Stainless Steel 6.4 Released!

[gracul]

Installation:

Click here for download links and installation instructions.

New features

- New strategy map balance
Growing settlements is now a lot harder for both the player and the AI!
Although it's easy to get minor cities and fortresses, getting your settlements higher will be a struggle - and you won't be able to capture a lot of godly developed cities since the AI will be experiencing the same issue!
Citadels and Huge Cities are VERY rare now.
The whole system stands on a base of 50 auto-games which went above turn 200!

- Faith wars
Rebalanced the usage of priests for the AI. Now, the AI factions will work more on spreading their faith outside their borders.
BEWARE! as heretics and witches got seriously buffed in both their piety and spawn chance, both the player and the AI will have to work in order to stop heresy at their lands.
Religious unrest is more severe, so maintaining high faith levels is something a lot more important now.
Better get assassins for heretics labelled as prophet's....

Sample Screenshot

- New and rebalanced Faction Leader traits
Faction Leader traits are now a lot more important!

The Traits

- New buildings & rebalancements
Public Gallows, Bakehouse, Stonemasons hut, Logging camps and the third level of caravan stops these are the new buildings.
Their unique abilities will help you develop your cities nicely!

Sample Screenshot

- The Antipope
With the excommunication of HRE or France, their faction gets an Antipope - a priest who made a claim to be the Pope and is supported by a large faction in the church.
The Antipope is a godly buffed priest, who helps mostly in battling the inquisitors.
Station your Antipope(or any priest with piety more then 7) next to an inquisitor, and the next turn his piety will drop with a good chance.
The Antipope is designed for this, due to his massive movement boost!
This will help your generals survive an inquisitor onslaught!

Sample Screenshot

- Economic script updates
The economy script which tried to make the AI spend their money reasonably has gotten upgraded.
The AI will surely field a lot less troops if he cannot afford such!

- Guild System Overhaul
Guilds have been completely reworked.
Both the bonuses of the guilds were changed, as well as the points accumulation system.
Be sure to check what every guild can offer!
Chapter houses have been dropped from the guilds system - they can now be built in only specific locations on the campaign map, but these Templars or Hospitallers can really pack a punch!

List of Settlements where chapter houses can be built

Chapter Houses in v6.4 Teutonic Templars Hospitallers Santiago Montesa Thorn Edessa Edessa Leon Pamplona Stettin Antioch Antioch Oporto Zaragoza Hamburg Aleppo Aleppo Salamanca Valencia Magdeburg Damascus Damascus - - Palanga Acre Acre - - - Tortosa Tortosa - - - Jerusalem Jerusalem - - - Clermont Iraklion - - - Toulouse Rhodes - -

Sample Screenshot

- New Setup
The setup for SS has been completely reworked.
It allows for a lot more freedom for any modder, as well as supports using translations.
The setup already houses the translations for German and Spanish version!

Sample Screenshot

- New UI's by cedric37, and battle UI's by KDK!
Brilliant Strat UI's by master cedric37 have made their way to the SS!
Master KDK have supplied us with Battle UI's!

the UIs

Southern European Southern Battle UI Eastern European Battle EE Greek Battle Greek Middle Eastern Battle ME Northern European Battle NE

- New textures by Baraban
Baraban has kindly provided new unit models and textures for some of the SS units!
The battlemap is now a nicer place

- Teutonic Hilltop settlements added!
The hilltop settlement structure for the northern european settlements has been implemented into SS!

Sample Screenshot

- Warman222's new death animations added!

- Hotseat compatibility
SS was fully reviewed in terms of hotseat compatibility and is now smoother when it comes to hotseat campaigns.

Other:
Added stake sound when deploying stakes.
Bulgarian names fixed.
Russian names in Galway fixed. [early/late]
Banners fix.
Pre-battle one liner speeches fixed.
Wise Admin/Greedy ruler fix. [early/late]
Trebuchet+Catapult Smoke fix.
Imams and Pagan priests getting bishop title fixed.
Bonus movement hotseat bug fixed.
Sicily trait fix.
Infamous gui CTD bug fixed.
Slave merchants now have some movement points so you can't kill them accidentally.
Title stripping and faction killer traits now work correctly.
Old pagan priests portraits added.
Jihad video added.
New mongol/cuman cards added.
Timurid script overhaul.
Generals are now recruitable in higher level castles.
Merchant old age trait remade. [not so hardcore anymore]
Added newt's fix as 'DisableRR' option.
UI cards tweaks.
Tourney grounds can host tourneys!
Devastation bug removed.
+ all reported bugs were removed

Personal remarks:
Well, there it is. While 6.3 was packed with features, 6.4 is a more of a "balance, upgrade, fix bug and re-think" patch.
CTD's should be just incredibly rare with this patch if it's installed right, as just a hint, in over 100 auto-games which used these files i have not gotten one CTD, and i used the base version with permanent watchtowers, savage AI and permanent arrows.
Most importantly, the campaign map is now balanced in a lot nicer way. Although it is not hard to maintain your faction, growing and developing your settlements is harder.

First of all i'd like to thank bane_tw, Meneth, Rozanov, newt and Ishan; for keeping track of the bugs and writing bug-fixes. Without them, there would be no way to release a perfect bug-fixer like this one Secondly i want to thank PB, CC and Byg, who's work always was and always will be the core of SS. Thirdly, special thanks to everybody who reported bugs - without you guys this mod will never reach perfection!

The Stainless Steel 6.4 Team:

gracul - leader
King Kong - SS 6.1
Point Blank - RR/RC, lots of things
Byg - support and BGR
Caesar Clivus - forum handling, support and CBUR
Rozanov - coding and ideas
Germanicu5 - coding and ideas, BAI
y2day - art & graphics
Awellesley - units & support
Meneth - bug fixing
bane_tw - forum handling and bug fixing
Ishan - forum handling and bug fixing
cedric37 - art & ui graphics

BETA TESTING:
Smikis
Navajo Joe
sancco
TheColdTruth
Zanze
CamilleBonparte
adecoy95
nonnob3
PedroL

THANKS:
(HG)LordKoal, (HG)Super, (HG)Iliturgitano, (HG)Xaviar, (HG)Carlos, (HG)Adrics, CeltiberoThormes, penyetta, garcy170 (Spanish translation)
Fred Putz (German translation)
warman222 (new combo&death animations)
Baraban (textures & model fixes)
KDK (ui graphics)
beikon & gord69 (Steam help)
Fair Prince (SSNOP, SSHCP, SSTAIP)
newt (No Waiting)
Savage (CAI)
Caralampio
wolfslayer
Santiago de Pola
davide.cool (better grass)
Argent Usher (real horses)
Agis Tournas & Anthonius II (CBUR)
Magus (Crimson Tide)
Lord Calidor (KT mod)
agart (castle & city strat models)
Agis Tournas (Unit Card improvement)
Seether (AFR mod)
Soupdragon (EE watchtower)
Chimaeira (SSTC)
Lord Condormanius (Mailed Knights)
Akvilonn (additional unit info cards)
MADTAO (polish units)
Csatádi (hungarian map guidelines)
gewehr36 (pagan mongols)
Kevin MacLeod (music)
Jon Sayles & Bill Hudak (music)
Swagger (sky mod)
Akvilonn (Unit info cards)
nonnob3 (Unit info cards)
Lusted (CAI)
Lord Calidor (KT mod)
Quark (wherever you are right now)

All the people in the SS forumswho posted bugs and fixes!

Special thanks to all the people on the TWC forums providing tools for easier mod editing!