sorry for the long title gang. (knights and knaves, dismounted order knights mode, plus Zappa stuff) That's what I'm playing with. One other note: I cut the field costs in 1/2 and set devastation at 1/2 of normal DLV.
Will edit this first part with updates:
Overall Narrative:
Playing as HRE: Simple game, not hard at all I think to myself as I grab Hamburg, Magdeburg, Prague, Florence and Metz within the first 25 turns. Sure, I'm spread thin, but I wanted to be aggressive early.
At that stage, I feel like King of the world and wonder what everyone is complaining about.
Then the bandits start plaguing me and I have not built up my infrastructure too well.....and my ally Hungary attacks Venice. I sense opportunity and send two converging armies (one from Vienna, one from Bologna and a small blocking force through the Alps) with the idea that I'll take Venice and get rich. Venice is scantily garrisoned, but the population stands up 15 units (mostly militia spear) and I can't think of storming as it will gut my army. I'm patient and have it down to 3 turns until they surrender/come out to get killed. Treasury is getting low, even with nothing being built. Then two big Ventetian armies with advanced troops (dismounted knights, sergeant swordsmen and spearmen and cav) show up, trap my first army between them and the city and crush it, zero survivors as they massed well and squeezed me between them. My other army had been pulled back to friendly lands to save costs.....it is 1198.
Narrative update:
Re-grouped, massed some armies and took Venice by siege. Somehow did not get excommunicated, but did lose standing with Pope. Wow, Venice with the right buildings sure helps the finances.....oops. Mauler army shows up and crushes my Venice garrison just 3 years after I took it. They killed and wrecked everything. I took the city back, but now have to re-build. Lesson to all, watch that happiness level! Also, merchant cav under a governor is pathetic....they ran even before they got engaged!
France and England continue to kill each other (good), but their armies have lots of silver chevrons and I'll have to face them some day (bad). The Byzantines and Venetians are working the underbelly of the Magyars and I better get down there to help my ally. It is 1205 now and still no crusades, but a successful Jihad vs. Antioch was just completed.
The RPG aspects of this game are simply fabulous! I do hope we can let the governors gain some sort of experience.....but it can't all be positive, after all, corruption should be a big problem.
So that's where I stand. We shall see what happens next.
Issues (good and bad) so far:
1) Garrison-script HRE crossbowmen have peasant info card.....have not seen them in battle yet. This may be a function of the mixed mods, not a DLV-driven problem.
2) Campaign AI is aggressive for AI factions and rebels, but no other nations have allied, so diplomacy aspects not looking ideal yet....but it is early. Once larger wars break out, we'll see if the power blocs that form move to alliance.
3) France and England went to war early, which is nice to see. Byz declared on Hungary once Hungary was committed against venice, which I thought was an intelligent move (have not been able to see if they are sweeping Hungary's flank, but one would expect it.
4) No crusades called yet, which is odd, but perhaps there is more of a random nature to the years for crusades, rather than event driven?
5) lots of cool little things happening, adoption candidate died before I could grab him (I minimized the screen to wait on it.....which made his death seem really reactive to my actions, perhaps a coincidence, but it felt really cool.
6) I have not moved armies far enough to see if I can get "foreign mercenaries" (say, if my army moves through Zagreb region, can I get Balkan archers and Croat axes) but I hope so, cause that is a nice feature I have missed from the RTW series.
Latest two issues (will also post them in the lead item):
7) Money: I'm fine with keeping the player strapped, as it makes the game challenging. However, most of the other factions list as having almost 200,000 in cash when I look at the list. I guess it might be irrelevant, cause you can't possibly leverage that amount in the game anyway....but have we allowed the AI a bit too loose of a wallet?
8) Unit stats: This might be a result of the "mixed mods" I am using, but will talk to it anyway.
- the english longbowmen rate below lots of other archers (Venetians, Bosnians, even the Norse) in missile attack. I know their range was increased to give them an edge, but I would have through they would have high missile attack value too.
- Norse archers have higher (12) melee value than Viking Raiders....that doesn't make sense to me.
- Not a DLV problem, but the Sergeant Swordsmen new unit from the "dismounts" mod is too well protected, they are equivalent to knights.....they should have stats that make them useful infantry, but not as close to knights. Perhaps a penalty against cav? (Will forward that comment and others to the guys who made that mod).
More to come.