Lands to Conquer v1.1 released!

[Basilakes En Strategoisin]

1.0
-all factions playable in campaign
-new victory conditions for all factions

Hi Lusted! Thanks for your efforts, I haven't been able to play mtwII just yet but will be glad to have a fix available for the two-hander bug. Couldn't live without Varangians.

I got one question though. So Mongols and Timurids are both playable. I assume this means they will be present at the start of the game with a couple of units and some territory, right? And even if you're not playing them? Is there any easy way for me to somehow change this part back to vanilla, so that they first appear with the invasion stacks (like, are all the changes in one file or something, I'm not a modder but I can use copy&paste...). I like most other changes but it would somehow ruin it for me to have mongols and timurids running around in 1080

Anyway, would you/ have you already / are you considering publishing your fix for the 2-hander troops for all to use in their mods, since CA's patch apparently won't touch the issue?

Thanks again.

[Lusted]

No the Mongols, Aztecs and Timurids are not playable, i sohuyld have made that part of the readme say: all playable factions unlocked

Anyway, would you/ have you already / are you considering publishing your fix for the 2-hander troops for all to use in their mods, since CA's patch apparently won't touch the issue?

Yes i will be releasing one once the patch is out.

[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...

[Ars Moriendi]

I have now changed the VG animation to norse_swordsmen and their stats to the original ones. They now appear to be working properly against both inf and cav. They look weird indeed, with their stabbing attacks and one-handed axe wielding, but not that weird (it's not like they're shooting arrows or anything) - and definitely not weirder than them just standing there doing nothing but getting slaughtered. Anyway, who has the time to actually watch the fights zoomed in a real campaign battle ? not me, I usually stay at helicopter height :). I'd much rather have the units do their thing right than look pretty and move as in real life.

They seem a little too powerful now (they won too easily on the huscarls and norse axemen), but I think I'll just increase their cost rather than try to rebalance the whole unit roster. I just wanted to finish my Byz campaign, as I've already quit the english one (right before the climax) when I realized the billmen and DEK were broken. If I quit this one too, my M2TW experience will start to look more and more like a series on prematurely interrupted sexual acts (coitus interruptus for the latin speakers out there:))

I think I'll put the game on ice after this campaign until a real fix is released for this bug (hopefully in february...)

[KARTLOS]

Because they havea slow attack animation, so even though they have such high stats they are equal/lose slightly against JHI. Stats in M2Tw are very misleading, the attack spped of animations seems much more important that actual stats.

so did you keep their original aniamtion or have you changed that too?

[Lusted]

For which unit? i've had to change it for the units with the 2 handed bug, and only those units.

[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).