My concerns about TLR

[Drizzt250]

So far I LOVE this mod. Ive played 4 campaigns unfortunately I got bored of them towards the end. Anyways, here is what I found was lacking in TLR. Some of which you may already be aware of.

- Seems to be a heavy "snowball affect". In each game I played, I was able to begin maxing out my building's economic sections within 200 to 300 turns because I so quickly blitz enemy nations and recovered their land. After 300 turns in my abbassid campaign, I was making 70k gold a turn with nothing to spend it on. Now its not too big of a issue because I was a super power and well... Super powers SHOULD be making loads of money. However getting to that position as a "super power" was far to easy. In fact, supporting allied nations with 30k gold a turn tributes is fun IMO. But again, it was hardly a fight to destroy the turks then Khwaremids(sp) empires. I suggest (aside from better campaign AI), is to add light garrison scripts

- However there should be more buildings. There should always be something interesting for these "super" nations to build. Maxing out settlements with 400 turns to go is kinda lame. Only problem with this is that in my campaigns, I noticed that while my cities were all maxed out, other nations still had "wooden castles". So more buildings for the already powerful nations may be counterproductive. Perhaps larger nations should have increased restlessness and rebellion problems to slow their progress?

- Vassals are a little to scarce. I easy moded this myself however.

- Another step in preventing players from early domination, perhaps there is a way to implement a script of some sort that reduces a players global standing by say .2 when they destroy a faction instead of vassaling them. So the up side of gaining vassals is not losing global rep, down side is less providences.

- AI only builds thieve guilds. Not a big problem, kinda weird tho

- AI spends to much money on military / non-economic buildings. In fact, you even said something along the lines "if you do not build up a strong economy early, expect to be destroyed". The AI sure doesn't listen to you =(.

Thats all I can think of right now. Ill add more if I think of em or if you guys remind me of some more. Please post your own concerns or possible solutions to these problems to make this an even more awesome mod!

[Averroës]

Those are good suggestions.

If I knew how to script them, I'd make the changes myself too.

I like the idea of losing global standing like.

I've also seen some mods which make you much more likely to become the target of everyone else once you get to be a superpower. That is definitely something TLR lacks. The other factions should come after you once you become the leading faction, territorially. You'll have to spend all that income creating armies and defending yourself.

Darth Ages takes care of much of that, however. The AI factions are stronger and more difficult to bully because they make armies of more than just a few partial stacks.

On the issue of guilds, I think that's because guilds are offered based on what you build, and the AI loves to build spies. So, naturally, the first thing they get offered is a thieves guild. And the AI seems to accept every guild offer. Because they build spies all the time, they are always offered thieves guilds first, rather than assassins guilds or merchants guilds, etc.

Sadly, I think that's simply because we may call it an "AI" but lab rats are smarter.

[anaztazioch]

Modify kings pourse of yout kingdom in descr_strat.txt in world/maps/imperial_campaign IIRC to 0. This way begining of game will be much tougher, making your way to super power a greater challange.

[Valantine]

You could also try, in the same file listed above, reducing the amount of bonus you get for doing missions for the nobles and the pope. You can also limit the amount they gift you in that file too. Less money = a harder campaign.

You could also make yourself obey certain house rules like no adoptions, only royal marriage, only ally with certain factions etc.
Lots of possibilities to keep it interesting, especially if you enjoy the role playing element!
V

[KozaK101]

you could play the campaign out instead of blitzing...

[Encarmine]

im glad im not the only one who enjoys the light role play factor in total war games, its good fun managing your royal family, and getting your heirs to marry other nations princesses.

wierd im the only one who seems to get more boring fights out of darth mod ><

[anaztazioch]

I dont like wars in MTW, becosue theya re amde only to conquer provinces. No Economical attacks, no princess abductions, no merchant murders, no priest executions, no pillaging country yard. Just provinces and ocasionally ports.

[Valantine]

You can actually execute priets

Economical attacks - drive away their merchants and blockade their ports, you'll soon see them loosing cash!
Admittedly abducting Princesses sounds like a good RPG element but in reality how often would it have happened other then in fairy tales?
War in MTW is the same as War in the Medieval period - to expand or defend one's territory whilst maintaining a politcal prescense and good relations with yoru subjects (ie reduce squalor etc.)
If yo uare going to look at it in such a bland way then i expect you'll find MTW quite boring after a short time
V

[anaztazioch]

yeah, but still it would be nice to openly kill priest, merchants, princesses.

But wars are so stright "stupid". I conquer city, now i get like 400-600 florins a turn and must maintain bigger army for "empire". Also i must split my founds if i want to build in both cities.
AND AI never declares a war, it just lays siege to your city, ocationally attacks your army sieging rebel city they want to have. And thats it.
I build forts arround passabges to my country. 2 forst blocking hill passage from Hungary, forest there blocks other possibilities. 1 fort blocking bridge from Prague to Wien. 3 forts along border with Nuremberg, 2 forst in Breslau, 5 forts in Magdenburg, 1 fort in Stettin, 5 forts in Thorn, 4 forts in Cracow border with Peremyshl. All forts has 1 spear militia in garison. Hungary has 6 full stacks "touching" my forts, Kiev is allies and is in war with Russia, HRE has 4 full stack near Magdenburg, Denmark 3 full stacks near Stettin.

AI DOES NOT DECLARE WAR, becouse they see small armies in fort not needed to attack or "a trap" (yes in deed, my cavalry just waits for a reason to rape), and AI connot lay siege to my cities.

[Encarmine]

jesus, that sounds well defended. very well defended.

I tend not to involve forts allot, im more of a 'hide in the trees' kind of guy, nothing better than a large stack of cavlery getting an ambush battle.

In regards to Darthmod TLR, is there anyway I can get it to run the same turn and building time as in original TLR.

EG 8 turns for town watch instead of 2. ??

[ConstantineVII]

IMHO Drizzt has many strong points in his overview, some of which are not even mentioned by the rest of us who contribute to this thread.
I believe that the notion of realism should be served BY THE GAME'S AI and NOT by houserules.
Some of the others suggested , you should do A or B or C to roleplay the game. My point of view is different dear friends. Do NOT implement house rules. Let the player blietz and be destroyed. This should happen.
Now, what I did was the following:
- gave x3 or x4 time to build a building. At the same time I multiplied the cost x4.
-I implemented the fast recruiting script of Sicilian Vespers 2.5 plus the generals script. (The first one generates 3 spear and 3 archer conscript units immediately after the siege. Believe me, it's not easy to take a town. The second charges 500 and 1000 for generals being in your area or outside your area respectively. What I have seen with my own eyes is that you will loose 4000 florins each turn by having one half stack in campaign) These scripts are easy and I can tell you where to find them FOR YOUR PERSONAL USE.
-I increased the levels of cities (for me a huge city has at least 100000 people) so that they evolve slowly. Accordingly I decreased the farms contribution, so that every town/city has an increase of 0.5 each turn with normal-high tax rate. I believe that very high taxes should only be implemented in times of crisis and these make the city go -0.5 per turn.

All these are the easy part dear Drizzt.
The hard part is the AI in all its expressions: building, garrison, variety of troops in a stack, choice of opponent etc.
This is difficult, but I think Darth (God bless his name) did a neat job.

In a nutshell I share your thoufhts but I have managed to solve most of your problems. If you like some of the scripts or EDB I use be my guest and ask.

Cheers

Constantine VII

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[Trygvasson]

IMHO Drizzt has many strong points in his overview, some of which are not even mentioned by the rest of us who contribute to this thread.
I believe that the notion of realism should be served BY THE GAME'S AI and NOT by houserules.
Some of the others suggested , you should do A or B or C to roleplay the game. My point of view is different dear friends. Do NOT implement house rules. Let the player blietz and be destroyed. This should happen.
Now, what I did was the following:
- gave x3 or x4 time to build a building. At the same time I multiplied the cost x4.
-I implemented the fast recruiting script of Sicilian Vespers 2.5 plus the generals script. (The first one generates 3 spear and 3 archer conscript units immediately after the siege. Believe me, it's not easy to take a town. The second charges 500 and 1000 for generals being in your area or outside your area respectively. What I have seen with my own eyes is that you will loose 4000 florins each turn by having one half stack in campaign) These scripts are easy and I can tell you where to find them FOR YOUR PERSONAL USE.
-I increased the levels of cities (for me a huge city has at least 100000 people) so that they evolve slowly. Accordingly I decreased the farms contribution, so that every town/city has an increase of 0.5 each turn with normal-high tax rate. I believe that very high taxes should only be implemented in times of crisis and these make the city go -0.5 per turn.

All these are the easy part dear Drizzt.
The hard part is the AI in all its expressions: building, garrison, variety of troops in a stack, choice of opponent etc.
This is difficult, but I think Darth (God bless his name) did a neat job.

In a nutshell I share your thoufhts but I have managed to solve most of your problems. If you like some of the scripts or EDB I use be my guest and ask.

Cheers

Constantine VII

-

VERY INTERESTING. I've been nosing around for something like this for WEEKS. Could you lay out for me in very plain terms how I go about making your suggested changes? I'm an experienced strategy gamer, but a total noob at modding.

[ConstantineVII]

Now that I think about it, these are my thoughts on TLR.
I like this mod and I mean it. Despite what some people have said, I think that with small arrangements (the choosing of crusade-jihad-horde targets for instance) it did a nice job for the level of knowledge we had by the time TORN made this mod.
Also, the new factions were nice and variable, if we ignore this huge vacuums to the northeastern part of the map where a Cuman tribe kingdom should be. To make a long sentence short, the rest of the faction slots should have been filled. Nowadays, this seems feasable since lots of mods have added nice factions.
In a nutshell, TLR is a good mod nowadys, a fantastic mod of its time. The question is: is there a living soul to continue TORN's legacy???

[Averroës]

If you all wish to do that work, no reason not to do so. But, for myself, with Tornnight gone, I feel uncomfortable continuing work on his mod without his permission and guidance. It is his mod after all.

For that reason, I'm slowly working on my own personal mod. From scratch, new map and all.

[Encarmine]

well im playing darthmod TLR and last night after some tweaking, im having abit of a stupid time, all factions including my own get 250000, each turn, i am byzantium, and just got invaded by 7 full stacks, 3 from Hungary and 4 from Scilily.

It wasnt a case of 'hold them here', it was a case of send all troops back to constantinople and pray for deliverance.

Currently my Imperator is holding at Adrionople, Preslav lies abandoned, along with Durazzo.

The turks are building at Nicia, im still only in the year 1099. So if anyone is just after a crazy war without worrying about finances, Darth Mod TLR is all you need with kings purse changes.

With the aggressivness of the AI, will keep you busy untill Total War Empires.

@ Avveros, with all of your skills at modding, why not wait or plan a mod for Empire Total War?? And I wouldnt feel bad in working on other peoples material, its a tribute of sorts.

[Averroës]

@ Avveros, with all of your skills at modding, why not wait or plan a mod for Empire Total War?? And I wouldnt feel bad in working on other peoples material, its a tribute of sorts.

I doubt that Empire will have anything interesting for me, unless like Kingdoms, it has features which can be retrofitted to M2TW. I didn't buy Kingdoms, originally, because I thought it was only about updating the timeline to later periods. Such seems the same with Empire.

One of the main reasons I like TLR is that Tornnight did away with the Americas on the map. They have nothing to do with "medieval" total war, unless one is talking about wars between various factions in the Americas alone, without Europe, or perhaps if CA had the vikings fighting skraelings.

[Encarmine]

Hey thats cool, so your just here purely for the medieval side of things? not the overall total war experiance?

I imagine converting the new engine of empires back into medieval will be easy, and will include stuff like sea battles.

I say easy in a light way, the actual conversion is allot of time and respect to anyone who does that.

Personally, Empires is the 'time zone' ive been looking forward to for a long long time, mainly as I can really enjoy building the British Empire and actually thwart the American Revolution.... so so long have i wished to do that ><