Kingdoms Battle Map Balance - Latest Blog entry

[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.

[Jack Lusted]

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

That is correct.

[icek]

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.

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.

[Jasaray]

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.

[Jack Lusted]

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?

The balance changes will not affect the Grand Campaign.

[FactionHeir]

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

[Jasaray]

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

[crpcarrot]

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

[icek]

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

[Zenicetus]

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

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.

[icek]

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.

[andrewt]

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?

[Orda Khan]

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

......Orda

[econ21]

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

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.

[FactionHeir]

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

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

[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.

[Nebuchadnezzar]

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.

[Miracle]

What about historical battles?

[hoetje]

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

[FactionHeir]

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.

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.

[icek]

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.

[Lusted]

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

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.

[icek]

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.

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.

[Lusted]

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.

Oh 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.

[econ21]

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

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.)

[sapi]

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.)

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

[crpcarrot]

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?

[NagatsukaShumi]

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

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

[Miracle]

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

Let me rephrase my question.

Will historical battles in vanilla receive the balance changes?

[icek]

Let me rephrase my question.

Will historical battles in vanilla receive the balance changes?

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.