Garnier's Mod v1.2 Beta - Updated 01/13/2009

Release thread on TaleWorlds forum.

Release thread on the Total War Center

I mod M&B while I'm playing it to suit my tastes. This isn't a big ambitious mod or anything, just tweaks and ideas that I implemented for myself.

The theory and purpose of the mod is as follows.
I do not like grinding experience and leveling up a character over time, so my character stays fixed with certain skills. To make some more dynamics, weapon proficiencies decay over time, but go up through fighting as usual. This means you have to fight if you want to stay skilled, and gives less incentive to rest while your fiefs give income. Likewise renown decays faster and you eat more food, all to make sitting around worse. However, fighting also has its drawbacks. If you fall in battle, you get a wound which until it heals makes you fight worse. Wounds can accumulate, so you do need to be careful and retreat more often rather than fighting to the death. The two other main features are being able to start as a lord in any faction and have a castle, and also the new recruitment system where village recruits don't upgrade very far, and there are two other tiers of soldiers, "troops" which are recruited from towns, and "warriors" which are recruited from castles. These better soldiers cost a lot more than recruits, and are not as readily available, especially in the case of warriors.

DOWNLOAD LINK for beta 1.2 (20MB)
INSTALLATION:

Open the zip and place the folder "GarnierMod_1" in your modules folder. Then select "GarnierMod_1" as your module when you start the game.

FEATURES:

1. Each of the five capitals in the game has a bank, where you can borrow money or store money to be retrieved later. The interest rate on money you borrow is 400% per game year, and you have to pay 100 denars for every 1000 that you borrow, up front. Also you have to have at least that 100 denars in real (unborrowed) money to get a loan. You can't just keep taking more loans and stay rich. Interest is payed weekly and you can't avoid it. You make 1.2% per year as interest on money that you deposit in the bank, and this is added to your deposit each month. In 1.2 the code for the banks is mostly rewritten to be easier to use in other mods. Now also you can easily set in the code which cities have banks.

2. Horses are all slightly faster, slightly more maneuvrable and have slightly less charge, so they aren't as good for wading through masses of men knocking them all down, but they go faster in the open. Also their hit points are halved, so they fall a LOT more. In 1.2 horses are more balanced. They have more hit points than in 1.1, but less armor.

3. Recruiting is changed. Volunteers you recruit at villages only can be upgraded 1 or 2 times. You can hire middle tier troops at towns, though the number you can hire is based on renown and relations with the faction you are hiring from. You can also hire real warriors like knights from castles. These are quite rare to be able to hire. So each of the three tiers of troops stay in that tier, you dont recruit a peasant and turn him into a knight. I did update the types of reinforcements the AI lords get, so they don't just have armies of peasants (as might happen if they simply couldnt upgrade anymore). In version 1.1, AI Lords and castles get better troops on average than in 1.0, so the game is significantly harder in that respect. In version 1.2 the recruitment scripts are entirely rewritten, they are now much more flexible, more potential and easier to adapt to other mods.

4. Your men eat about twice as much food as in vanilla, but there is a warning when you are low on food. So you have to get more food on average, but you won't run out accidentally.

5. There are two sets of companions you can use, you pick which to use at the beginning of the game. "Garnier's set" of companions start at a fixed level and have random combat skills/attributes and proficiencies. The default set was made by my brother and they are similar to the normal companions in vanilla, they can be leveled up.

6. At the beginning of the game your character's skills are set to the default for this mod, and a very important rule is never to upgrade the character. This is a very significant aspect of the mod.

7. Your renown deteriorates four times as fast as in vanilla. Also your weapon proficiencies deteriorate over time, so you have to fight a lot to maintain higher levels. Now there is a good reason not to sit around letting time go by for whatever reason. Tweaked some in 1.1, but the theory is the same.

8. Each time you are knocked out in battle and carried away from the fight or taken prisoner, you get a wound that takes away some skills/attributes until it heals. The time it takes to heal is random, but on average it is 6 weeks for each wound. There is now a good reason to surrender if the battle is hopeless, to avoid taking a serious wound. Wounds tweaked in 1.1, so there is an equal chance of losing STR/AGI, and equal chances of losing each of the personal combat skills. Only STR/AGI and combat skills are affected by wounds. Also in the character report it says how many wounds you still are recovering from. In 1.2, your companions also can be wounded in the same way. This was one of the most difficult coding jobs I've done, but it's working now (finally!).

9. There is a button to sort your inventory by value of the items, and a button to select a new banner at any time you want. Note that selecting a new banner too many times can mess up the banners that other lords use.

10. The starting menus are redone entirely. You can choose to either have grown up in Calradia, or to be an unknown adventurer from far away. If you choose to be from Calradia, you choose the faction you've lived in/near, and then your station in society. You can start as a lord of any faction, and have a random castle and ~50,000 denars at the beginning, or a peasant with almost nothing. In between you can be a merchant, craftsman or soldier, for varying starting difficulty levels. The starting equipment is appropriate to your faction/station.

11. Income from fiefs is increased, so you can support more military, especially so you have money to recruit the rather expensive troops. Also you only recieve taxes from a fief/castle when the accumulated tax from that location is above 1000. I still will probably change the actual tax amount, to balance it.

12. Plate armor and great helmets are removed, as I wanted the armors to seem more historically accurate together. Also lords equipment is changed a lot, in general they ride better horses. Also all Swadian, Rhodok and Nord lords wear heraldric armor.

13. Party size and prisoner space is 1000, so you don't have to worry about hitting that limit. Prisoners are valued based on their level as well, not always 50 denars. Note that prisoners escape now.

14. Since new recruits don't upgrade very far, I have made more of them available and they cost only 5 denars apiece. Also mercenary groups in taverns are larger.

15. I added in "Rhodok Knights" which are just slightly better than sergeants, they are recruited in castles, while the rhodok town troops can upgrade all the way to sergeant/marksman. This makes the Rhodoks stronger like they needed to be.

16. Added in order knights (Templars, Teutonics and Hospitallers). These are available as mercenaries in taverns, as well as roaming the map in small parties fighting bandits and some factions. The parties of them aren't finished, I want to make more interesting stuff you can do such as join an order, but this is as far as I am now.

17. Bandits now ask for random amounts of money when you offer to pay them. The money they take scales with the money you have, so you don't want to carry lots of money around unless you're willing to fight to keep it.

18. Added slave markets in some cities. At slave markets you can sell any prisoners for a fixed price regardless of their level. Though this price randomly changes as time goes by. I also made it quicker to sell prisoners to the ransom brokers by adding in a "sell all" button at the beginning of the dialog. Also note that prisoners can escape from your party if you have too many prisoners and not enough men guarding them.

19. All faction, Lord, and town/castle/village names are redone, using European names. The faction conversions are as follows:
Swadia = Holy Roman Empire (German)
Vaegirs = Principality of Rus (Rus)
Khergits = Kuman Khaganate (Kuman)
Nords = Kingdom of Norway (Norse)
Rhodoks = Lombardy (Lombard)

20. Included the autoloot script thanks to fisheye.

21. Added some options at the beginning of the game and during the game, for using different companion sets and other stuff.

22. This change list isn't entirely complete, this is just a beta of 1.2. The in-game functionality is there, but I haven't taken the time to detail every change and function of the mod.

23. My python source is included.

Credits:
My brother for the order knights skins, and most of the European names.
Fisheye for the autoloot script.

Notes:
Don't use the CHEAT! option at the start of the game, it doesn't work properly -- duh!
In the camp menu there is a button to "take other actions" where you can increase or decrease renown by 100 per click. That's for testing, its a cheat, so you're not meant to use it while playing. :wink:

That's all I can think of that I did so far, I know there's more minor tweaks in there but I can't remember them all right now. Nothing game-changing though.

This mod is completely open source. If you're modding feel free to take any of my code and use it in your own mods. I've not included anything from other modders that is not open source.

A mod where militia can upgrade but stays militia, with 3 separate "tiers" of soldiers ? I wanted someone to try & mod that! I'll try this asap.

Horses are "slightly" faster ?!
I feel like I'm running like the wind!
Especially on the strategical map: can't control my movement! :p

Quote:

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My .ini file is included that speeds the game up, increases sight range, removes tracks, and makes the player and the companions not gain experience.

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My ini file has the time scale set to 1.0 instead of 0.25, so the game runs 4x faster in the campaign. I play that way so I don't have to watch my man slowly cross the map all the time. Just don't click on things too far away, move in shorter spurts so you can check for enemy armies coming at you.

Or you can change the time scale to whatever you want. Perhaps I should have left that as default when I posted this. :tongue:


The faster horses is in battle, they are 1.2 times as fast as default.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Garnier

My ini file has the time scale set to 1.0 instead of 0.25, so the game runs 4x faster in the campaign. I play that way so I don't have to watch my man slowly cross the map all the time. Just don't click on things too far away, move in shorter spurts so you can check for enemy armies coming at you.

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So you sped the things up in the campaign in order to slow the player down? :tongue:

well for me it does save lots of time. Most of the time I am hauling an army around, so bandits aren't a concern. The only time I need to be cautious is when moving through enemy territory.

Bump, I've just released what I have currently, version 1.1.

Hey Garnier, did you make many changes or any at all to the Troops.txt file?

Reason is, I'd love to combine your mod with Cremo's Native Improved mod. The two together would be imo the perfect game :)

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Originally Posted by mdibatti

Hey Garnier, did you make many changes or any at all to the Troops.txt file?

Reason is, I'd love to combine your mod with Cremo's Native Improved mod. The two together would be imo the perfect game :)

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I use the module system to mod, and yes I did edit the troops file somy troops.txt is different from others. The native improved mod didn't release their source code though, so there's no way for me to use the features it has.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Garnier

Release thread on TaleWorlds forum.
3. Recruiting is changed. Volunteers you recruit at villages only can be upgraded 1 or 2 times. You can hire middle tier troops at towns, though the number you can hire is based on renown and relations with the faction you are hiring from. You can also hire real warriors like knights from castles. These are quite rare to be able to hire. So each of the three tiers of troops stay in that tier, you dont recruit a peasant and turn him into a knight. I did update the types of reinforcements the AI lords get, so they don't just have armies of peasants (as might happen if they simply couldnt upgrade anymore). In version 1.1, AI Lords and castles get better troops on average than in 1.0, so the game is significantly harder in that respect.

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Rest assured i'll be using that for 268 B.C., if we cant entirely debug the script that we are working on now.

I havent looked at it yet, but I would guess its based on the faction troop tiers defined in module_scripts?

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Originally Posted by EdwardL

Rest assured i'll be using that for 268 B.C., if we cant entirely debug the script that we are working on now.

I havent looked at it yet, but I would guess its based on the faction troop tiers defined in module_scripts?

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In module party templates there's kingdom reinforcement parties, where you can change what troops are used, and in module scripts there's a reinforcement script that actually adds these reinforcement parties to the lords and castles.

Er yeah I got that. I was more referencing the recrutment options you made.

Oh, in regards to that, I've completely redone the recruiting code since I released 1.1, and I don't recommend using the recruiting code in 1.1 as its very clumsy and not flexible.

Once I have a good version of my current code (I'm always changing more things in the mod) I will post it here.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by mdibatti

I use the module system to mod, and yes I did edit the troops file somy troops.txt is different from others. The native improved mod didn't release their source code though, so there's no way for me to use the features it has.

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Hmmmm, would you be willing to incorporate his changes IF we were to get the source?

Perhaps, it all depends on how easy it would be and if I like it well enough. You are referring to their changes to the equipment of the various factions, I assume?

Anyway I did ask if they'd release the source but that was a week or two ago and he's not said anything about it..

It's a real shame that people don't always include the source. It's not like they can copyright what they've done or anything.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Garnier

Perhaps, it all depends on how easy it would be and if I like it well enough. You are referring to their changes to the equipment of the various factions, I assume?

Anyway I did ask if they'd release the source but that was a week or two ago and he's not said anything about it..

It's a real shame that people don't always include the source. It's not like they can copyright what they've done or anything.

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Yeah, the changes to factions to make their equipment more true to their culture. I'll bug him too, he seems pretty open about the mod, a couple people bugging him might help :)

Call me a noob if you want , but after downloading this *and I LOVE it by the way* I was wondering what files do I change to put the horse's hp back to default?

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Originally Posted by Axeman

Call me a noob if you want , but after downloading this *and I LOVE it by the way* I was wondering what files do I change to put the horse's hp back to default?

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Well if you mod using the module system, its in module_items.py.

But if you don't use/have the module system you'd need to edit the text files directly, which is a lot more confusing and I have never done it.

The next version will have higher hit points for horses, but less armor. Basically both the armor and hit points will be decreased by 20%, so all horses are harder to kill in equal ratio.

I have to give this a try!

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Garnier

Oh, in regards to that, I've completely redone
Once I have a good version of my current code (I'm always changing more things in the mod) I will post it here.

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Great, I look forward to it.