach to Thorn and similar castles - there are the gate towers, the towers next to them then a right-angle then another tower then a right angle to the rest of the (short) wall to another tower. You really don't want to make frontal assault on it - and with a unit of spears on the walls on either side of the gate towers you can zip around to stop anyone coming over the walls.)

As for the design philosophy of problemFixer I'm not sure how far down the road one should go in forcing gameplay in a particular direction. If people want to blitz, then that's their problem. If they can't adapt their game style to make for a longer, more absorbing game then they have an issue that needs addressing, not the game. For me, and despite the various bugs etc, the balance is fine for my style of play - after 4 campaigns I finally completed one within the time frame (and that took about three weeks playing for a couple of hours a day). If people say it's too easy they should change how they play the game. (well that's my 'umble opinion anyway! :))

Oh well let's see if the patch is out and I can tell a mate of mine to start downloading it.

(ER ... not so fast - the 1.2 patch has a couple of nasties in it, so looks like next week at the earliest.)

[Carl]

Re: castles.

Pontefract is pretty much an exception in terms of its height.

Oh I know that, (sorry should have been clear on that point), It would easily be a Citadel in game, I believe it was the largest castle ever built in england and one of the largest castles ever built anywhere in the world, (don't quote me on those last two, though as my memory is hazy on those).

I've been through some of my collection of castle guide books (I've been visiting them (castles not the guide books) in England and wales since i was nipper - (I.e. many years)) and I can assure you most castles similar in design to level 1 stone castles would not have a vast number of arrow slots in either the towers or the walls. Given the level 1 walls are only a 2 stories high and the towers 3 (unimproved) you simply won't have space to put more than a couple of arrow slots in the walls and a couple in the towers - walls would have no more than 1 slot per 10 feet (3m).

Ohh I know that, I've been to Norwich castle as well which is mostly intact, (I believe only the Curtain wall is missing), and thats much smaller. My point was that Real defenses of Castle where MUCH taller than the one in game which are frankly barely 10 stories high at the most on the largest sizes. But more to the point, even defenses as small as the ones in the game wold have had arrow slits in the walls and the towers (in comparison to the wall size), are far too small. The Towers would easily have been several stories higher than the walls and rather wider to boot, (real castle towers aren't the ultra thin ultra tall things fairy tales make out after all, their virtually miniature keeps in most cases). Overall I'd expect a minimum of 4 arrow slits per tower, per level, per side. And at least 2-3 levels on the tower plus at least another 6 arrow slits per level on the walls and at least 2 levels their. Thats 8-12 tower slots and 12 wall slots. so 20-24 slots in the space CA has put 2 in reality.

Even at one arrow every 4 seconds that gives the 20 arrow slots a fire rate of around 300 arrows a minute, which is not that much below what I've actually given them.

OK about needing to have the rate of fire upped to compensate for lack of firing positions in vanilla, I suppose it depends on whether you see the towers and walls as being the garrison, with anything extra as a supplement or whether the visible user controlled troops are the garrison with the walls and towers as a supplement. (I tend to the latter, the Problemfixer to the former?)

I'm somwhere between the 2, much like M2TW/RTW are in general. Namely their is a Kind of fixed Garrison that is invisible and is just used for manning towers. But their is also the visible Garrison which works in tandem with the invisible component and which is still a very important part of matters. I've merely raised the power of the towers to a more sensible level. Given the option I'd just reprogram the engine to give extra free units on top of the actual troops present for siege battles and make you have to put units actually in the towers to man them. Sadly this isn't something i can do as that would require a MAJOR re-write of the engine, which requires access to the source code and knowledge of a form of programming I know nothing about.

As for the design philosophy of ProblemFixer I'm not sure how far down the road one should go in forcing game-play in a particular direction. If people want to blitz, then that's their problem. If they can't adapt their game style to make for a longer, more absorbing game then they have an issue that needs addressing, not the game. For me, and despite the various bugs etc, the balance is fine for my style of play - after 4 campaigns I finally completed one within the time frame (and that took about three weeks playing for a couple of hours a day). If people say it's too easy they should change how they play the game. (well that's my 'umble opinion anyway! :))

I'm doing it mainly because the various blitzers out their don't WANT to blitz, but at the same time the kind of play-style that makes the game a challenge and isn't blitzing is actually quite boring for them and they don't enjoy simply sitting their giving the AI chance to build up when they could have ripped it to pieces 5 times over. What i'm trying to do is make sustained blitzes and early blitz's against the rebels very difficult for the player to pull off. The only way to do this easily is to make attacks on provinces very expensive for the player to pull off. Whilst a better AI and better garrisons can most definitely help this, the much stronger towers really ensure it. The Historical realism of it is simply a nice bonus which also means I don't feel like i'm being a-historical about it.


On the flip side i'm not totally against reducing the fire rate, (stone walls and stone castles are proving a Little hard on the AI, I just need to see how they do once they get good quantities of Siege artillery available before I decide how to lower it), I'm just pointing out that in general I WANT siege assaults to be very costly on the attacker. Stone castle and Ordinary Stone Walls SHOULD be possible to take without siege artillery, but it should still cost well over half a stack, and close to a full stack in dead doing it. As Bob the Insane has pointed out with his battle, artillery makes a VERY big difference to the effectiveness of the AI. Trying to claim the walls is a very bloody affair and as a result the AI often does badly at it due to it's lack of sufficient numbers, (something i'm trying to cure). However, when given a way to fight it out on the ground with significant numbers of men, it can actually make significant headway.

It's also worth noting that the Siege AI is going to be heavily re-written in the patch and I expect that to make sieges MUCH more difficult for the player as the AI won't just stand their and be slaughtered as it was. hell, given enough siege towers/ladders I've seen the AI give me quite major challenges in Custom Battles. It just doesn't build enough siege equipment on site ATM.

[vonsch]

So, Carl...

Since patch is delayed (again)...?

Heh, don't let me stampede you. I'm playing EB for the first time. Nice work there.

[Carl]

I'll probably get V1.24 out sometime tonight. i'm just doing my own quality assurance ATM.

[Carl]

Just a quick update. Good job I did my own QA, I've found a Little bug in the traits, nothing major but it's taking some tracking down i'm afraid, so it looks like the release is going to be delayed by 24 hours or so.

Sorry about this.

(The irony ehh).

[vonsch]

Heh, no sweat. I'm beating my head against the steppes as the Saka. They make your Russians look rich.

[Bongaroo]

I think something with the mongels is causing a ctd. not sure if you knew about this one. Its not on the first wave as they arrived a few turns ago. Any chance of getting a tiny fix for this like the last one? Spainish campaign is really taking off but there are a lot of interesting things happening. Crusade to jerusalem, milan forcing a few big countries into vasslage and a byzantine empire that is sprawling. Really shaping up.

thanks again for all the hard work, really enjoying the playtesting.

[Rozanov]

Carl wrote:

Ohh I know that, I've been to Norwich castle as well which is mostly intact, (I believe only the Curtain wall is missing), and thats much smaller. My point was that Real defenses of Castle where MUCH taller than the one in game which are frankly barely 10 stories high at the most on the largest sizes. But more to the point, even defenses as small as the ones in the game wold have had arrow slits in the walls and the towers (in comparison to the wall size), are far too small. The Towers would easily have been several stories higher than the walls and rather wider to boot, (real castle towers aren't the ultra thin ultra tall things fairy tales make out after all, their virtually miniature keeps in most cases). Overall I'd expect a minimum of 4 arrow slits per tower, per level, per side. And at least 2-3 levels on the tower plus at least another 6 arrow slits per level on the walls and at least 2 levels their. Thats 8-12 tower slots and 12 wall slots. so 20-24 slots in the space CA has put 2 in reality.

I suppose the problem here is that there were such a wide variety of castle designs adopted through europe (and I know nothing about north africa or the middle east) that it is difficult to know exactly what castle the game should use as its template.

The basic way the game works (if I'm correct) is that for every level of increase in castle development you get an extra story of wall defences. Thus for a level 1 stone castle you get 1 level, up to the level 3 where you get 3 stories plus towers (and you can add another level on top of the towers for ballistas or cannon.) Given the way the game works that's about as good as we can expect, it's a workable rule, and not to distant from much castle design (which changed over the course of the 11th-14th centuries.)

That's for the curtain wall where we can do the fighting. The larger towers (keeps) we can't fight in but are taller still.

10 stories seems a tad much for most medieval buildings, especially defensive structures - if by that you mean so many floors inside the building. Height can, of course be added to by building on an artificial mound (motte) or high rocky outcrop. I doubt there are any medieval keeps with more than 5 floors internally.

Arrow slits - well I was in Carmarthen yesterday and had a look at the castle there (or what's left of it) - the main gatehouse facing into the town had 0 arrow slits visible but a tower facing over the river had about 6 (total) on three levels. Rarely do you get more than 2 arrow slits facing in any particular direction on any particular direction. (nb we're talking mid-range curtain walls here.) (nb The designers obviously didn't expect trouble from the townsfolk, only outsiders coming up the river.)

My figure of 1 arrow slit per 10 feet came from the plan of Manorbier castle where there is a "fighting gallery" so equipped. It is the wall with the most arrow slits. Point to remember about castle walls - they have 2 functions: physical barrier and fighting platform. If you put too many arrow slits in you weaken the physical structure, pretty important when people are firing large boulders at you.

Again with the stories - if you look at even great castles as Caernarvon the main wall has three (tall) stories with towers another story up with tiny towers on them up another. Most towers would not be more than 2 stories higher than the curtain wall, unless they were serving as accomodation quarters or part of a highly defended gateway. I'd agree they were not flimsy fairy tale towers, but neither were they all massive mini-keeps (but a lot depends on which castle you are assuming as your template.)

So I don't find the number of arrow slots on the CA castles to be too few - and remember, the field of fire from them was highly restricted so you could only fire if there was something directly in your line of sight. Also it would be unusual for every arrow slot to have someone behind them or that they could find a target all the time.

[Bob the Insane]

Lets get away from the realsim of castle towers and walls for a moment and look at concepts...

For a settlement defended by a reasonable number of militia units (say 5 or 6 Militia Spears) and attacked by a larger force that is equiped only with the siege equipment built on site (rams, ladders and towers). Who effective should the castle defenses be?

In vanilla a single unit with ladders will make it pretty safely to the walls and get up and fight. Your only problem as the attacker is keeping the morale up enough that they keep on fighting. The towers will cause casaulties but hardly in sufficient number to impact the attacking force (unless they hang around under the towers for a long time as the AI does at present). So the only real effect towers provide in vanilla is a constant morale hit for units under fire and some defence against rams and towers. But the loophole is a high morale and good combat unit (footknight) with ladders is nearly unstoppable unless you have equivilent units on the walls defending.

The whole point of the changes are to try and make life a little more difficult for the rusher than simply building a bunch of ladders and maybe a ram to overcome every settlements in the early game...

The (possibly unrealistic) fire rate of fire from the towers prevents this and forces a (overall more overall realistic?) senario of having to starve out defenders in a siege until you develop the technologies for catapults and such, unless you are willing to sacrific a large number of troops to assault the fortifications.

That last paragraph is what is trying to be achieved... Would you agree with that as a concept?

[Carl]

Hey, thanks for that explanation Bob. you've explained the essence of the vanilla siege issues much better than i did. I can usually explain the issue in very simplistic terms, but it takes a few runs at it to get all the details painted out.

The Realism issue was just a side debate. Me saying that it's also not necessarily historical the level of losses you suffer in vanilla to the towers.

And I agree with the last Paragraph fully.

In fact I'll quote it to remind everyone:

The (possibly unrealistic) fire rate of fire from the towers prevents this and forces a (overall more overall realistic?) scenario of having to starve out defenders in a siege until you develop the technologies for catapults and such, unless you are willing to sacrifice a large number of troops to assault the fortifications.

On the other hand I've been busy on a Spanish test campaign today and went after Valencia, (El Cid had died of old age by this point). and I suffered some worryingly high losses considering the level of settlement.

The defenders where:

4 Jinetes
3 Mailed Knights
6 Spear militia
6 Javlinmen

All with 1 Experience.

I had:

8 Sword & Buckler Men
3 Trebuchets
1 Dismounted Chivalric Knight
3 Pavise Crossbowmen
1 General

I knocked 4 holes in the walls with the trebs and tried to knock the towers down without success, (the Trebs kept missing as the towers are so small. Something I intend to fix).

I then charged in with the foot units, and attacked the massed rebel forces.

Now during the charge, and subsequent melee that sent them running for the town square I probably lost about 2 units worth of Sword & Buckler Men and a half a units worth of Crossbows.

A this point I got Charged by the mailed Knights and pounded by the Jinetes, the Mailed Knights also just managed to activate the gate towers. as a Result my losses instantly doubled and in taking the square I lost some more including most of the Dismounted Chivalric Knights.

After healing & merging I was left with:

4 Sword & Buckler Men
3 Trebuchets
0.25 Dismounted Chivalric Knights
2 Pavise Crossbowmen
1 General


Don't get me wrong, at least half my dead for the melee units where from being pounded by Javelins and charged by Cav. But at the same time, my Sword & Buckler Men where each around twice as good as any of the melee units, (except the Cav), that the enemy had and I killed a fair few of both the Cav and infantry with the Trebs Missed shots and collapsing walls.



My point? I'm worried that the towers even with a decent amount of siege gear available are a bit on the powerful side. My primary worry is the way in which even high quality units attacking a breached wall are being badly ripped up by low level towers.

On the other hand I also don't think their totally overpowered. Just allowing trebs to hit wooden towers will really help make siege assaults easier, and taking the two gate towers out would have made my losses much lower in that attack.

Currently however, my aim of a significantly superior force, (either in numbers or quality), being able to take the lower levels of walls with sufficient ladders/siege Towers isn't going to work. With the slow down Ladders/Towers cause and the losses incurred on the walls it would be nearly impossibbile for any force to take any settlement without artillery ATM.

That wasn't my intention. My intention was to make walls a very dangerous opponents, (for the reasons bob the Insane outlined), which make any siege require large quantities of troops, (more total power than the defender by a fair way in effect), and plenty of siege gear, and even, (in the case of larger walls), artillery if you wish to take the settlement in an actual assault.

BUT, Stone Walls and below where intended to be tackle-able with sufficient a sufficient overall power advantage over the enemy WITHOUT needing artillery, it was just meant to be very costly to pull it off.


Thus I suspect a slowdown in fire rate IS in order, but I'll wait a while to decide exactly how much of a slowdown is required.


@Bangaroo: Right, i' looking for it now. I haven't seen it in my Hotseat test campaigns so i'm going to have to use a normal campaign to find it. This is taking some time. I'm up to turn 64 with my Spanish campaign and the second wave won't show up for a minimum of 20 turns after the first, so where looking at turn 100+.

However, doing this is going to delay the release of V1.24 still furthar. My apologies

Can anyone else confirm this bug in the meantime please? If you get it could you copy your error log up as well please. Specifically the last 50 lines or so.

[Bongaroo]

00:34:05.796 [system.io] [warning] open: data/terrain/aerial_map/tree_models/textures/conifer_01.TGA.dds is missing
00:34:05.812 [system.io] [warning] open: data/terrain/aerial_map/tree_models/textures/conifer_winter.TGA.dds is missing
00:34:05.859 [system.io] [warning] open: ProblemFixer/data/world/maps/base/water_surface.tga.dds is missing
00:34:31.203 [game.script] [error] Trigger processing error in <nicolau_copernicus>
: <prior_build> is unavailable from event <CharacterTurnEnd>
when testing <SettlementBuildingFinished> condition
00:34:31.203 [game.script] [error] Trigger processing error in <nicolau_copernicus3>
: <prior_build> is unavailable from event <CharacterTurnEnd>
when testing <SettlementBuildingFinished> condition
00:34:31.203 [game.script] [error] Trigger processing error in <nicolau_copernicus>
: <prior_build> is unavailable from event <CharacterTurnEnd>
when testing <SettlementBuildingFinished> condition
00:34:31.203 [game.script] [error] Trigger processing error in <nicolau_copernicus3>
: <prior_build> is unavailable from event <CharacterTurnEnd>
when testing <SettlementBuildingFinished> condition
00:34:31.203 [game.script] [error] Trigger processing error in <nicolau_copernicus>
: <prior_build> is unavailable from event <CharacterTurnEnd>
when testing <SettlementBuildingFinished> condition
00:34:31.203 [game.script] [error] Trigger processing error in <nicolau_copernicus3>
: <prior_build> is unavailable from event <CharacterTurnEnd>
when testing <SettlementBuildingFinished> condition
00:34:31.203 [game.script] [error] Trigger processing error in <nicolau_copernicus>
: <prior_build> is unavailable from event <CharacterTurnEnd>
when testing <SettlementBuildingFinished> condition
00:34:31.203 [game.script] [error] Trigger processing error in <nicolau_copernicus3>
: <prior_build> is unavailable from event <CharacterTurnEnd>
when testing <SettlementBuildingFinished> condition
00:34:32.578 [game.script] [error] Trigger processing error in <0117_Update_Religion>
: <target_religion> is unavailable from event <FactionTurnStart>
00:34:32.578 [game.script] [error] Trigger processing error in <0118_Update_Religion>
: <target_religion> is unavailable from event <FactionTurnStart>
00:34:34.734 [data.missing] [warning] Cannot find the portrait path: data/ui/eastern_european/portraits/portraits/young/priests/001.tga, using the default culture path if it exists
00:34:34.734 [data.missing] [warning] Cannot find the portrait path: data/ui/eastern_european/portraits/portraits/young/priests/001.tga, using the default culture path if it exists
00:34:34.734 [data.missing] [warning] Cannot find the portrait path: data/ui/eastern_european/portraits/portraits/young/priests/001.tga, using the default culture path if it exists
00:34:34.734 [data.missing] [warning] Cannot find the portrait path: data/ui/eastern_european/portraits/portraits/young/priests/001.tga, using the default culture path if it exists
00:34:34.734 [data.missing] [warning] Cannot find the portrait path: data/ui/eastern_european/portraits/portraits/young/civilians/085.tga, using the default culture path if it exists
00:34:34.750 [data.missing] [warning] Cannot find the portrait path: data/ui/eastern_european/portraits/portraits/young/civilians/085.tga, using the default culture path if it exists
00:34:34.750 [data.missing] [warning] Cannot find the portrait path: data/ui/eastern_european/portraits/portraits/young/civilians/085.tga, using the default culture path if it exists
00:34:34.750 [data.missing] [warning] Cannot find the portrait path: data/ui/eastern_european/portraits/portraits/young/civilians/085.tga, using the default culture path if it exists
00:34:34.750 [data.missing] [warning] Cannot find the portrait path: data/ui/eastern_european/portraits/portraits/young/civilians/062.tga, using the default culture path if it exists
00:34:34.750 [data.missing] [warning] Cannot find the portrait path: data/ui/eastern_european/portraits/portraits/young/civilians/062.tga, using the default culture path if it exists
00:34:34.750 [data.missing] [warning] Cannot find the portrait path: data/ui/eastern_european/portraits/portraits/young/civilians/062.tga, using the default culture path if it exists
00:34:34.750 [data.missing] [warning] Cannot find the portrait path: data/ui/eastern_european/portraits/portraits/young/civilians/062.tga, using the default culture path if it exists
00:34:34.750 [data.missing] [warning] Cannot find the portrait path: data/ui/eastern_european/portraits/portraits/young/merchants/075.tga, using the default culture path if it exists
00:34:34.750 [data.missing] [warning] Cannot find the portrait path: data/ui/eastern_european/portraits/portraits/young/merchants/075.tga, using the default culture path if it exists
00:34:34.750 [data.missing] [warning] Cannot find the portrait path: data/ui/eastern_european/portraits/portraits/young/merchants/075.tga, using the default culture path if it exists
00:34:34.750 [data.missing] [warning] Cannot find the portrait path: data/ui/eastern_european/portraits/portraits/young/merchants/075.tga, using the default culture path if it exists
00:34:34.750 [data.missing] [warning] Cannot find the portrait path: data/ui/eastern_european/portraits/portraits/young/priests/008.tga, using the default culture path if it exists
00:34:34.750 [data.missing] [warning] Cannot find the portrait path: data/ui/eastern_european/portraits/portraits/young/priests/008.tga, using the default culture path if it exists
00:34:34.750 [data.missing] [warning] Cannot find the portrait path: data/ui/eastern_european/portraits/portraits/young/priests/008.tga, using the default culture path if it exists
00:34:34.750 [data.missing] [warning] Cannot find the portrait path: data/ui/eastern_european/portraits/portraits/young/priests/008.tga, using the default culture path if it exists
00:34:34.750 [data.missing] [warning] Cannot find the portrait path: data/ui/eastern_european/portraits/portraits/young/priests/024.tga, using the default culture path if it exists
00:34:34.750 [data.missing] [warning] Cannot find the portrait path: data/ui/eastern_european/portraits/portraits/young/priests/024.tga, using the default culture path if it exists
00:34:34.750 [data.missing] [warning] Cannot find the portrait path: data/ui/eastern_european/portraits/portraits/young/priests/024.tga, using the default culture path if it exists
00:34:34.750 [data.missing] [warning] Cannot find the portrait path: data/ui/eastern_european/portraits/portraits/young/priests/024.tga, using the default culture path if it exists
00:34:34.828 [data.missing] [warning] Cannot find the portrait path: data/ui/eastern_european/portraits/portraits/young/rogues/000.tga, using the default culture path if it exists
00:34:34.828 [data.missing] [warning] Cannot find the portrait path: data/ui/eastern_european/portraits/portraits/young/rogues/000.tga, using the default culture path if it exists
00:34:34.828 [data.missing] [warning] Cannot find the portrait path: data/ui/eastern_european/portraits/portraits/young/rogues/000.tga, using the default culture path if it exists
00:34:34.828 [data.missing] [warning] Cannot find the portrait path: data/ui/eastern_european/portraits/portraits/young/rogues/000.tga, using the default culture path if it exists
00:34:34.828 [data.missing] [warning] Cannot find the portrait path: data/ui/eastern_european/portraits/portraits/young/merchants/049.tga, using the default culture path if it exists
00:34:34.828 [data.missing] [warning] Cannot find the portrait path: data/ui/eastern_european/portraits/portraits/young/merchants/049.tga, using the default culture path if it exists
00:34:34.828 [data.missing] [warning] Cannot find the portrait path: data/ui/eastern_european/portraits/portraits/young/merchants/049.tga, using the default culture path if it exists
00:34:34.828 [data.missing] [warning] Cannot find the portrait path: data/ui/eastern_european/portraits/portraits/young/merchants/049.tga, using the default culture path if it exists
00:34:34.828 [data.missing] [warning] Cannot find the portrait path: data/ui/eastern_european/portraits/portraits/young/rogues/052.tga, using the default culture path if it exists
00:34:34.828 [data.missing] [warning] Cannot find the portrait path: data/ui/eastern_european/portraits/portraits/young/rogues/052.tga, using the default culture path if it exists
00:34:34.828 [data.missing] [warning] Cannot find the portrait path: data/ui/eastern_european/portraits/portraits/young/rogues/052.tga, using the default culture path if it exists
00:34:34.828 [data.missing] [warning] Cannot find the portrait path: data/ui/eastern_european/portraits/portraits/young/rogues/052.tga, using the default culture path if it exists
00:34:34.828 [data.missing] [warning] Cannot find the portrait path: data/ui/eastern_european/portraits/portraits/young/merchants/034.tga, using the default culture path if it exists
00:34:34.828 [data.missing] [warning] Cannot find the portrait path: data/ui/eastern_european/portraits/portraits/young/merchants/034.tga, using the default culture path if it exists
00:34:34.828 [data.missing] [warning] Cannot find the portrait path: data/ui/eastern_european/portraits/portraits/young/merchants/034.tga, using the default culture path if it exists
00:34:34.828 [data.missing] [warning] Cannot find the portrait path: data/ui/eastern_european/portraits/portraits/young/merchants/034.tga, using the default culture path if it exists
00:34:34.828 [data.missing] [warning] Cannot find the portrait path: data/ui/eastern_european/portraits/portraits/young/civilians/017.tga, using the default culture path if it exists
00:34:34.828 [data.missing] [warning] Cannot find the portrait path: data/ui/eastern_european/portraits/portraits/young/civilians/017.tga, using the default culture path if it exists
00:34:34.828 [data.missing] [warning] Cannot find the portrait path: data/ui/eastern_european/portraits/portraits/young/civilians/017.tga, using the default culture path if it exists
00:34:34.828 [data.missing] [warning] Cannot find the portrait path: data/ui/eastern_european/portraits/portraits/young/civilians/017.tga, using the default culture path if it exists
00:34:34.828 [data.missing] [warning] Cannot find the portrait path: data/ui/eastern_european/portraits/portraits/young/civilians/044.tga, using the default culture path if it exists
00:34:34.828 [data.missing] [warning] Cannot find the portrait path: data/ui/eastern_european/portraits/portraits/young/civilians/044.tga, using the default culture path if it exists
00:34:34.828 [data.missing] [warning] Cannot find the portrait path: data/ui/eastern_european/portraits/portraits/young/civilians/044.tga, using the default culture path if it exists
00:34:34.828 [data.missing] [warning] Cannot find the portrait path: data/ui/eastern_european/portraits/portraits/young/civilians/044.tga, using the default culture path if it exists
00:34:34.828 [data.missing] [warning] Cannot find the portrait path: data/ui/eastern_european/portraits/portraits/young/rogues/058.tga, using the default culture path if it exists
00:34:34.828 [data.missing] [warning] Cannot find the portrait path: data/ui/eastern_european/portraits/portraits/young/rogues/058.tga, using the default culture path if it exists
00:34:34.828 [data.missing] [warning] Cannot find the portrait path: data/ui/eastern_european/portraits/portraits/young/rogues/058.tga, using the default culture path if it exists
00:34:34.828 [data.missing] [warning] Cannot find the portrait path: data/ui/eastern_european/portraits/portraits/young/rogues/058.tga, using the default culture path if it exists
00:34:34.828 [data.missing] [warning] Cannot find the portrait path: data/ui/eastern_european/portraits/portraits/young/rogues/079.tga, using the default culture path if it exists
00:34:34.828 [data.missing] [warning] Cannot find the portrait path: data/ui/eastern_european/portraits/portraits/young/rogues/079.tga, using the default culture path if it exists
00:34:34.828 [data.missing] [warning] Cannot find the portrait path: data/ui/eastern_european/portraits/portraits/young/rogues/079.tga, using the default culture path if it exists
00:34:34.828 [data.missing] [warning] Cannot find the portrait path: data/ui/eastern_european/portraits/portraits/young/rogues/079.tga, using the default culture path if it exists
00:34:34.843 [data.missing] [warning] Cannot find the portrait path: data/ui/eastern_european/portraits/portraits/young/merchants/090.tga, using the default culture path if it exists
00:34:34.843 [data.missing] [warning] Cannot find the portrait path: data/ui/eastern_european/portraits/portraits/young/merchants/090.tga, using the default culture path if it exists
00:34:34.843 [data.missing] [warning] Cannot find the portrait path: data/ui/eastern_european/portraits/portraits/young/merchants/090.tga, using the default culture path if it exists
00:34:34.843 [data.missing] [warning] Cannot find the portrait path: data/ui/eastern_european/portraits/portraits/young/merchants/090.tga, using the default culture path if it exists
00:34:34.843 [data.missing] [warning] Cannot find the portrait path: data/ui/eastern_european/portraits/portraits/young/princesses/066.tga, using the default culture path if it exists
00:34:34.843 [data.missing] [warning] Cannot find the portrait path: data/ui/eastern_european/portraits/portraits/young/princesses/066.tga, using the default culture path if it exists
00:34:34.843 [data.missing] [warning] Cannot find the portrait path: data/ui/eastern_european/portraits/portraits/young/princesses/066.tga, using the default culture path if it exists
00:34:34.843 [data.missing] [warning] Cannot find the portrait path: data/ui/eastern_european/portraits/portraits/young/princesses/066.tga, using the default culture path if it exists
00:34:34.843 [data.missing] [warning] Cannot find the portrait path: data/ui/eastern_european/portraits/portraits/young/princesses/065.tga, using the default culture path if it exists
00:34:34.843 [data.missing] [warning] Cannot find the portrait path: data/ui/eastern_european/portraits/portraits/young/princesses/065.tga, using the default culture path if it exists
00:34:34.843 [data.missing] [warning] Cannot find the portrait path: data/ui/eastern_european/portraits/portraits/young/princesses/065.tga, using the default culture path if it exists
00:34:34.843 [data.missing] [warning] Cannot find the portrait path: data/ui/eastern_european/portraits/portraits/young/princesses/065.tga, using the default culture path if it exists
00:34:34.843 [data.missing] [warning] Cannot find the portrait path: data/ui/eastern_european/portraits/portraits/young/merchants/055.tga, using the default culture path if it exists
00:34:34.843 [data.missing] [warning] Cannot find the portrait path: data/ui/eastern_european/portraits/portraits/young/merchants/055.tga, using the default culture path if it exists
00:34:34.843 [data.missing] [warning] Cannot find the portrait path: data/ui/eastern_european/portraits/portraits/young/merchants/055.tga, using the default culture path if it exists
00:34:34.843 [data.missing] [warning] Cannot find the portrait path: data/ui/eastern_european/portraits/portraits/young/merchants/055.tga, using the default culture path if it exists
00:34:34.843 [data.missing] [warning] Cannot find the portrait path: data/ui/eastern_european/portraits/portraits/young/merchants/077.tga, using the default culture path if it exists
00:34:34.843 [data.missing] [warning] Cannot find the portrait path: data/ui/eastern_european/portraits/portraits/young/merchants/077.tga, using the default culture path if it exists
00:34:34.843 [data.missing] [warning] Cannot find the portrait path: data/ui/eastern_european/portraits/portraits/young/merchants/077.tga, using the default culture path if it exists
00:34:34.843 [data.missing] [warning] Cannot find the portrait path: data/ui/eastern_european/portraits/portraits/young/merchants/077.tga, using the default culture path if it exists
00:34:34.843 [data.missing] [warning] Cannot find the portrait path: data/ui/eastern_european/portraits/portraits/young/priests/027.tga, using the default culture path if it exists
00:34:34.843 [data.missing] [warning] Cannot find the portrait path: data/ui/eastern_european/portraits/portraits/young/priests/027.tga, using the default culture path if it exists
00:34:34.843 [data.missing] [warning] Cannot find the portrait path: data/ui/eastern_european/portraits/portraits/young/priests/027.tga, using the default culture path if it exists
00:34:34.843 [data.missing] [warning] Cannot find the portrait path: data/ui/eastern_european/portraits/portraits/young/priests/027.tga, using the default culture path if it exists
00:34:34.890 [data.missing] [warning] Cannot find the portrait path: data/ui/middle_eastern/portraits/portraits/young/heretics/085.tga, using the default culture path if it exists
00:34:34.890 [data.missing] [warning] Cannot find the portrait path: data/ui/middle_eastern/portraits/portraits/young/heretics/085.tga, using the default culture path if it exists
00:34:34.890 [data.missing] [warning] Cannot find the portrait path: data/ui/middle_eastern/portraits/portraits/young/heretics/085.tga, using the default culture path if it exists
00:34:34.890 [data.missing] [warning] Cannot find the portrait path: data/ui/middle_eastern/portraits/portraits/young/heretics/085.tga, using the default culture path if it exists
00:34:34.890 [data.missing] [warning] Cannot find the portrait path: data/ui/middle_eastern/portraits/portraits/young/heretics/064.tga, using the default culture path if it exists
00:34:34.890 [data.missing] [warning] Cannot find the portrait path: data/ui/middle_eastern/portraits/portraits/young/heretics/064.tga, using the default culture path if it exists

[Carl]

Think you could go back furthar? Each of the "<nicolau_copernicus3>" entries happens once a turn, (i'm not even sure what it refers to TBH), you need to go back 4 or 5 turns preffrablly.

Thanks.

[Bob the Insane]

Thus I suspect a slowdown in fire rate IS in order, but I'll wait a while to decide exactly how much of a slowdown is required.

That could well be the case, especially to give the AI move of a chance... Balancing must be so much fun...

I do wonder what effect the correct implimentation of shields after the patch will have...

[vonsch]

That could well be the case, especially to give the AI move of a chance... Balancing must be so much fun...

I do wonder what effect the correct implimentation of shields after the patch will have...

And why are you assuming the implementation will be correct, hmmm?

History argues against it!

[Carl]

Balancing must be so much fun...

, you said it.

I'll get back to my Spanish campaign, the main Mongol attack showed up 2 turns ago so I've got between 18 and 38 turns to wait for the next wave.

I'm also trying to get hold of the files from the unofficial 1.2 patch, but from a few titbit's people have posted it looks like i'm going to have a LOT of work to do.