Kingdoms Battle Map Balance - Latest Blog entry

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Originally Posted by icek

reitars in HRE medieval army

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Oh, that's easy.:laugh4:
Reiter is nothing but the german word for rider. Basically any guy on a horse. ~;)

And while we are talking about underpowered and settlement battle, what about the moors? Their christian guard are only available in citadels and don't even get an armour upgrade, dismounted polish knights are also available in citadels but have much better armour. and the dismounted polish nobles aren't bad either.dismounted portuguese knights are useless in city battles in comparison to dismounted feudal knights who can take a lot more beating from arrow fire etc. And I don't think aventuros are very useful in city battles.

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Originally Posted by FactionHeir

On a side note, have cav charges against cav been fixed in Kingdoms? In M2TW it is quite dishearting to see cav charge each other with damage only being done with the swords. Same if cavalry charge another cavalry that is static but in formation.

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Do you any comments on this point, Lusted? I agree with Factionheir, it is disheartening to have your knights execute a perfect charge, lances down, into enemy cavalry but not seem to have an impact. I mean, knights used lances in jousts vs other mounted knights for a reason. The big edge of the lance over the cavalry sword should be in the charge impact.

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Originally Posted by Husar

Oh, that's easy.:laugh4:
Reiter is nothing but the german word for rider. Basically any guy on a horse. ~;)

And while we are talking about underpowered and settlement battle, what about the moors? Their christian guard are only available in citadels and don't even get an armour upgrade, dismounted polish knights are also available in citadels but have much better armour. and the dismounted polish nobles aren't bad either.dismounted portuguese knights are useless in city battles in comparison to dismounted feudal knights who can take a lot more beating from arrow fire etc. And I don't think aventuros are very useful in city battles.

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at first lol, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reiter . second tell me what good is heavy infantry armed with spears without bonus againts cavalry? well i fought as english in 1.2 for citadell of pamplona with balista towers defended by dpk and aventuros and i really slaughter lot of my men and dont really want to think what typical polish army based on cavalry could do to win with aventuros in city battle. Moors have a powerfull, unique, long ranged, penetrating, horse-scaring camel gunner killers.

An official statement from the Oz team about 1.3:

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In order to ship Kingdoms some of the original Medieval II data needed to be changed to support new features. Primarily some miscellaneous settlement blocks. By changing this data, this created a problem, not with Kingdoms, but with Medieval II multiplayer. When a player who has the expansion pack installed plays the original game against someone who does not have the expansion pack installed, there is an incompatibility between the two versions and they will not be able to play against each other. If we allowed them to, as our trials showed, desyncs are immediate and unresolvable.

In order to not 'split' the Medieval II MP community into two (those with the expansion pack and those without) we made the changes in the form of a patch called 1.3. This patch which is placed on the Kingdoms disk is the identical version to what will be separately publicly released. The Medieval II Patch 1.3 is no longer something we can continue to work on or alter as it has to be identical to the one released on the Kingdoms disk. This Kingdoms disk has just gone gold!

About 5 months ago we did consider adding bug fixes and balance changes but it was determined that this would be an impossible achievement to aim for. It would mean that we had two fluid code bases and fixes going on (med II and Kingdoms) which both had to be completed and mastered on the same day. This would have for certain overloaded our testing resources. For the rest of the development team, the loss of focus by dividing their attention across two projects would have been equally as detrimental to the Kingdoms project. Shipping just one of these products on its own is an incredibly weighty task that pushes the studio to its absolute brink. Trying to pin two moving targets was just too unrealistic and in hindsight it absolutely was the correct decision to make. When we made this decision 4-5 months ago we shared it with SEGA and they agreed that whatever 1.3 patch is found on the released Kingdoms will also be permitted to be released separately to the public as the 'compatibility patch'.

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Well, fair enough, but will CA release another patch after Kingdoms is released with bug fixes etc. (and "Get off my land!" please!!!)? Like they did for RTW with 1.5 and 1.6.

lol can someone translate that to english please :D

from what i understand (english not being my first language and all) the game balancing is included in patch 1.3 and will affect thr grand campaign. right?

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from what i understand (english not being my first language and all) the game balancing is included in patch 1.3 and will affect thr grand campaign. right?

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No it will not.

ok then why would a vanilla player need 1.3 at all?

Edit: will 1.3 only affect the multiplayer community?

and to think i was egerly awaiting the patch to start another campaign

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Originally Posted by Jack Lusted

No it will not.

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If one buys the Kingdoms expansion, will the rebalancing affect the core M2TW campaign or just the four Kingdoms campaigns? I'd like to try a vanilla campaign with the rebalancing.

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Originally Posted by icek

at first lol, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reiter.

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Nice find, but I don't know what we would call these troops in german, in the game they are called Reiter, but there is no such german wikipedia entry as you can see on the bottom left of your link. I'm not saying you're wrong or anything, I was just kidding anyway.

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Originally Posted by icek

second tell me what good is heavy infantry armed with spears without bonus againts cavalry?

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It's good against infantry since no bonus against cavalry = no malus against infantry either. They just use another weapon and animation.

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Originally Posted by icek

well i fought as english in 1.2 for citadell of pamplona with balista towers defended by dpk and aventuros and i really slaughter lot of my men and dont really want to think what typical polish army based on cavalry could do to win with aventuros in city battle.

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Dismounted polish knights, a cavalry based army of any nation will have a hard time conquering a castle full of heavy infantry and ranged units. And dismounted polish knights are decent sword and shield infantry just like dismounted chivalric knights.

[/QUOTE]Moors have a powerfull, unique, long ranged, penetrating, horse-scaring camel gunner killers.[/QUOTE]
Who are useless in city/castle assaults as long as the enemy does not stand around waiting to get shot. They also have rather low armour so while they can kill a lot, they're also vulnerable.

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Originally Posted by econ21

If one buys the Kingdoms expansion, will the rebalancing affect the core M2TW campaign or just the four Kingdoms campaigns? I'd like to try a vanilla campaign with the rebalancing.

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As far as I understand any possible rebalancing will only affect the expansion and not the grand campaign, for that one could still get the LTC mod I guess.

Actually, I like it that way as described above, I'm not saying the LTC mod is bad in general, just not my cup of tea apparently.

excuse me, did I understand this correctly; 1.3 patch will have no effect on the standard grand campaign? so no rebalancing or polishing of units?

icek; you cant expect to have top notch units in every category, youre beginning to sound like a kid not getting the same toys the other kids get.. like I said, youre playing a cav-orinted faction, so youre supposed to have a harder time fighting i built up areas..
besides dism. polish knights is about as good as melee infantry gets, sword and shield infantry being the best infantry class.

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1.3 patch will have no effect on the standard grand campaign? so no rebalancing or polishing of units?

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That is correct.

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Originally Posted by anders

excuse me, did I understand this correctly; 1.3 patch will have no effect on the standard grand campaign? so no rebalancing or polishing of units?

icek; you cant expect to have top notch units in every category, youre beginning to sound like a kid not getting the same toys the other kids get.. like I said, youre playing a cav-orinted faction, so youre supposed to have a harder time fighting i built up areas..
besides dism. polish knights is about as good as melee infantry gets, sword and shield infantry being the best infantry class.

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And you begin to sound like some forum-returner guy that will write anything just to be on top of stack. Where did i wrote that i want all the best for poles? I wrote that i want one unit of our crappy missile infantry to have a long range and
i dont like dpk in portugease roster because its ruin any overall balance having insignificant faction a long range missile units, skirmish cavalry, heavy counter infantry, sword militia, great cavalry and pikes. they have everything besides horse archers and stakes. try to fight them with scotland on LTC.

Apologies for being thick but i am still a bit confused. I understand that the 1.3 patch includes no balances changes in itself, however when i buy Kingdoms(though that is now in doubt) will the balance changes included in that affect the grand campaign also? If the balance changes are not included is there any suggestion that they may be included in a later patch?
Thank you in advance for any clarification.

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Apologies for being thick but i am still a bit confused. I understand that the 1.3 patch includes no balances changes in itself, however when i buy Kingdoms(though that is now in doubt) will the balance changes included in that affect the grand campaign also?

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The balance changes will not affect the Grand Campaign.

So vanilla M2TW is being dropped unbalanced and left buggy while actual work goes on with kingdoms?

Thanks for the quick response lusted, I am very disappointed to hear that but at least i know not to bother with kingdoms now.

i was pretty dispointed at making us have to buy another expansion to play the complete game but i guess i'll just download LtC mod now. i was waiting for 1.3 cos i didnt want to have to uninstall etc due to mods.

will LtC being updated for 1.3 or is it ok downloading 3.1 Ltc now

So i dont know why i produce myself if those changes are only for 4 campaigns of kingdoms.

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Originally Posted by FactionHeir

So vanilla M2TW is being dropped unbalanced and left buggy while actual work goes on with kingdoms?

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Reading between the lines, that seems to be about the size of it. There are now two separate codebases, and they only have resources to work on the latest one. And they must be working in the background on the next major release by now, so I'd assume M2TW is now locked into its current status.

That's not so unusual for a game this long after release, but it's unfortunate that they split the codebase/balancing for an expansion that takes place in the same time frame as the original game, with many of the same units. That's different from the BI expansion for RTW, which basically replaced all the units instead of having an overlap. I don't see how this won't mess up the ability to switch back and forth between Kingdoms mini-campaigns and the original game. That's going to screw up any coherent sense of tactics or strategic unit build planning.

I guess they figured most people would just move on to Kingdoms mini-campaigns and abandon the main game? I don't know. I'm interested in Kingdoms because I thought it would be a neat set of mini-games within the context of the overall game. I'm not quite ready to abandon the grand campaign. There are a few factions I haven't played yet, and a few ideas I still want to try (I haven't managed to get the Turks over to the New World yet). And I for sure don't want to be putting on different tactical thinking caps when I switch back and forth, controlling the same unit type.

P.S. CA really needs to find someone who can write clearly, for information releases like the one Lusted quoted.

Do expansion pack owners will also need to apply 1.3 patch? i yesterday unistalled m2tw and deleted my england 33 provinces campaign being sure that exp will resize and rebalance all game.

Are javelin and gun cavalry affected by the increased accuracy as well? I like playing missile cavalry heavy factions and frequently use up all my ammo. Javelin cavalry are especially affected by this as they use up all their ammo quickly then fight in melee. Will the increased accuracy offset the smaller unit size, and hence, smaller amount of missiles available?

Very disappointing when you finally get to the bottom of things. Sad to say, nothing changes

......Orda

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Originally Posted by Orda Khan

Very disappointing when you finally get to the bottom of things. Sad to say, nothing changes.

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Gripes about horse archer unit size etc excluded, I suspect many people here will be disappointed that the rebalancing is not being applied to the grand campaign. Most of the changes did sound sensible and welcome.

However, re-reading the announcement it seems to be all about what is shipped on the Kingdoms disk. There's still a chance of a later patch (a 1.4) that rebalances the grand campaign. If Lusted's mod already does most of that anyway and he is now in CA, I can't see it taking an excessive amount of time.

I suppose there is still an issue for the company to authorise the playtesting etc required for another patch. Maybe we just have to hope Kingdoms comes with a killer bug (all Kings die at 56 or something) so that they have to authorise another patch.

Well, you can actually set when characters die in moddable files :tongue:

A real killer bug would be characters not aging or aging some 4 years a turn :grin:

If Kingdoms is released with a show-stopper bug and they have to fix it, that won't solve the balance problems (or the mismatch between same units in Kingdoms) in the original game. It's two different sets of code; two different game engines. They've already said they don't have the resources to deal with both.

If Kingdoms has a show-stopper bug and is a flop, its highly unlikely they will fix it.

They might release another Xpack that balances, fixes and maybe even add some new content to the Grand campaign sometime next year. If so then perhaps they can consider throwing in Kingdoms with it as a sweetener.

What about historical battles?

There won't be any historical battles in kingdoms as far as I heard (official at totalwar.com ^^)

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Originally Posted by Zenicetus

If Kingdoms is released with a show-stopper bug and they have to fix it, that won't solve the balance problems (or the mismatch between same units in Kingdoms) in the original game. It's two different sets of code; two different game engines. They've already said they don't have the resources to deal with both.

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It is still the same engine and the same script language, but I think they just don't want to deal with all the bugs (see over several hundred).
It wouldn't be too difficult to use the kingdoms unit file for the grand campaign.

it appears that we will have the most badly planned expansion in the tw history. I dont understand why balances go only for kingdoms and not the whole game. for eg i will play as hre in teutonic with super uber zweihanders and then i go to play hre in grand campaign and my zweihanders will be crappy as they are now. And dont tell me to play on lusted LTC mod in grand campaign coz this mod is screwed in grand campaign - lusted kicked all recruitment from castle walls and he kicked dismounted polish knights totally from the game and who know what else. I wont even mention how i like to have a polish menu and english units.

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lusted kicked all recruitment from castle walls and he kicked dismounted polish knights totally from the game and who know what else

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Whilst DPK might have been missing from earlier versions of LTC thanks to an error on my part, they are recruitable in the latest version. and i moved recruitment from walls to the stables, barracks and ranges as i felt they were a bit redundant otherwise.

And i've seperately released my balance files at TWC so you could just use those.

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Originally Posted by Lusted

Whilst DPK might have been missing from earlier versions of LTC thanks to an error on my part, they are recruitable in the latest version. and i moved recruitment from walls to the stables, barracks and ranges as i felt they were a bit redundant otherwise.

And i've seperately released my balance files at TWC so you could just use those.

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I pressume that 3.1 is the latest, i tested only it and i didnt have them. Tell me what building should give them now and i show you it on screenshot when i check it one more time. And this doesnt change my mind about having new balances in both games.

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I pressume that 3.1 is the latest, i tested only it and i didnt have them. Tell me what building should give them now and i show you it on screenshot when i check it one more time. And this doesnt change my mind about having new balances in both games.

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Oh :daisy: i've made the same mistake again. They're recruitable from the highest leve barracks which Poland can't build, i'll have to fix that for 3.2.

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Originally Posted by Lusted

And i've seperately released my balance files at TWC so you could just use those.

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Please could you post a link here? I just had a look over at TWC and they did not scream out at me. (Mod output tends to be hard to find for the uninitiated like me, but these files sounds closer to an unofficial 1.4 patch than a mod.)

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Originally Posted by econ21

Please could you post a link here? I just had a look over at TWC and they did not scream out at me. (Mod output tends to be hard to find for the uninitiated like me, but these files sounds closer to an unofficial 1.4 patch than a mod.)

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I believe that they're in the LTC hosted mod forum here ~;)

erm excuse my really bad modding language but if i'm using LTC then i dont need to do anything further to get these balance adjustments right?

a question for lusted

what if any are the differences in kingdoms stats to LTC 3.1?

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Originally Posted by Lusted

And i've seperately released my balance files at TWC so you could just use those.

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Is this on the vein of a sort of unofficial rebalance "patch"? Bringing the old into Kingdoms I mean, just not officially naturally.

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Originally Posted by hoetje

There won't be any historical battles in kingdoms as far as I heard (official at totalwar.com ^^)

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Let me rephrase my question.

Will historical battles in vanilla receive the balance changes?

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Originally Posted by Miracle

Let me rephrase my question.

Will historical battles in vanilla receive the balance changes?

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Dont be angry on me, but i think that there will be no rebalancing for all vanilla aplication. we will have such expansion like those for star wars empire at war and comand and conquer generals. No changes for main game.

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Is this on the vein of a sort of unofficial rebalance "patch"? Bringing the old into Kingdoms I mean, just not officially naturally.

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Well i suppose, it is a version of the balance that is used in Kingdoms that was released unofficially, and i've released it for all to use.

So if I install Kingdoms there's going to be two distinct stat "sets":

1. Grand Campaign/Historical Battles (Old 1.2)
2. Kingdoms Campaigns/Multiplayer (New 1.3)

...and if I wanted 1.3-esque balance changes to #1 I should install LTC, correct?

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Originally Posted by Miracle

So if I install Kingdoms there's going to be two distinct stat "sets":

1. Grand Campaign/Historical Battles (Old 1.2)
2. Kingdoms Campaigns/Multiplayer (New 1.3)

...and if I wanted 1.3-esque balance changes to #1 I should install LTC, correct?

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I may be wrong, but I believe Lusted has released a seperte update which rather than updating everything, just updates unit stats to 1.3.

The question is how the update system will work now? Will kingdoms automatically update m2tw old game to 1.3 and kingdoms application to 1.4 like in rome or do we need to download separate patches to old game and add-on witch include downloading another 800 mb 1.3 patch for m2tw old.

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Will kingdoms automatically update m2tw old game to 1.3

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Yes.

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Originally Posted by Jack Lusted

Yes.

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sorry for being extremely slow-witted right now, but did you just say kingdoms will give a 1.3 patch for the grand campaign?

if not, will kingdoms give 1.2 patch for the grand campaign( never got it since my home internet access is so unstable..)

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sorry for being extremely slow-witted right now, but did you just say kingdoms will give a 1.3 patch for the grand campaign?

if not, will kingdoms give 1.2 patch for the grand campaign( never got it since my home internet access is so unstable..)

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Kingdoms will automatically patch M2TW to 1.3.

Lusted what kind of things will the patch 1.3 change for the grand campaign if it does not introduce the rebalancing? Is it just fixing some bugs? I am not aware of any big issues with 1.2 aside from the need for some rebalancing.

Patch 1.3 does not fix anything but rather makes m2tw compatible with kingdoms as far as I am aware.

@anders the answer you are looking for i think is that yes 1.2 will be updated to 1.3 however 1.3 will make no changes to the grand campaign unit balance. it will balance units used in multiplayer though to the new balance in Kingdoms.

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it will balance units used in multiplayer though to the new balance in Kingdoms.

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No it does not, it makes people who have M2TW and not Kingdoms play games of M2Tw online against people who have M2Tw and Kingdoms. There are no unit balance changes in 1.3.

thanks guys, then I still have good reason to get kingdoms, and will finally have patch 1.2. looking forward to getting billmen who can actually take down horses..

btw. lusted its amazing to have a CA insider posting so regularly and answering questions on the fansite, thanks a bunch, and i hope your rebalancing with effect on the grand campaign game will be available in a commercial product soon.

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Originally Posted by anders

looking forward to getting billmen who can actually take down horses..

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you wont fell it too much if you wont play in custom on mp because horses in britania campaign will have a little power.

I havent got 1.2 icek, didnt the twohanders get a fix so they could take down horses in 1.2?

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Originally Posted by anders

I havent got 1.2 icek, didnt the twohanders get a fix so they could take down horses in 1.2?

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Yes, they did.

1.2 is an essental patch - fixes the twohanders bug and the shield bug.

So what is the actual reason balance fixes from kingdoms can't be added to the grand campaign? (a bit of technical detail wouldn't go amiss) As nothing stated so far seems to add up. For instance if your able to make a compatibility patch there doesn't seem to be any reason why you can't transfer over the balance fixes .

Basically it seems a bit of a non-issue that you've made a big deal out of and one easy solution of waiting until the balancing for the grand campaign is done before releasing kingoms hence easily solving the problem has been overlooked so you can make more money. That doesn't even need to be done, you can have your cake and eat it by just creating a balancing patch between now and when kingdoms is released for the grand campaign, fixing any bugs with kingdoms you missed and releasing it just after kingdoms is released as the only reason from your last paragraph of why it won't be released with kingdoms is you didn't have the time before kingdoms went gold, however if you can change it at all it means you can institute it on a patch that you now have time to make:whip:

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Originally Posted by Kronos

So what is the actual reason balance fixes from kingdoms can't be added to the grand campaign? (a bit of technical detail wouldn't go amiss) As nothing stated so far seems to add up. For instance if your able to make a compatibility patch there doesn't seem to be any reason why you can't transfer over the balance fixes .

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Well, maybe here's one reason, from early in the thread (quoting Lusted):

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Whilst the overall balance for each of the Kingdoms campaigns is the same, there are differences between each campaign for game-play reasons.

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Search the post for more info. That makes sense... sort of... if you consider each Kingdoms campaign a standalone mini-game. But I still think it's a terrible decision, if it means you have to change your tactical thinking for the same units when moving back and forth between Kingdoms campains, or the original Grand Campaign, because the units are balanced differently. That really makes no sense to me, but then I didn't design this game.

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So what is the actual reason balance fixes from kingdoms can't be added to the grand campaign? (a bit of technical detail wouldn't go amiss) As nothing stated so far seems to add up. For instance if your able to make a compatibility patch there doesn't seem to be any reason why you can't transfer over the balance fixes .

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Well, we've said ourselves that the Grand Campaign is huge, with tons of replay value.

Currently, with no changes to it in Kingdoms, it does not need to be re-tested.

The new Kingdoms mini-campaigns do, so chucking in a few fixes can be done without much disruption, due to the fact that there are already testers in place.

To start up testing for the GC would require a lot more work, and they've just decided that it's not worth it at the moment, it seems.

It's all about making profits then eh?

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Originally Posted by FactionHeir

It's all about making profits then eh?

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Well, yeah :beam:

TBH I don't think rebalances should be something that should cause CA undue concern, as, after all, they can be changed as much as people like through modding. They should focus on stuff that modders can't change, like getting rid of the remaining bugs and increasing hardcoded limits.

Eh, as someone who *really* disliked LTC and was very disappointed with the whole "release than patch later" attitude of the last Total War release, what little hope I had for Kingdoms went down the drain after reading the comments that the Kingdoms "rebalancing" is basically going to be a rehash of a mod that wasn't fun, only with a price tag.


I might pick this up once it hits the bargain bin for £10 or less... Even then, I doubt it. Sorry CA, but you've dropped the ball in a big way with Med2 with a lot of people. :(

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Originally Posted by Zenicetus

Search the post for more info. That makes sense... sort of... if you consider each Kingdoms campaign a standalone mini-game. But I still think it's a terrible decision, if it means you have to change your tactical thinking for the same units when moving back and forth between Kingdoms campains, or the original Grand Campaign, because the units are balanced differently. That really makes no sense to me, but then I didn't design this game.

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Not really as he also said at one point the reason was because they didn't want to work with 2 sets of code so which one is it?

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TBH I don't think rebalances should be something that should cause CA undue concern, as, after all, they can be changed as much as people like through modding. They should focus on stuff that modders can't change, like getting rid of the remaining bugs and increasing hardcoded limits.

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So how are you going to get 10,000+ people that play this in the multiplayer aspect of the game to download a mod thats unsupported by CA. the biggest mod in the history of total war for online play was probably Napoleonic Total War 2 made by the Lordz which about 500 people might of downloaded and played online.

It's not as if it's a hard task to institute balance fixes that they basically just need to import from LTC at the least. It's not hard to balance the game from scratch either, as modders can do it extremely easily.

The funny thing is this is the worse of 2 evils as what we'll have now after Kingdoms is released is 2 games, one of which will hopefully be perfectly balanced and a pleasure to play, unfortunately it's not exactly a multiplayer freindly game with no eras except all which will in itself completely unbalance the game like CA said all would be in standard mtw2, or you can only play with a small amount of units, although i haven't played kingdoms yet so I'm not 100% sure.

Then you have the normal mtw2 game which has great potential to be greater than mtw/vi's multiplayer which i heard was pretty damn good but didn't get the option to play it online. Only problem is there's 1 or 2 small bugs in the game however only 1 of them would be a problem if the game was actually balanced. It isn't which is why more people still play rtw compared to mtw2 online. Or on the other hand you could of released it but where people without Kingdoms couldn't play those with kingdoms which wouldn't be much of an issue on multiplayer as everyone would have kingdoms as they're all pretty fanatical about total war. then a few weeks later you release a patch that corrects this when you've thought about it and come up with a better solution. Then there's all those poor Sp players who will have to continue to put up with an inbalanced game because of a few mp players.

This is all presuming what what your saying is correct as out of the 5 or 6 different reasons that have been given they're not actually reasons but non-sensical excuses hiding that CA still can't be bothered to release a complete game or properly fix a broken game. Any reasons that could be plausible haven't been gone into in enough detail to judge there worthiness.

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It's not as if it's a hard task to institute balance fixes that they basically just need to import from LTC at the least. It's not hard to balance the game from scratch either, as modders can do it extremely easily.

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Any balance changes require extensive testing, it is not as easy as most people think.

I think it only needs a lot of testing, but extensive changes may be somewhat exaggerated. Except for the animation files (and only some of the 2H units actually need some faster animations), you only got descr_mount, descr_projectile, and EDU to change really for the most part.

If you really wanted to do even more, I suppose you could work the EDB to then control how many units you can hire of which unit, but that's about it.

Sorry meant extensive testing not extensive changes.

Meh, you got the whole community who are pretty much beta testers since 1.0 (which really should have been called 0.7) :wink:
Enough testers around here who probably wouldn't mind doing some of your work :grin:

I was hoping that 1.3 will fix all of those bugs still present after the last patch...

Lusted, I hope you don't mind me asking, do you know if the CA plans releasing another patch to fix the bugs?

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Originally Posted by I Am Herenow

TBH I don't think rebalances should be something that should cause CA undue concern, as, after all, they can be changed as much as people like through modding.

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Maybe, although the strategic map and your starting point in Kingdoms will be based on the unique balance for each campaign, and against special units that only show up in Kingdoms. You might break the gameplay (i.e. make it too hard or too easy) if you mod it back to match the original grand campaign, or if you mod all the Kingdoms units to the same balance.

And going the other direction, it might not work to mod the grand campaign to match Kingdoms balance, if much of that balancing is based on going up against units that aren't even seen in the grand campaign. Argh.

I know I should reserve judgment until playing Kingdoms or hearing some user feedback, but it just seems like a disjointed mess to me. Maybe it plays better than it sounds "on paper". All I want to do is be able to move smoothly back and forth between Kingdoms campaigns and the grand campaign, without changing my basic strategic and tactical planning. I don't want a specific unit -- one that I'm used to, and know how to use -- suddenly and arbitrarily changing its stats and capabilities just because I'm playing in one TW game module, and not another one.

For myself, I'm going to wait until Kingdoms comes out to judge how well balanced the units are.

I've tried LTC and I do find the balance between units more realistic. To me, the effort in running an empire is a bit high (greater unrest and build costs) but the units fight very well. My hope is that Kingdoms will have the combat balance of LTC without the micromanagement required on the campaign side.

So will LTC 3.1 work with the 1.3 version of M2TW, or will there be an updated version?

It should, considering that 1.3 won't be touching anything but the MP system, which (iirc - don't quote me) should be separate

um. does everything said about the expansion (mostly that rebalancing will not affect the main campaign) so far mean that oil from gates will appear only in the mini-campaigns, not in the main game?

:inquisitive:

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Originally Posted by Gaius Terentius Varro

So we're basically paying 30 bucks for a mod which will supposedly fix the game AGAIN?
I am still waiting for the patch (after all the expansions) that will fix my RTW...

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Quoting myself from page one here. So let me guess I am paying 30 bucks for an expansion which will NOT fix the game i bought a year ago and HOPEFULLY will not be bugged and needing another patch AGAIN?
Gotta love the business model here. Well I guess I have to let my wallet send the message nad not whine here.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Slaists

um. does everything said about the expansion (mostly that rebalancing will not affect the main campaign) so far mean that oil from gates will appear only in the mini-campaigns, not in the main game?

:inquisitive:

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As far as I know, yes (but it is apparently moddable)

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Originally Posted by Jack Lusted

Not really. Whilst archers are more accurate they are weaker in melee now, so close the distance with them and they are done for. Cavalry units might be smaller but they are still powerful, and factions like Jerusalem in the Crusades are reliant on their heavy cav thanks to the extra mobility and punch they bring. And yes i suppose cavalry has been nerfed in it's frontal charge steamroller mode, but they are still hugely useful in battle thanks tot heir powerful rear andf flanking charges and mobility. Poland will not be weak, it's grerat cavalry like Polish Knights and Polish Guards will still play a key part in it's armies.

Believe me if you'd played it you would know that cavalry are far from useless.

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More important than anything else, will the AI know how to use Cav, i.e. flanking into the sides of units rather than just being used to frontally charge units long before the infantry have engaged??

Just read through the rest of the info. Sad that the Grand Campaign is now officially on the rubbish heap. Because of this I think I'll wait and see if Kingdoms is worth it from forum reviews, and I don't mean by content and new features, but rather by AI improvements (or not as the case may be...).

All right so, if I understand it right, Kingdoms patches MTW2 to 1.3, but does *not* rebalance the units.

Is there any mod out there that rebalances the units in the normal MTW2 campaign but doesn't do anything else?

The changes sound really awesome and I'd like to see them used in my regular campaigns, not just the crusades, new world, teutonic, and english campaigns.

The Retrofit Mod rebalances the units and adds the features introduced in Kingdoms to the Grand Campaign.

Thanks for the heads up Phoenix !

Thanks Phoenix. That is perfect.