Kingdoms Battle Map Balance - Latest Blog entry

[Lusted]

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

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.

[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?

[NagatsukaShumi]

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?

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.

[icek]

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.

[Jack Lusted]

Will kingdoms automatically update m2tw old game to 1.3

Yes.

[anders]

Yes.

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..)

[Jack Lusted]

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..)

Kingdoms will automatically patch M2TW to 1.3.

[econ21]

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.

[FactionHeir]

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

[crpcarrot]

@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.

[Jack Lusted]

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

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.

[anders]

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.

[icek]

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

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

[anders]

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

[econ21]

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

Yes, they did.

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

[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 .

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

[Zenicetus]

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 .

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

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

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.

[sapi]

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 .

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.

[FactionHeir]

It's all about making profits then eh?

[sapi]

It's all about making profits then eh?

Well, yeah

[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. They should focus on stuff that modders can't change, like getting rid of the remaining bugs and increasing hardcoded limits.

[Silverhawk]

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. :(

[Kronos]

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.

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?

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.

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.

[Jack Lusted]

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.

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

[FactionHeir]

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.

[Jack Lusted]

Sorry meant extensive testing not extensive changes.

[FactionHeir]

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

[DVX BELLORVM]

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?

[Zenicetus]

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.

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.

[John_Longarrow]

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.