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Thread: Stainless Steel Rebalance Mod

  1. #1
    Gabranth12's Avatar Laetus
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    Default Stainless Steel Rebalance Mod

    This mod's purpose is to rebalance the SS early era campaign, making it more interesting to play for more turns (instead of stopping as early as year 1140, which is what I usually find myself doing). It also includes a few more features and some minor fixes.

    Note that this is not a standalone mod. It’s only a modification of some files of Stainless Steel.

    Also note that some of the changes/rebalances made here might be subjective. You might not like everything I modified (and that’s ok). In general, the purpose of this mod is to make the player play for more turns, with a tougher economy that needs developing (more similar to the original m2tw grand campaign), as well as make the players see more historical events and technological advances before they stop playing. Players who like slow campaigns and developing their kingdom might be interested in something like this. If you like having a lot of money from the start and quickly conquering a lot of regions in the first few turns, then this mod might not be for you.

    Needless to say, credit goes to the developers of the SS mod. Most things I did merely required tinkering with a few files that I already had. My purpose was to slightly change an already awesome mod to better fit my taste (and that of some other players).

    With that said, here is a list of the changes in this mod:


    1) The following changes aim to make the campaign progress “faster” as far as technological advances go, so that you can see more historical events before you get bored and stop playing, as well as get access to better units relatively earlier. On the contrary, the economy has been slowed down, so that expanding is slower and rebel regions hold their own for slightly longer. Contributing to this, factions that used to start very large and powerful have been weakened, so that the campaign lasts longer before the player loses interest because the whole world has been conquered. Speaking for me personally, I was sick of seeing AI Egypt and the Byzantine Empire steamroll other AI factions before the Mongols even appear.

    -Economy is in general tougher, with lower purses, farming and trade income. It will take slightly longer to build a strong economy. Some powerful buildings that bring a lot of income have been toned down.

    -Religion changes slower and will require more patience (closer to vanilla).

    -Some other minor tweaks in settlement mechanics. Public order should be slightly harder to maintain.

    -Most buildings can be built in fewer turns.

    -Requirements for huge cities and citadels have been slightly lowered. They are still quite hard to get, but you might get to see your faction’s best units more with this change. Also, some population-increasing buildings can be built earlier.

    -Most large factions start with slightly less settlements, so that it takes a while before they take over the world. The Byzantines and Egypt have been affected the most. The Turks have also lost some of their southern settlements, but that is actually good for the AI, since they keep their army closer to important fronts instead of wasting it in some rebel settlements in Kuwait and Dubai. Note that some of these changes are not historically accurate, but are made for gameplay balance. The HRE still has all of its settlements, as even though it starts strong, it is surrounded by potential enemies, which makes its position difficult.

    -Timescale has been increased to 2 years per turn, like vanilla M2TW. Not realistic, but better for gameplay balance and speed in my opinion.

    -Since with the above change characters do not age properly, the aging script has been removed to re-enable devastation.



    2) Some new features.
    -Added a fourth crusade event. At the start of the 13th century, a few rebel crusader armies spawn to take over Constantinople and the rest of Greece. The purpose of this is to make the Byzantine Empire decline after a while, because normally it tends to defeat every faction around it. Prepare for some tough defensive sieges if you’re playing Byzantium!
    I believe this event is necessary because AI crusaders will never attack orthodox factions, even though it is possible. Therefore, it is impossible to demonstrate Byzantium’s fall to the crusaders without a special script. Note that I’ve made this event not happen if you’re playing as Venice. This is because as a player you can attack Byzantium yourself with crusaders in order to re-create the fourth crusade, while the AI can’t do that.
    I tested this event a lot and the rebel crusading armies seem to have the expected success, attacking the settlements and taking them over unless their path is blocked. Seems to have no CTDs.
    (Note that I’ve added trebuchets to rebels in order to make the sieges more difficult. Normally they can’t have artillery and the trebuchet crews would appear blank on the battlefield, but I’ve fixed that.)

    -Added salt mines for settlements with salt resources.

    -Some settlements automatically change names depending on who owns them.

    -Added some income bonuses to certain buildings depending on the region’s resources. For example, timber gives a small income bonus to logging camps, fish to ports and river ports, grain to farms etc. The purpose of this is to make you prioritize different buildings in each settlement depending on what you have.



    3) Unit rebalance.

    -Cavalry has been toned down, with all charge values halved. Also, melee weapons such as swords/axes (not lances) have been weakened for all cavalry. I think this is necessary because in vanilla SS even trash-tier cavalry like Hobilars can decimate elite infantry units like the Varangian Guard (test it if you don’t believe me). Similarly, missile cavalry like the Magyar Cavalry can deal insane damage by charging the enemy army head-on instead of firing arrows. That’s really not how it’s supposed to be. With these changes cavalry is still dominant, but more reasonable.

    4) Minor fixes and tweaks.

    -Fixed the merchant’s wharf and shipwright glitch. Wharves are supposed to give trade fleets (exports) and shipwrights are supposed to give better fleets, but in reality shipwrights do both and wharves do nothing, even though the building screen tells you otherwise. This has been fixed by making wharf buildings an upgrade to ports, and shipwrights a separate building chain.

    -Reduced crusade targets so that most crusades are called for Egypt. It felt silly to me to see the Spanish march off to take Lithuania or Poland fighting the Moors. I also don’t think Lithuania needs to be a crusade target, as it gets eventually invaded by the TO anyway.

    -Fixed some glitches in the initial faction standings. In vanilla SS, some relation values seem to not register properly, for example if you see your diplomacy screen as the Crusader states it says that relations with Egypt are “reasonable”, even though they should be terrible or abysmal. I believe that glitches appear in faction standings when commas are used between factions in descr_strat.

    -Fixed Dublin position. The settlement was misplaced, meaning that its rebel army started outside it and the settlement evaded the plague in Black Death event.

    -Added an actual earthquake to the Aleppo earthquake event (normally an announcement appeared, but no earthquake happened).

    -Changed the script for Bulgarian uprising, so that the rebels are more likely to assault the settlements instead of starving them or walking away. Seems to work fine in testing, no CTD and they always attack unless their path is blocked.

    -Modified win conditions to be relative to each faction’s starting size.

    -Removed floods to prevent their permanent watchtower/movement effects.

    -Changed faction turn order to be more intuitive (factions from the same area grouped together in categories).

    -Reverted Mongol voices back to how they were in vanilla. I just hate Mongols speaking like Arabs/Turks. This sadly makes the Cumans mute when you play as them, so I suggest replacing the voices file if you want to play as Cumans.

    -Changed Lund to a castle and Kalmar to a town. This is important because Denmark normally starts with only 3 settlements which are all towns, which means that the AI will not be able to recruit any good units if it fails to conquer a nearby castle. I’ve seen AI Denmark collapse many times and I think this is one of the reasons why that happens.



    I haven’t made an installer, but all you need to do is replace certain files in your SS installation. There are some instructions in the zip file.SS_Rebalance_Mod.zip

  2. #2
    Gabranth12's Avatar Laetus
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    Default Re: Stainless Steel Rebalance Mod

    I am new to this site and unfortunately I screwed up a bit with how the above post looks. The downloadable zip file is right at the end of the post, just not very visible. I am uploading it again so that it is more clear. Sorry for the confusion.



    SS_Rebalance_Mod.zip

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