[UP]TES UP 2.0.5. RE-RELEASED on the 17th March 2024

[skelior]

Oh, I'd also love to write flavor texts with lore backgrounds, that'd be fun.

[Jadli]

Well I can try to learn how to make maps/battle scenes. I'm not good with modeling but I'm sure I can make a good map or two (or several) if I put my mind to it.

Some new historic battles or custom settlements wouldnt hurt . Someone should also finally fix Imperial City...

Melee cavalry for Orcs sounds alright, possibly with axes. I don't imagine they have any knightly tradition to match Yokuda and High Rock heavy cavalry. Another important thing to remember is that Orcs are Pariah Folk, they are supposed to be fairly irrelevant and every time they start to become relevant, Redguards and Bretons come to smash them. So it seems to me they should have the most limited roster. There is no lore reason to NOT give them cavalry, but their place in the series' narrative isn't that of mighty conquering heroic people who can do anything, it's Malacath: spurned and ostracized, with oaths and vengeful curses on their enemies. Whenever they try to get out of Malacath's sway and worship Trinimac they get smashed.

I have some suggestions for mercenaries: Solstheim and Northern Morrowind get Nord reavers, the rest of Morrowind gets Outlander Men-At-Arms, central and southern Skyrim and Cyrodiil get Colovian sellswords, as well as much of Valenwood and outer Black Marsh (Colovians are famous all over the world, so really they could pop up anywhere.) Few mercenaries in Anequina, but lots of mercenaries available in Pellitine for Elsweyr of any races. No mercenaries available in Summerset Isle. Orcs should be available as mercenaries all over the world, showing up occasionally, in Morrowind, in Valenwood, in Cyrodiil, in Skyrim, etc. Remember that Orcs don't just live in the Wrothgarian and Dragontail mountains, but are long-settled all over the world, though in small population outside of Dragontail, Wrothgarian mountains and northern Valenwood. Just using default units for Orcs would be sufficient for now, for them.
Cyrodiil should also get region-specific mercenaries, Argonians in the Black Forest, Khajiit at Border Watch, just to keep it neat. Khajiit mercenaries available should be ambush-infantry and archers.
Valenwood mercenaries as archers, it'd be neat if sometimes they just disappear from your stacks. "For a brief time the Colovian armies used Wood Elf archers, as in the War of Rihad two years past. The Bosmer proved to be too undisciplined and prone to desertion for further use. They would sometimes walk into the shade of a single tree and vanish. Their forest-coupling skills are remarkable. The title of their most famous poem, the Meh Ayleidion, means "The One Thousand Benefits of Hiding." Again, Valenwood light archers would probably be sufficient.
Oh, and Elinhir should have mages available, but I already said that.

Disagree on bandit mercenaries. I agree that bandit units should be made, though, in general, I just don't think anyone would want to use such undisciplined troops except in special circumstances (Nord bandits available as mercenaries in Elsweyr or Nibenay, people who wouldn't really know the difference )

Yep. Religion limit for recruitment works pretty well for orcs in this matter, as it makes basically impossible for AI to expand further than few bordering settlements. As I said, creating units is rather poblematic right now, so dont go with hopes that high. Will try to make some of these hopefully, one day. There already are wood orc mercenaries for Valenwood, as well as a special orc unit for Orcrest. That one should probably made mercenary too, I suppose. Perhaps also Akavir Tseaci, tho not sure where. There already is Valenwood ligh archers unit too

Also, I think there already is some kind of a bandit unit for the rebel faction

If you want, I'm always available for lore consultation, I've been interested in TES lore for more than a decade, and have read more of it than I can remember.
Oh, I'd also love to write flavor texts with lore backgrounds, that'd be fun.

Great. Well, keep bringing interesting ideas and suggestions I suppose, you are free to take more active part. If you have that much knowlegde, perhaps you could help with gathering all possible info for the new septim custom campaigns? Or fer example ideas for new lore features, ancillaries etc. Not sure what do you mean by flavor texts?

[AsbjornIronside]

Just tell me what you'd like me to do, and I'll do what I can! I'm so excited, I've never helped make a mod before!

[AsbjornIronside]

Just tell me what you'd like me to do, and I'll do what I can! I'm so excited, I've never helped make a mod before!

Edit: I just tried to open the battle editor and it crashed

[StShoot]

Ah and another thing i couldnt check it out yet =P but in the vanila mod there was a bug ( at least i think that it is one XD) that Falinesti in northwest valenwood had the imperial city costum map as the battle map if you fight there, just without river and more trees O,o

[Jadli]

Edit: I just tried to open the battle editor and it crashed

I have never actually worked in the battle editor, so didnt know that. However, I heard the one for vanilla TES works, perhaps you could create something here and then somehow move it to the newew version?

Ah and another thing i couldnt check it out yet =P but in the vanila mod there was a bug ( at least i think that it is one XD) that Falinesti in northwest valenwood had the imperial city costum map as the battle map if you fight there, just without river and more trees O,o

It should not be happing anymore with bosmeri huge city

[Lamrett]

Sorry if it's been pointed out or I've messed up, but in the Imperial roster Light Legionnaires are more expensive with better attack and defence than the visually better equipped Imperial Swordsmen.

[Lamrett]

Ah sorry for double posting, but additional to above, the same is true of the spearmen variants of the same... Am I missing something? It's just the weaker units are shown with better equipment...

[Johrnarlor]

Have been playing your new patch for a while now and I have to say (sadly enough), it's not really a succes. I can't see a lot of improvements, I would even say that it is worse then your other patches. Unit stats aren't exactly what they should be (some units too weak, some too strong). Like Lamrett already pointed out, you seem to have switched the stats of Empire_swordsmen with Auxiliary_Swordsmen and same goes for the spearmen variant. You can also not buy those special units anymore like Knights of the Nine or Knights of the [insert order here]. Dunno if this was intentional or not.

And now the biggest issue. I can still live with the others but this one is probably my main beef with this patch: the settlements. A lot of settlements are totally messed up right now. I don't know why you made towns upgradable but Ald'ruhn doesn't look like Ald'run anymore when upgraded. Balmora on the battle map looks like Molag Mar (one of those cantons from Vivec), while cities like the one near Mournhold are now generic human cities. Fortresses like Abibon Gora are now those custom made dunmer fortresses (the city in the valley with two pallisade walls). I don't know what other cities are messed up but I fear there are more. I don't know what went wrong when you were modding this. It was fine in the previous version.

Please don't take this as 'destructive criticism'. I'm merely trying to point out what went wrong.

[Jadli]

Well, Imperial Swordsmen and Spearmen, which are city units, are supposed to be weaker, to increase the difference between castle and city units. Might switch them for the next version because of the equipment I supose.

Knights of The Nine and other units can be hired, see the list of AoR units. You need to build a knight chapter, which is availible only in huge cities.

Well, thats the difficulty with custom settlements, not sure if I can somehow make them unupgradable. About models on battle maps, did you follow the install instructions and delete the folder "settlements" before installing the patch? Because if you havent, this sounds exactly like something that would happen.

Thnx for the feedback

[ShadowSpion]

I really like the update. I am having a great time as the telvanni, but whenever I take mar gaan off the ashlanders and destroy their faction the game crashes. Is there any fix for this?

[Jadli]

Well, they are a horde faction, so they cant really be destroyed, what might somehow cause the problem. Are you sure its not because of something else? Could you perhaps look into the log file and lemme know if it says anything?

[ShadowSpion]

Well, they are a horde faction, so they cant really be destroyed, what might somehow cause the problem. Are you sure its not because of something else? Could you perhaps look into the log file and lemme know if it says anything?

It is odd, so I take maar gan and kill the leader, though they remain alive. Once I choose what to do with the city the game just sits and thinks. The screen freezes and nothing happens. The game doesn't ctd, but when I open task manager it is not responding, so I close it. There is nothing in the main M2TW logs folder for me, does the mod save them elsewhere?

[Johrnarlor]

Well, Imperial Swordsmen and Spearmen, which are city units, are supposed to be weaker, to increase the difference between castle and city units. Might switch them for the next version because of the equipment I supose.

Knights of The Nine and other units can be hired, see the list of AoR units. You need to build a knight chapter, which is availible only in huge cities.

Well, thats the difficulty with custom settlements, not sure if I can somehow make them unupgradable. About models on battle maps, did you follow the install instructions and delete the folder "settlements" before installing the patch? Because if you havent, this sounds exactly like something that would happen.

Thnx for the feedback

- Good to hear that knights are still available. But since you need a huge city to do that I assume that you can upgrade your cities all the way up to huge? Won't this cause a lot of cities to become Imperial Cities just like Falinesti in earlier versions?

- I actually didn't do that since I didn't read the instructions. Sry for that. Normally I do, but I was in a rush when I installed this. I haven't done a siege battle now yet, so I don't know if it is solved already.

- Something I forgot to mention in my previous comment: what's up with the insane victory conditions? I know the game lasts longer then a normal vanilla game but still... You have to destroy half Tamriel with nearly every faction. The reason why a game like medieval is so replayable is because every faction has different victory conditions. That replayability is kind of ruined if you have to destroy the same 6 factions with nearly every single faction you play with. Also it is too much to finish a game, because eventually one or two of those factions become superpowers and if you then have to destroy those, it becomes really frustrating.

For the rest there isn't really anything.

Now to answer Shadowspion's question: when I once took the last city of the mongols in vanilla, all of their armies and agents were forced together on the same spot. Probably it tries to do the same thing here, so it may take a while. Don't forget to press space to rush things up. If it really takes too long, then I don't know what the problem is.

[Jadli]

Ye, might be it. Shadowspion, just send the save and Ill figure it out

to Johrlanor:

1) as I said, custom settlemnts were reorganized, and the upgrading should be working properly now, so nothing like that should be happening anymore.

2) Well, Im confused now. If you havent played a single siege battle, how could you have seen that? You were talking about battle settlement models, not map models, right?

3) Well, victory conditions should be improving AI behavior a little bit, so considering AI is stupid I gave priority to that before players. I have never actually cared much about vitory conditions when playing any campaign, so I deemed neither do others



BTW, 4k posts. Lets party!

[K'Sharra the Conqueror]

Have been playing your new patch for a while now and I have to say (sadly enough), it's not really a succes. I can't see a lot of improvements, I would even say that it is worse then your other patches. Unit stats aren't exactly what they should be (some units too weak, some too strong). Like Lamrett already pointed out, you seem to have switched the stats of Empire_swordsmen with Auxiliary_Swordsmen and same goes for the spearmen variant.

The source of the problem with inconsistent unit stats is Jadli's decision to make one patch for both singleplayer and hotseats. I argued against it for this reason. Another effect of this is the duplicated bodyguard units for most factions. They only exist for hotseat balance reasons.

And now the biggest issue. I can still live with the others but this one is probably my main beef with this patch: the settlements. A lot of settlements are totally messed up right now. I don't know why you made towns upgradable but Ald'ruhn doesn't look like Ald'run anymore when upgraded. Balmora on the battle map looks like Molag Mar (one of those cantons from Vivec), while cities like the one near Mournhold are now generic human cities. Fortresses like Abibon Gora are now those custom made dunmer fortresses (the city in the valley with two pallisade walls). I don't know what other cities are messed up but I fear there are more. I don't know what went wrong when you were modding this. It was fine in the previous version.

Please don't take this as 'destructive criticism'. I'm merely trying to point out what went wrong.

I argued that the dunmer city (molag mar), dunmer fortress and telvanni castle (third tier) should be removed as they give huge advantages to the attacker on the battlemap.

Another problem with the mod is the inclusion of female generals, mostly in the Three Banners campaign. Because of how character names work you will end up with random characters having female names and male portraits, breaking immersion. Not to mention the problem of female kings and sons (High King Ayrenn or King Almalexia). To solve this I argued to make the important female characters ancillaries instead. But would Jadli listen, no.

Sorry for being so rude but this must be said.

[Jadli]

Recruitable generals are purely singleplayer feature, nobody has got time for that in hotseats.

I ve already removed few useless custom settlements battle models, so removing also these seemed a pitty to me.

Female names are ok, as in fantasy world, where everyone can use magic no matter the gender, women are not just for making kids, and there were some important female characters. Engine is ofc problem as all generals are men inibut gamwe but its not a big deal. I tried to change the female names in that way that they dont sound as 100 percent female names. Most of them are elven anyway, where its hard to recognize anyway

[K'Sharra the Conqueror]

I ment the units that are just copies of the old general unit with different stats.

As for female characters:
Here is a quote from the FULL PREVIEW of "Call of Warhammer" v. 1.4. (see in first post) thread, page 9.

No female "generals/characters". Not because of sexism, but just because It's irrelevant with the Med2 engine. hey, even ETW & NTW have trouble w/ female leaders having male traits !

female characters = ancilliaries & also as "princesses" & on the family tree.

Most fantasy mods avoid female characters for this reason, even those set in the Warhammer universe that have female generals/leaders in the lore. And so should we.

In short, having female generals cause more problems then it's worth.

[Johrnarlor]

2) Well, Im confused now. If you havent played a single siege battle, how could you have seen that? You were talking about battle settlement models, not map models, right?

I mean that I haven't played a siege battle since I updated the settlements map.

[Jadli]

Yea, sadly we cant make new units currently and some factions needed few more. Fortunately, you already made few new units, so hopefully in future we will be able to provide more real new units .

As I said, Im aware of the fact the engine doesnt support female characters. I deemed it would be interesting to include some important female characters, and I stand behind it, unless more people have problems with it. I also heard there is a way to make unique names, by storing them in some unused factions, so that would be the best way. Hopefullly will include that for the next version.