Lands to Conquer v1.1 released!

[Lusted]

Yes i have increased building construction times. 1.2 will feature tweaks to population growth, and increased popluation requirements for each level of settlement.

[JR-]

excellent thanks.

so the timeline and game development should play 'normally', just over a longer period?

[Lusted]

Yup basically.

[JR-]

cheers, can't wait. :)

[edit]

what about movement rates on the campaign map?
do we effectively move twice, and is it considered a problem even if we do?

[/edit]

[Ars Moriendi]

Varangian Guard still doesn't work against cavalry.

I'm playing a Byzantine campaign with Lands to Conquer ver.1.0 (1.1 wasn't out yet when I started). It took me some time to notice something's still wrong because the VG come quite late in the campaign and I mostly ignored their poor performance on the battlefield at first - I thought it was just some unlucky circumstance or some detail I missed in the confusion and general mess of the battles. Then one particularly disturbing event occured, while I was watching closely : I had the VG attack the flank of an engaged bodyguard unit expecting if not decimation then at least some casualties. There were exactly ZERO. The bodyguard unit then disengaged and walked right through the varangians without taking any damage, while the VG dropped from 90 to 70.

So I decided to do some clean tests : custom battle, flat terrain, 1 vs. 1 units, no upgrades.

I first tested the VG against infantry - with the danes since that's what I was up against in the campaign. They performed as expected : they won against sword units every time they charged. They also won most of the battles they didn't charged (i just walked them past the enemy and they engaged without charge). The VG started to run into troubles with the huscarls but they still won more often than not (when they got the charge right).

I then tested them against cavalry, with the weakest unit I could think of at the moment : scottish border horse. I just kept the cav. standing still, not wanting to take advantage of their charge bonus and let the AI led the VG to attack. The cavalry dropped from 60 to 40 almost instantly after impact, but then they stopped taking casualties.
The VG started to die quickly after that, and the battle ended with the VG routing with 4 men left, while the border horse unit was still at 37.

I run 7-8 more identical battles with pretty much the same results : the border horse won with 35-37 men left, with only 3-5 of them dying in the actual melee and the other 20 when the VG charged. The problem's definitely with the animation : after the charge the VG just stand there doing nothing while the cav. chops their heads off. They must be swingin their axes from time to time since they manage to kill 3-4 horsemen, but not nearly as often as they should.

Any ideas why this happens or how to fix it ?

PS:
I've also tested the DEKs, norse axemen and heavy billmen but only 2 battles each. DEK and billmen appear to be almost ok, as they won, but their losses seemed too large against such a weak cavalry unit (70, resp. 50 men remaining at rout). The norse axemen acted exactly like the VG, ie. they lost with the border horse taking 20+4 casualties.
The DEK and billmen animations appear to have a slightly different issue : they don't just stand there, they keep running. They don't go anywhere, as they run into the horses, but they don't fight much either - many of them just keep pedaling.

[Lusted]

Bugger, that means there are no unbugged units with 2 handed axe animations, and Varangian guard units look quite wierd with other animations.

[Ars Moriendi]

Some update on the two-handed units tests.

First , some screenshots with the typical VG vs. border horse fight :

The VG charging, horsemen stand still :



The cav dies in droves (~20) but the charge ended and the VG start taking hits :



The obviously wrong end result :



--------

I ran some other tests with the heavy billmen vs. the cuman horse archers (the most inept in melee cav unit I could find, 6att/3def/2charge). The billmen won, although with heavier losses than they should (about 45-50 men remaining on avg). The problem seems to be deeper than just the animation cycle : if you look closely you'll see 1-3 billmen with their heads pressed against the chest of a horse, trying to run through them as if they weren't there. It looks quite ridiculous. Maybe some problem with a conflict between army/unit level AI (telling them "go there") and the individual soldier AI (which should be saying "start swinging the damn weapons already").
What's even worse, I ran 5 fights when I ordered the cumans to charge - they won 3 out of 5 tests, and the 2 occasions when the billmen won they only had 10-15 men left. I know that there's people on this forum ready to argue that this is what should really happen, but I don't think that this should be the result of an encounter between a heavy infantry unit wearing plate and wielding pole weapons and the lightest missile cav in the game.

I also ran another 5 battle tests, this time with the battle diff set to VH (all other test were on medium). This time the billmen seemed to do a little better - they won 4/5, with lower casualty rates (~35 men avg. remaining). I hope this doesn't mean that there are combat bonuses on higher difficulties, since in no way could this be attributed to "better AI" in an 1-on-1 plain frontal charge.

This game is definitely broken - then maybe I just haven't run enough tests, although I think the trend here is quite clear...

[JFC]

Hiya Lusted,

Will this Mod work with the New Patch?

PS EMPTY your PM box!!

[Lusted]

It should yes, as it installs to a seperate folder, but i will be releasing 1.2 not long after the first patch is out.

PS EMPTY your PM box!!

Doiine, im just used to having my mega pm box at TWC(10000 messages if your an admin).