Mass Spawns ruin the mod ...

[Catullus]

Hey guys,

first of all thanks for a really great mod, love the unit designs & overall feel of the mod.

That said: What really ruins the game for me are the countless, often ridiculously OP spawns of AI army stacks; the main problem is not that they make the mod too difficult - they don't - they are just annoying as hell!

For example: In my Empire game, I finally killed of the Beastman faction - now they respawn every 5-10 turns with 2-4 full army stacks - wtf? I don't want to fight the same battles over and over again!
What makes it worse: Auto-resolving the battles isn't really an option, since even much smaller Beastman (and Chaos) stacks consistently win against full Empire stacks - meaning you have to fight almost every battle yourself!

The final straw for me: The Chaos Undivided invasion. I really like the idea of scripted events to spice things up a bit, but that's just ridiculous: Right now I have 42 (!) full stacks of Elite Chaos on my border (that I can see - who knows how many more there are where I can't see them...)

Once again, I don't doubt that I could kill them off eventually - but I really don't want to fight 40+ Chaos armies!
And it's only possible to win against such overwhelming odds because the strategic AI is really really sucky (even worse than the original MTW2) and just wanders about without attacking anything.

Sorry, but that's it for me. It's just no fun that way.

[Kahvipannu]

Beastmen are a force that can't be killed, so it's the same in the mod. I think there have been talks about more "sand-boxy" campaign in the future, don't know, hopefully it will become as a option. Autoresolve is and will be broken, it wasn't good in vanilla to start with, and it really doesn't work with fantasy setting.. It's really a shame. About strategy AI, I tryed Klierowski's Warcry sub-mod, and it made huge difference in it. Not sure if it is compatible right now tought... And welcome to the forums by the way.

[Reiksfart]

All a matter of personal taste. We've been through this a few times here. This mod isn't for everyone because of the heavy scripting, but for me personally it is the only reason I am still playing after over 2.5 years. It's not perfect and there is still a lot of room for improvement, but the alternative is just another boring (to me) vanilla style campaign leaving the useless campaign AI to do its own thing and hope it is a challenge. It's not a challenge at all, so the alternative to heavy scripting is making it more difficult for the player to raise and pay for his own armies. That is even more artificial than heavy scripting, because it impedes the flow of play. CoW flows, it's a world which is alive and is the most accurate take on the warhammer fantasy world on the pc. It is truly total war, as the warhammer setting is.

[ninja51]

Ruin is a very strong word This is my favorite mod for M2TW by far, but I will agree, the endless and massive stacks just get old, annoying, and boring.

Of course it all comes down to personal taste, but I will throw my hat down on your side of the field Catullus, the huge stacks give at best, an artificial challenge, and at worst, a bored frustration that causes one to stop playing the game for a couple weeks

[DiddlyDark]

Well, it makes sense, Beastmen are so numerous that they can never truly be destroyed in the Warhammer world, it's the same case with the Greenskins. Although, being a fan of Warhammer, I prefer it to be accurate to the fluff, even if it's quite infuriating to deal with endless stacks of Greenskins invading my Karaks.

[Faeronsword]

I most definitely agree. I've been playing as the Warriors of Khorne, took me a very long time on Very Hard difficulty to conquer the other Chaos factions to become undivided, and move south.

I've played through games with various factions about to turn 100, including Empire, Dwarves, Sylvania, Chaos, and High Elves.

I'm about turn 80 in my Chaos campaign and I've hit the southernmost border of Kislev (or what should be Kislev but is now Chaos Dwarves and Night Goblins) and I see absolutely no human armies. So I turn off fog of war...

The ENTIRE Empire has been captured by various other forces, there are no human factions left and a good 80% of the Empire is Beastmen controlled. This also has happened in every single other game I have played, as Middenheim the Orc Waaagh! absolutely blindsided me and it took about eleven turns for my faction to fall while it was the last of the Imperial factions.

[boatie]

The solution for the scripting is easy and should not require the modders to change it. The problem is that no script can meet all tastes. For some it will be too hard, others just hard enough and a few, no matter how hard, it will appear easy. So you need to solve the problem yourself.

1. The script assumes that you are playing a good faction. So if you play an evil one, you need to up the stats of the empire or they will die fast, because all evil factions are design by the script to expand.
2. If you are playing a good faction, just mod your unit stats to suit your taste. For example, I play dwarfs on vh vh and I love the feeling that the dwarfs are in a war of annihilation. If they don't win, their entire race will be extinct and each battle can be their final battle. This captures the feel of the Warhammer universe. The enemies of the good factions are numberless, ugly looking, and murderous (including the pussy-looking elves). So I have modded my stats to suit dwarfs. I used little dwarfs adjusted stats. It's posted in a thread in the submod page. He adjusted stats for all races making elites really elite.

In addition to Little Dwarfs' modification, I also reduced upkeep and/or buy costs for some units (like higher end arty). The idea was to give me a chance to field 1 army on 3 fronts, with a little money to refit units. I also gave myself a +10,000 gold at start so that I can develop a few more buildings. Works like a charm and have been having epic fights after epic fights.

There is no need for the modders to adjust the scripts. You, the player, need to adjust the mod to suit your preference.

[Faeronsword]

To be honest, while I understand how mods work, I'm not sure how to find and properly edit the scripts in order to do so.

And I don't feel comfortable enough to go tinkering around and lose my save-data

[boatie]

To be honest, while I understand how mods work, I'm not sure how to find and properly edit the scripts in order to do so.

And I don't feel comfortable enough to go tinkering around and lose my save-data

You need notepad++ and about 1 hours work. If you are going to spend about 50 hours on 1 campaign, isn't it worth your time to make sure the mod plays out as your prefer? If the modders change the script to suit you, they will make it unworkable for someone else. The end result is the same, just different people complaining.

Edit: Faeronswords, pm me and I will help you out.

[paradamed]

I like the scripts. I just wish the scripts could involve other factions like Tomb Kings, Ogre Kingdoms, for example.

[DiddlyDark]

I like the scripts. I just wish the scripts could involve other factions like Tomb Kings, Ogre Kingdoms, for example.

And I wish they'd make all of the factions that have actual army books playable. Although, they're working on the Tomb Kings.

[boatie]

Btw, if Rieksfart says anything, that dude is always right, even when I disagree with him. That dude is a Demi-God!

[Catullus]

I don't mind the scripts per se - scripts can be great, can make the game less predictable and more alive. I could even think of some more scripts I'd really like. For example, a try-to-retake-your-capital-script.

That said: The scripts that are in CoW just don't work for me. What's the point in spawning 60+ (yeah, I found some more...) elite Chaos stacks out of thin air?

- it's tedious grinding to kill all those armies - and I don't want to be stuck fighting basically the same battle over and over again! Fighting those 60 armies would take roughly 30 hours of RTS fighting alone! Not to mention the annoying micro of refilling armies after each battle, and so on.
And since auto-resolving loses even battles where my forces are really really superior, that's not an option either.

- it's a well known bug of this mod that battles with reinforcements, especially sieges, tend to crash a lot - which means that I can't even defend my cities against these hordes!

So no, I don't think "ruin the mod" overstates the problem. Right now, the mod has become completely unplayable for me. Which is a shame since I agree that otherwise this is probably the best MTW2-Mod out there!

[Kahvipannu]

And I wish they'd make all of the factions that have actual army books playable. Although, they're working on the Tomb Kings.

We have to remember the limitations of M2 engine, and biggest handicap is the culture limit.. There is currently one free slot, and it will go for Bretonnia, or Tombs I think...

There is no need for the modders to adjust the scripts. You, the player, need to adjust the mod to suit your preference.

This^ It isn't hard to learn some basic text modding, spent a little time with it. The mods are work of certain inviduals, and it's theyr work, they make it like they want it. It's up to others to modifye it to suit in theyr own taste if the developers don't share same vision with you.

[DiddlyDark]

We have to remember the limitations of M2 engine, and biggest handicap is the culture limit.. There is currently one free slot, and it will go for Bretonnia, or Tombs I think...

Group tombs and vamps under a single culture slot? Since they both originate from Nehekhara after all, then again, I've always preferred Tomb Kings over Bretonnia anyway, French Arthurian Expies. However, Skaven could just be shoved into the "other" section. Or even the Chaos Cult, as the Horned Rat is supposedly a Chaos God after all. That could work, right? Although I know that DOOMWHEELS will never be implemented, which is saddening.

[The Despondent Mind]

I agree with OP , playing the same battles 100 hunderd times over , completely kills the fun and immersion and makes this mod more Third Age-ish (which is bad) .

[Mjolnr839]

for me, its not so much the AI stack spams, its the fact that unless you play as the Empire and actively try to keep it together, retaking Allied cities and gifting them back to the other states, the Entire Empire just becomes a beastman controlled mess. and how you can have bad luck and have 2 stacks of Beastman spawn one turn, the next have 2 Orc stacks, and then the NEXT turn have 2 more chaos stacks. its ridiculous to the point that i play on easy and still have to use money cheats for some factions like Sylvania to stand a chance, while other factions like Chaos are no problem at all without cheats.

no matter how much i love this mod, and i absolutly do, when Holy Pilgrim helped me figure out how to download it this mod consumed every waking moment of my life for a couple weeks, it needs some polish to make it balanced.

also, i'd like to throw my hat in for Brettonia over the Tomb Kings. Brettonia is right next door to the Empire, so they make more sense, while the Tomb Kings are way down south.

[Vette]

Hey guys,

first of all thanks for a really great mod, love the unit designs & overall feel of the mod.

That said: What really ruins the game for me are the countless, often ridiculously OP spawns of AI army stacks; the main problem is not that they make the mod too difficult - they don't - they are just annoying as hell!

For example: In my Empire game, I finally killed of the Beastman faction - now they respawn every 5-10 turns with 2-4 full army stacks - wtf? I don't want to fight the same battles over and over again!
What makes it worse: Auto-resolving the battles isn't really an option, since even much smaller Beastman (and Chaos) stacks consistently win against full Empire stacks - meaning you have to fight almost every battle yourself!

The final straw for me: The Chaos Undivided invasion. I really like the idea of scripted events to spice things up a bit, but that's just ridiculous: Right now I have 42 (!) full stacks of Elite Chaos on my border (that I can see - who knows how many more there are where I can't see them...)

Once again, I don't doubt that I could kill them off eventually - but I really don't want to fight 40+ Chaos armies!
And it's only possible to win against such overwhelming odds because the strategic AI is really really sucky (even worse than the original MTW2) and just wanders about without attacking anything.

Sorry, but that's it for me. It's just no fun that way.

Well if you dont like fighting same type of enemy again and again then I sugest you dont play as empire faction,and if you dont like stacks spawning around all the time play as 1 of the chaos factions.
If you would like to play empire I sugest you fix some units for better autoresolving adding hp att in general helps a lot( dont do that plz hehe ).
Also there is a nice mod called Warcry(forgot the autors name)you can try it it makes gameplay wery interesting.
But what you should realy do is fight these battles your self the old easy style with pikes gunpowder and horses screeming BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD oops I mean FOR THE EMPIRE!!!

[Lord Golog]

Spawned armies are fine. It's when there are so many that it causes problems. Especially when those spawns include Minotaurs that require you to dogpile your army on them to take down, or goblin shamans that insta-kill half your army from the other side of the field.

[Reiksfart]

Spawned armies are fine. It's when there are so many that it causes problems. Especially when those spawns include Minotaurs that require you to dogpile your army on them to take down, or goblin shamans that insta-kill half your army from the other side of the field.

How else is the mod supposed to simulate the actual 'Storm of Chaos', where hundreds of thousands of chaos troops marched together as one host? Same with the Orc Waaagh's which happened during the period. These are supposed to be overwhelming forces and the only way to simulate that is large numbers of armies. Leaving it up to the campaign AI alone would result in nothing spectacular happening, just as in the vanilla game or mods based around vanilla style.

In my opinion it only gets boring because the battles are either too easy or they are too hard because of single units, as you mentioned the mage type units which are ridiculous. When you have a chance of losing or at least a minimum of a pyrrhic victory in almost every one v one battle, with no silly super units either side, the campaign becomes far more tense and exciting.

Btw, if Rieksfart says anything, that dude is always right, even when I disagree with him. That dude is a Demi-God!

I have no idea why you think so highly of me, but thanks.