Suggestions

[Tuckles]

Ability to choose between Sivaic and Ajarine blood lines.

This would probably open up a new line of gameplay, learning strategies and weaponry of the Sivaic nation.

It could be something like this

Choose your bloodline

Ajaria

Sivas


Ajaria: Normal story

Sivas: Different storyline, choices of childhood

Hostage in Lun
Hostage in Aimaren
in another city
Capital of Father

etc.

Just a suggestion though

[ex_ottoyuhr]

Tuckles,

I hate to say it, but... no. Obviously, you don't know the story I'm planning on, but Arcos' bloodline is absolutely vital to the story as I plan it. It would be possible to create "multiple ASLOWs", you might say, for characters of different backgrounds, but with 4+ story paths to write already, I don't want to commit to anything like that...

zjhann,

Much of the Middle Easternness is due to my low art budget (i.e., "what I can scrounge"). If you're at all familiar with Hayao Miyazaki, I envision the Honseli looking more like the civilization of Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind than anything -- and that film gave me quite a shock, to discover that someone had already sort of arrived at the same place in world design...

(Edit: But thinking about it further, I don't think Nausicaa is the best of analogies -- some of the setting and especially costume design is a little simple-minded, and, of course, there won't be quite so many giant insects or proto-chocobos. That, and the Honseli proper are small, physically speaking, not really physically imposing -- one of several effects (their preference for heavy clothing being another) of living in a New England-type climate for a very long period of time...)

Don't worry at all about the spellings; I'm not exactly satisfied with the names, partially because they're evidently infernally hard to spell. (Sivas is due for a rename sometime soon, too; I'm sure my Turkish players would be able to tell you why. )

The similarity of equipment is very intentional, though, based on the similarity of cultures; Sivas, Lun, and Ajaria are all the same sort of civilization, and thus have more or less the same... "aesthetics," you might say -- like how it would be hard to tell the nationalities apart in the Hundred Years' War mod or the Lombard Leagues (if said mod's ever released, which I'm rooting for).

The Soltalline civs are a similar story, except that one of them uses a lot more horses than the other. You do get the "civilizational difference" between Soltallines and Honseli, but not within each of the two; M&B Native, and for that matter mods like Holy War, have an easier time in this regard because they're depicting a "clash of civilizations" of sorts -- the factions and cultures more or less correspond.

However, if I had a concept artist (or ideas and drawing skills) and modding skills and/or volunteer modders, there'd be much more systematic art and a lot more differences. The Ajarines have diverged from the "normal" type of Honseli civilization just in being landbound versus seafaring; Sivas sees some really heavy Galine influences (in fact, all the Honseli civs depicted in ASLOW have a lot of Galine blood -- notice all the blonds -- and culture); and Lun intrigues me just because quasi-nomadism was something I would never in a million years have envisioned for this particular civ/race...

(And as a disclaimer, if you're now wondering where to track down the novels/games/movies/role-playing sourcebooks/whatever that will give you more detail on this stuff, don't -- none of it exists yet. Yet... )

Papa Lazarou,

Sounds like a good idea. I can't promise when, but I'll do that. (Alarm level, FWIW, is the amount of money that a city would like to spend -- as opposed to the amount it can spend -- on military ventures at the moment.)

Cirdan, on sieges,

Regarding duels, you're obviously not a Honseli.

Espionage won't even be an option in sieges -- there'll be no way to find out how strong your enemy is, apart from the fact that if he deploys fewer than thirty men in a sally, he's probably got less than thirty fighters left in his castle. You also won't be informed of when your enemies run out of food... but then again, maybe you should. "Sieges in the dark" might be a little excessive -- all this needs more thought.

Don't worry, city troop hiring is under control again now. I should probably do a bugfix release...

Satyr,

7500 rallen? Sounds like it might be a bug... ... No, it's just that I don't start the player very hostile to anyone -- the starting situation is more a suggestion for how to play, I guess. I'll fix that...

I'm planning on implementing towns 'feeding in' to cities; one of these will be fairly significant in the opening game. Unfortunately, that'll involve a lot of level design. Don't hold your breath, but it is in the pipeline.

Remember that what you're playing isn't the full game -- I plan on getting the engine up to a good level, then overlaying the storyline (introduced in the opening menus) upon it. I should probably actually mention that somewhere...

I agree that starting the game is pretty ticklish. It'll be better with the storyline, but that may be a little while... perhaps I should start the player pumped up a little. Yeah, I'll do that.

Yes, your choices in chargen affect your starting stats. Spoiler coming something like soon...

Merentha, regarding the tutorial suggestion,

That clinches it -- I'm doing a tutorial.

Rover109, Satyr, and Merentha, regarding economics,

I had debated that at the beginning of conceptualization of the mod, but rejected it. From the beginning, I hadn't wanted this to be a game concerned with economics. The desire for player control and the lack of historical consciousness combine in many games of this sort to make the player more than half a tycoon and less than half a warrior; here, though, I decided to abstract out all fiscal matters, and give the player no more influence, or interest, than would be realistic for a culture about like this. Ensuring that a city's tax collectors make it back home will slowly increase the city's economic strength, but that's about it for money...

And besides, this is a pretty nearly subsistence sort of place anyways. I don't see much trade occuring here to begin with -- not too much of a surplus to trade...

(Food will be a concern only during sieges. When else, barring famines, would it tend to be a concern...?)

[Papa Lazarou]

Thanks for the clarification - I thought it was something like that but when the steward says "We have 1500 rallen and our alarm level is 50000," I thought it might have been something else.

[Satyr]

Well... maybe you can if you have time alter it so that masterwork is different from silver is different from steel is different from iron is different from extravagant, if only in colour. You want it to be similar but it doesn't have to be too different just like little design tweeks and stuff. I'll play around with the game a bit more.

[Cirdan]

Ex_ottoyuhr: I think I'll live with the knowledge I wouldn't make a very good Honseli . Better a live conqueror than a dead failure, and all that.


But i wasn't suggesting espionnage during sieges. Honestly, if my army was surrounding a city and stopping travellers in sight of the walls, I'd expect the defenders to be a wee bit suspicious of an unknown traveller hiding his face as he demands admittance. Of course, no siege is perfectly hermetic and the defenders would no doubt try to send out spies and messengers, but there's not enough gameplay potential for it to be worth your time representing this.

However, as the saying goes, "a man forewarned is a man forearmed"; or as Sun Tzu put it, "Know yourself and know your enemy, and you shall not be defeated in a hundred battles" (was anybody wondering how long it would take for someone to quote Sun Tzu? ). Personnaly, I would not like to march on an enemy city without having any idea of what I might face. Thus, i would suggest being able to make contact with some of a city's less reputable citizens in order to gain information, before leading an army to besiege it (or avoiding doing so, if you don't like the look of their defences).

To avoid sieges being completely "in the dark", i'd suggest in-character reports of how a city's defenders look. If they have high morale and supplies, they could appear confident; if morale/supplies are low, they could look dejected/gaunt and famished.

[Hist-Man]

This is more of a personal thing, but could you give the swordsmen (Up to Sergent) And the Honseli Spearmen (Up to Elite spearmen) Shields please?

I found it sad that most spearmen and swordsmen only had shields when they had no upgrades. After that less and less had any.

I love using shields and in my opinion it had a better feel when when my men were better guarded against arrows and the like.

Now alot more of my elites die because very few use shields.

So is there ANY way you could consider this?
Maybe a way to recruit troops with shields?

I'd really love it

Thank you if you do consider it.

PS. I won't go insane if you decide not to.
I'd just really like it if you did.

[zjhann]

even if this is not a "clash of civilizations" i though it could give a little bit more veriety
i mean i love what you made. don't get me wrong. i am enjoying it very much. let me give you an another example of weapong variety.
there was a war between Korean and Japan which lasted for 7 years. (somewhere in 16-17 centuries, i think i forget)
so here is the comparison of soldiers:

Japanese armor: heavy samurai armor with breast plate, light leather armor for low rank soldiers
Japanese melee weapon: katana, long spear (note that i am simplifying all the weapons)
Japanese ranged weapon: long bow, musket (portuguese from a ship wreck taught Japanese how to make these)
Korean armor: scale armor, no armor for low ranks since most of them were militia
Korean melee weapon: kal (sword in Korean. longer and heavier than katana), Trident (don't ask i don't know why)
Korean ranged weapon: strong bow (which had longer range than long bow)

so my point is even if they were located very close to each other they still had difference in weapons and armors.

[Cirdan]

Zjhann: i think a better point of comparison for what ex_ottoyuhr is thinking of would be Warring States or Three Kingdom China, where everyone is basically Chinese although there are real differences between the Northeners and the Cantonese. Reminds me, i owe him an off-topic opinion on China...

[zjhann]

Zjhann: i think a better point of comparison for what ex_ottoyuhr is thinking of would be Warring States or Three Kingdom China, where everyone is basically Chinese although there are real differences between the Northeners and the Cantonese. Reminds me, i owe him an off-topic opinion on China...

lol i guess you are right. i just hate it when i can't tell which soldier is from where. i am so OCD

[Tuckles]

@zhjann

You're not OCD. lol.

@Cirdan

I don't think it's like the Three Kingdoms era. Because they aren't all Ajarine. Karachen can be what you consider mongolians, Sivaic can be the Teutons(?), Lunnic can be like the british(?) and their love for pointy sticks, the honseli could be like... medieval jihad warriors, and of course, Ajaria could be like the middle east.

Also, I believe ex_ottoyuhr actually commented on a post about lances/horses in shops. He was gonna fix the spread of weapons around the map. Meaning the most probable place to find good lances is in Lun, and good bows in Karachen. Specific horses would be found in distinct areas more commonly.

Probably:

Warhorse
 - Lun
 - Sivas

Fast Horse
 - Karachen
 - Ajaria

etc
 - Aimaren and the other kingdoms

[Hardrada]

[ex_ottoyuhr]

OK, a lot of things to respond to here...

To start with, no, the Honseli are not Middle Eastern -- not in the sense of the Middle East post-Mohammed, the "culturally Muslim" Middle East (or, indeed, India). Instead, imagine a Zoroastrian Persian Empire in which everyone was completely wrapped up in themselves instead of subservient to the King of Kings; or, for that matter, the Austrian Hapsburgs (if one can forget about Metternich ).

Hardrada,

Your confusion is noted and will be addressed. I plan on replacing the current progression with Steel, Masterwork, Extravagant, and leaving it at that, next version... (Well, probably -- I'm waiting for feedback from Cirdan and Tuckles, who both suggested that I try an altogether different approach...) My apologies for the confusion I've caused, though.

I will certainly have to provide more NPCs, more room for filling roles like that.

Staying in the castle in your own (or an allied?) city -- brilliant suggestion!

I like the idea of speeding up infantry, but I'm not sure I can do it; I could do it, relativistically speaking, by slowing down everything else, but... ... you know what, 9.7 is really not an appropriate rate of movement for a thirty-man stack. Yeah, I'll slow down everything else.

I particularly like the idea of upper-tier infantry being horse-mobile. Sheridanic spearmen, you might say.

I'm probably going to need to rename the 'kantis' and 'kasja' -- the words are a long way from fitting with the rules of their parent conlang as it currently stands. They're basically masculine and feminine versions of the same pattern of clothing...

As to feminine extravagant armor, don't worry, I'll do my best to figure it out.

Satyr,

...

What he said.

Tuckles, Cirdan, and zjhann, on the setting and on distinctiveness of troops among factions,

You might want to envision the mod as the Ajarine equivalent of something set in Germany in the Thirty Years' War -- with everyone from the same 'macro-culture,' for the most part, and more or less similarly equipped. In a hypothetical 30YW mod, you could tell the difference between, say, Imperial Hapsburgs, Spanish Hapsburgs, Poles, Saxons, Swedes, Bourbon French, and Scots mercenaries -- especially if we were to go anachronistic and provide uniforms and very distinctive equipment, as Cossacks, for example, did -- but it wouldn't always be simple unless you were talking about kilts. Err, except for the fact that kilts didn't exist yet. You get the idea, though; the same would apply here with ASLOW. Troops aren't going to be too terribly different, not by the standards we're used to, and there's not much we can do about it...

Tuckles, as far as cultural analogies, everyone who's noticed that Sivas doesn't fit in is, of course, right. I envision the Galines as pretty Slavic, somewhere between Poland and Russia in culture and material culture (the jury's still out on length of beards and frequency of mohawks, though ), and they're mainly influential in Sivas, and to a smaller extent in, say, Lun. (That said, though, there's a lot of Galine blood in "Greater Ajaria" in general -- Honseli are natively auburn-haired, and blond hair -- found among the Galines -- is of course a double-recessive trait.)

Soltallines are Turkic in appearance and material culture, but almost Scots or Scots-Irish in culture; I hope to convey a good bit of that in the story once it gets up and running. The Lunnais, like I've said upthread, are pretty unexpected -- I had not envisioned Honseli acting much like how they're going to...

So, again, filter all this through the Persian / Austrian-Hapsburg lens I mentioned above... (And be sure not to get the Austrian Hapsburgs -- the "cultured Hapsburgs," much better at diplomacy than fighting, and going in for religiously-informed politics as opposed to raw religiosity -- confused with the more "raw religious" Spanish variety...)

Cirdan,

Thanks, I understand your suggestion a lot better now. You're right, too, sieges aren't hermetic -- I'll include a status update on the condition of the other side during a siege. Thanks!

[Tuckles]

@ex

I stand corrected. Lol.

I don't actually remember me suggesting a different approach, just a bit of weapon balance.

@hardrace

about the allies...

Well, you had some allies in the 7.51 ver.
ex_ottoyuhr said he'd put them back in the next version, we can just keep our fingers crossed.

[Eother]

I personally think weapon speed should be increased. The game would be a lot more interesting if swordfights weren't so slow-paced. Or, even better, you could have an option to increase/decrease weapon speed from an in-game menu. That would fix it so players who like the slow combat (or who are less skilled) could still enjoy this mod.

[Tuckles]

Well, it sorta breaks the realism, doesn't it?

PLEASE NOTE: EVERYTHING HEREOFF IS MY OPINION, AND IF YOU HAVE A VIOLENT REACTION, FEEL FREE TO PM ME.
I don't wanna be responsible for board clutter. That is all.

Swords weren't meant to be fast slashing beasts that you see in anime, etc. They were meant to be precisely slashed for maximum effectiveness. Katanas and the like were probably made for that, but if I remember correctly, it was mostly a one-slash who-hits-first deal. And besides, I believe that the attack speed is hard coded and for a faster attack speed, you'd need more agility.