Hi Guys,
I’ve played recently two games with WotN:B 3.1 – RF1.6. Here you may find a few words on my experience after 2 games (the Franks and the Vendland - admittedly rather easy factions).
I think it might be helpful for the newcomers to the WotN (as I was a week ago and I couldn’t find any). I had a good time playing!
Here you have the financial data for both games:
And here is the data on the settlements from the Vendland game after 80 turns:
The observations (
sometimes with comments):
I. Overall assessment:
o This is a
very good, developed, well-thought-out, mature mod.
o The mod is very
stable. I didn’t have any CTD.
Congratulations: this is the most important feature of any mod!
o The
map is vast and well-representing the area of Northern Europe, even if not state-of-the-art graphically. I may live with some approximations (like the lack of the lakes in the swampy areas south of the Baltic sea), as well. However, it’s vastness is a serious challenge for the AI and you might find it behaving quite un-reasonably.
o The new
buildings feel historical and are immersive. You build your settlements from scratch (most villages have no single buildings) what is a paradise for the builder-type of players.
I love it.
o The
economic balance (income-costs) is good, although not without problems.
In particular, I find the buildings too cheap compared to the units, especially to the mercenaries. This makes the strategy “keep the peace, build up your villages” a superior one for some factions.
o One should adjust himself to the
role-playing in this mod: it’s not for the governors, it’s for the warriors. Your generals are just to conquer the world – they get a lot of Command stars and hitpoints. If a general stay at a settlement, he doesn’t get many interesting traits in the long run (for short time perhaps yes – an ancillary and the like). However, there’s no point in having governor-generals. The Piety, Loyalty or trait-benefits seem to be rather irrelevant in this mod since they don’t change.
o The
factions are very interesting as they are different from many other games. The Scandinavian ones are probably very immersive (it's just my impression, I haven't played any yet), the Franks are well developed with the
Regnum Frankorum submod, and the Slavic and Baltic-Finnish are ok (with
some minor hiccoughs). It's really exciting to play with such an unusual faction as the Wiltzen.
o I find the
unit rosters ok. The composition of the Slavic factions is what I'd understand historical. The Scandinavian rosters are perhaps excellent. I cannot tell much about the units and their names as I don’t have much knowledge of the languages at that time.
o I cannot tell much either about the
BAI and the course of the battles. I didn’t have problems, but I didn’t play many.
o The mod prompts the
raiding strategy (income from sacking settlements is very high, you may fund many buildings at home for this prices, the AI keeps on re-building his settlements due to its bonuses on money, public order, and growth), so I believe it’s very good at simulation the Viking times.
This makes this mod stand out!
o However, there’re currently some other
winning strategies possible that rather abuse the system (
I’ve described them here).
They can be easily fixed, though.
o
Visually the battlefield is ok, no complaints. I find units immersive, and the settlement models are specific to this mod and look fantastic.
o For some players immersion might be limited by very succinct descriptions of the buildings and the units. It's not about telling the story about that times, it's not the EBII where you can learn history.
o
Music is stunning: many different themes, many songs. It feels so well to play with.
II. Settlements & buildings
o Most (all?) of the settlements start at the village level and usually without buildings. The gameplay is based on the assumption that the player will gather the money from the raids, then build up the infrastructure, and only then the settlements will add something to the treasury. It's a long process as there many buildings. However, as you may see in the table at the beginning of this entry, developing many villages will add up eventually to a quite substantial budget.
o The settlements differ from one to another. There are certain that have the potential to grow fast and to provide much money (like Szczecin in Vendland), other will struggle. The essential factor is the access to the sea; also the resources and the number of the bordering provinces are very important. The capitals have usually the biggest potential.
o There’re many of the buildings and I like the logic. There’re many conditionalities among them (you need to build one first to be able to build another).
It’s one of the best features of the mod.
o The growth rates of the villages/towns are very reasonable for the village levels.
At the higher levels (town, large town) they can get quite high (squalor grows slower than growth benefits from the buildings).
o I really do like that setting taxes at “Low” doesn’t increase population growth. They are just to keep the unrest. You cannot put your villages on afterburner.
o Guilds (there’s 3-4 of them, only military) are rather easily acquired if you recruit units.
o Unfortunately, retraining doesn’t’ exhaust the recruitment pool what might be abused by the player (eg. you’ve got a unit of 4 soldiers, you retrain them up to 150, but the recruitment pool remains full. In this way you may collect good reserves).
III. Income and prices
o At the beginning, the main source of income is the lump sum of the Kings' purse. The settlements provide little until they're developed and trade with the neighboring provinces. The trade is then a significant sources of income, more important than in the other mods.
o The buildings are cheap in comparison to the units (usually: first levels 600, second 1200, third 2400, while recruitment of a decent infantry unit might be 1200-1600).
I'm not sure how it impacts on the dynamics of the campaign. For sure, there're no large stacks and rather few of them.
o Otherwise, the balance seems to be struck.
It’s an essential feature of a good mod so I praise the WotN on this.
o The building times are rather short but then you very often have several stages of a building chain what makes it reasonable.
One may think if for the infrastructural buildings the times couldn’t be longer.
o Everybody should be aware how much money do the generals suck –
as described in another entry – and should perhaps limit adoptions and marriages.
o Watchtowers are dirt cheap in comparison to their benefits (you need to have a look at your vast territories as there’re many rebels spawned).
The result is the player is better to build them everywhere.
IV. Public order:
o The main sources of disorder in the mod are:
1. Distance from capital: goes up and challenges the player in building a big empire.
2. Additional 30% in the settlements in territories that might be called “not our people”. So a settlement far away from your capital suffers not only the distance from capital penalties but also this penalty.
3. Religious unrest: for the pagan factions this can be a serious problem as they don’t have priests, it takes a long time to convert the population. The Christians have it easier (maybe it’s a good solution, but it’s still too fast).
Comment: it actually doesn’t matter much as most of the map is pagan.
4. Squalor (size of the settlement) – this impacts very little, only from the size of 1000 or so. Only for towns/large town this starts to mater a bit and prompts you to keep a larger garrison (but then you’ve got a free upkeep so it again doesn’t matter).
5. Other (enemy spies, traits of the governors, others?) – I haven’t seen them in practice.
o The buildings provide some order, but not so much – it’s not enough for the far-away regions, and most of them are available from the level of town. It makes it slightly more difficult to control those regions.
o Given the M2TW mechanics, one unit is enough to make a maximum garrison-order in a village (as this is counted by comparing the number of inhabitants with the number soldiers, and it’s capped at 80%). Only over 1000 inhabitants another one is needed. Then, at a level of town, you get many free upkeep slots and it renders the whole mechanism irrelevant.
IV. Traits & ancillaries:
o This is a mod for warriors so Commanders traits are numerous, concentrating on the “Command” stars and “Hitpoints”.
Sometimes it can make the generals invincible.
o Governors’ traits (+% tax, trade, happiness, - unrest) are rare and irrelevant.
o Ancillaries for the Viking factions seem to be interesting, for the Slavic factions they’re perhaps limited.
V. AI and diplomacy:
o This seems to have been a less important facet of the mod for their creators. The attitude of the factions is rather positive unless you’ve got a common border or you just invade somebody. Among the AIs it’s similar: the wars erupt very rarely.
o Initial diplomacy: there’s just one obvious conflict foreseen. Then the world is pretty peaceful unless the player attacks.
o The AI doesn’t seem to cope well with the challenge of the vastness of the map. It errs at finding his way to a foreign settlement to conquer, it hesitates, moves forth and back, it uses just part of the movement points etc. It wouldn’t invade across the sea, I suppose (no ships spotted over the 80 turns beside those initial ones).
o The AI is a good builder – I’ve seen his villages build up to the maximum what’s possible. This is an opportunity for the player to raid and raise funds.
Comment: good for the gameplay so that the player indeed adopts raiding style. However, it also shows that the AI sits on the mountains of cash (what’s also visible in the statistical screen).
o Having much money, the AI may be abused it in the trade negotiations, as already highlighted. Perhaps a simple script (
like this one) could prevent AI treasury from sky-rocketing.
o The AI sends also 2-3 unit stacks which are easy to mop up. The army composition is not particularly reasonable though.
VI. Agents:
o There’re plenty of Merchants in this mod as every village gives one (
the system I’m skeptical about, see here). They give rather little money (something like 24-40-100) and they develop max +2 Finance from their ancillaries (I haven’t seen any traits). After some time also the AI hires merchants and they come to your lands, sniping your merchants (the autoresolve is skewed in favor of the AI). But you may defend by striking with your older +2Finance on the AI +0 novices.
o You’ve got quick access to the diplomats (village level), while to the spies only from the level of a town. Given the vastness of the map, the spies are very valuable.
This is a very good solution for the mod to limit the number of the spies. Actually, at the beginning I’m using merchants to gather information about the foreign lands, what I find also historical.
VII. Other issues:
o Rebels spawn quite often.
What provides for a good check on the player’s strategy: forces are needed at home, so you cannot raid with everybody.
All in all, for me it’s one of the most interesting mods for the M2TW engine.
And this we owe to the modders who spend many hours just for their and our fun. So I'd like to thank Mr_Nygren, absinthia, Horsa, Aphain and all the others for their work. We can have fun only thanks to them.
Cheers
JoC