Is anyone up for helping make a FKoC sequel?

[AlphaDelta]

Are we nearly there yet?

[Geoffrey of Villehardouin]

Very little was left to chance. I spent a lot of time researching characters and trying to pinpoint where they were at the beginning of the war, where they historically recruited, how their troops looked and how they fought in certain situations.

Most aspects of the mod are very successful and historical. The problems with the mod are more about the campaign and battle AI than anything else. I understand now that higher difficulty simply means giving the computer player more money and the human player less. I find it grating. Even more so with the messages that the computer is the greatest kingdom on earth, despite losing battles and settlements, just because it awards itself more cash.

Waiting for the official war declaration in Sep 1643 is difficult. The latest I have so far managed to start was July, both out of impatience and because the economy seemed to be shrinking the longer I waited and the best means to generate income was clearly to capture settlements.

The computer might in my view be made a better player by tweaking instead the AI. There should be no need for the human player to be totally strapped for cash. A better AI should at the same time increase the chance for some interesting battles. One old and some new suggestions:

1. Make settlements harder to fall, so the computer player can generate bigger armies
2. And/or make the campaign AI attack the human player’s settlements more (I am no expert and I could not see a way in the script, but it may be possible)
3. Make the AI avoid pitched battles, since it is bound to lose, unless there are certain conditions that greatly favour the AI.
4. Make the AI have a tendency to move its armies as in a Mongol-style horde (or even 2-3 such hordes)
5. In multi army battles, “allied” armies fight just as badly as the AI, so multi army battles would be both more historical (in terms of total numbers of combatants) and would favour the computer player. They would also serve as a deterrent and balance the campaign in favour of the AI.
6. In the config_ai_battle of other mods, there seems to be a way to make cavalry avoid certain units. So cavalry in other mods will avoid spearmen (e.g. in Stainless Steel). By adopting a different style config_ai_battle, it should be possible then to make bodyguards avoid almost anything and cavalry avoid pikes – because at present they seem all too keen to charge straight into pikemen head on. Historically, I get the impression that the commonest thing was for cavalry to fight cavalry and infantry to fight infantry.
7. You have mentioned morale in one of the threads. If the situation looks like the AI is likely to be beaten everywhere on the battlefield (there is a comparison of odds in some config_ai_battle ‘s before the human player is attacked), then it might be possible to rescript it so that the AI should try leave the battlefield to preserve what is left of its army.
8. In custom battles, difficulty seems the same in easy, moderate, hard, VH. Is it different in the campaign? Not sure I have noticed a difference.

I wish I knew how and had the time to do some of these changes myself, because what I am suggesting might not work. In my view, as I said in March, the game could benefit from not so easy to kill historical generals and especially king Charles, and also from bigger AI armies and some ability to finance your own side, so that there can be bigger, more interesting battles. The computer player, despite being the greatest kingdom on earth, has lost the majority of its generals and cannot raise substantial armies after the first 6 turns, making this a game of attrition, since the human player is also often struggling to refit his own worn-out armies.

[AlphaDelta]

Wait until 1643? The war started in October 1642 and the same is true in the mod. You only need to wait for 8 turns.

1) Make them harder to fall, how? Garrison scripts? (that's free cash turned into bodies).
2) Scripting the AI to do certain things never works very well. Maybe it works with kingdoms, dunno...
3) Make the AI smarter you mean? In theory, yes please! but tweaking some variables won't produce that result.
4) See above.
5) I dont understand.
6) Stainless steal is for Kingdoms, a lot of things are different. Feel free to try and import those tweaks and post about your results.
7) It does already.
8) Probably. the AI is retarded. Pike and musket warfare was an after thought of M2TW. It was just an end game bonus.

Unofficial 9) Yes more traits might help generals to stay alive a bit longer, but you'll just be creating jedi masters and eventually they'll fall on a pike.
Unofficial 10) The fact that you have noticed them losing their generals is simply the side effect of creating historical generals. In Vanilla M2TW and every other mod I've played (besides BC ) I couldn't give a damn about the enemies generals because they are generic.

Try not to get too wrapped up in it all. Enjoy the history. Play it for a while. Watch the bloodshed. Indulge in the ambiance and have a nice weekend.

Cheers

[Geoffrey of Villehardouin]

Honestly the mod has a great atmosphere, I simply wish a different campaign and battle AI would make the overal experience even better. That is, an AI that can do better without just more free cash.

1. Sieges.
Sieges could be harder if cannons were made less effective and by giving the defenders some cannons, too (canon towers). Gates should be defended by cannons to keep enemy cannons away from gates. Mortars and light artillery should not be able to destroy walls or gates. Heavy artillery should be for that but could be made less effective than current artillery. Heavy cannons should be extremely slow to move around on the campaign map, immovable on the battlefield, and should have little or no effect in open battles (0 movement points). Petards (based on the script for the siege ram) could be used to approach and blow gates open. But petards should not always open up a gate. Petards should be dangerous to use, they would in practice make the unit a target and could in theory explode prematurely. Siege rams catch fire if attacked by lots of missile units. Lowering the petard threshold of their "catching fire" would negate their use against well defended settlements, as in reality. The use of siege ladders should mean high casualties (perhaps by negating a unit's defense skill somehow). Any and all of these modifications would make sieges more difficult for the human player (and I think also more complex and realistic). If a siege failed, for example if the petard unit was killed or the petard did not open the gate and the attacker had no heavy cannons for the walls, he would have to risk high casulaties in employing ladders or delaying the siege for another turn. Making one petard maximum available per turn per siege as a siege equipment and the slowness of moving about heavy canons would make sieges more spaced apart in turns and they may last more turns. In the meantime, hopefully the computer would get a chance to build bigger armies, closer to the front.

2. Open battles.
When I said "Allied" armies I meant that in a battle, if there are more than one army (stack) on your side, the others are called by the the game engine "allies". I do not know how keeping a horde together works with the Mongols, but some hording of the compuer player's armies would make it a bigger gamble to fight an open field battle. Because of the bigger numbers of stacks involved overall, some of the biggest battles could approach the actual numbers of historical ECW battles. Since "alled" armies are controlled by the AI, the end result would be less of a crashing victory for the human player.

The multi-army (multi-stack) battles could be fought in a historically semi-realistic fashion, with some of the cavalry regiments in the flanks attacking first, just their opponent and adjacent stack(s), then, if they win they might by chance be brought adjacent to some other enemy stacks near the centre and some of the infantry regiments could then attack stacks in the enemy centre, with the cavalry now as "allied" reinforcements. The battle could potentially finish in one turn or it may take more than one turn, but will consist of large numbers of troops fighting in separate but related engagements. It works out this way against the Mongols and with the Byzantines against the fourth crusade in vanilla. They can be costly for the human player but such battles are possible.

3. Battle AIs.
I tested some of the modded Battle AIs in small open FKoC battles. I could do a more exhaustive check, if you would be interested. At present I only checked the DLV4.3, SS6.1 and Chivalry II (Sicilian Vespers) 3.3. All are vanilla based. SS6.1 Battle AI seems the most consistent in avoiding AI cavalry attacks against pikemen. I have not yet found a way to make AI cavalry attack the human player's calavry. The biggest problem is that routed AI units keep rallying themselves and coming back, so in the end the AI army is wiped out every time, regardless of which Battle AI is used. Highest friendly casualties were with the Chivalry II Battle AI, with reasonably high losses at the VH level. I could test again, in case the higher losses were chance. I used two identical armies for each side with a normal mix of 10 units each. The AI was always the attacker in my tests (to see what they would do with their cavalry). It might be interesting to test battles with bigger armies, cavalry-heavy armies or sieges and also with the AI as the defender.

I feel some such modifications could balance things with less of a need to give the AI more money than the human player. The human player would get more of a challenge instead and the scale of large battles would be closer to actual history.

Edit: I have imperfect understanding of the code, however, I have managed to get a version of the battle AI where cavalry avoids pikemen and responds a bit better to cavalry. Friendly casualties are higher than with the present battle AI. Unfortunately this battle AI seems to crash with sieges, possibly because I increased the "health" of the walls. Siege deployment has also gone wrong. If anyone is inclined to check the code please email me.

[Mappo]

Hi all, is this sequel project dead?

[gaunty14]

it never got started

[DanimalKingdom]

Alas it has not been started. If someone is happy to script, I would be very glad to reskin and remodel the units, and spruce up the whole thing, but I'm no scripter! But if someone really wants to team up with me and get stuck in, drop me a PM or post on this thread.

And do take on board AD's advice. Don't think you have to remake the game, don't worry about siege issues and anything else that would slow you down. We should just get a good build out, with 4 factions and a smattering of units. The core gameplay, would be largely unchanged I believe.