Amazing Mod! - Minor QoL suggestions & Observations from a Returning player

[Sima_Zhao]

Just wanted to say that this is an amazing mod and I'm glad to see it's still around and in fact updated and improved since the last time I played it years ago! The game is full of nice little touches and scripts that make it feel so polished, and I'm really glad I rediscovered this mod.

That being said, I wanted to make a post about some minor QoL changes that could be made, and some other miscellaneous observations, in no particular order, to both potentially improve the mod even further, or at least improve my knowledge on certain aspects of it.

1) The Wu stack spam is apparently still a thing lol. Turn 95 right now and Wu has like 10x more military than anyone else , I toggled FOW to have a peak at them, and they have like 50 stacks despite having only a medium-sized domain of around 15 cities. By contrast, I have 35 provinces and have been neurotically cranking out elite units as much as possible, have 3x the military strength of the next closest faction, and Wu is still overwhelmingly strong compared to me. I'm not even sure how they have the money to support their army - they only have a couple large cities, and economically don't look to be doing much better than the other top factions. I was reading some older posts here about a stack spam script, so I'd be surprised if what I'm encountering in-game is an intended feature. ( In case it was not clear, I wasn't comparing them to my faction because I'm annoyed they are stronger lol, idc about that so much, was just using my faction as a benchmark for how, within the normal means of the game, they should be nowhere near as strong as they are). I might just turn them rebel so they don't break the endgame when it's down to like 5 factions xD.

2) imo, recruitment slots should scale from 3 to 4 from large --> huge cities. The amount of free upkeep units scales appropriately, but it doesn't feel like the recruitment does. Both lore and gameplay wise, I feel like huge cities probably should have more recruitment slots than large; I think it was like that in previous versions of the mod (with maybe even more), and it's definitely a bit disappointing that a fully developed Chang'An/Luoyang has the same recruitment capabilities as some random run of the mill settlement that just barely managed to make it to a large city, lol, especially with the advanced/imperial/generals units that huge cities are primary producers of, and especially considering how long it takes to make most of these units. I assume this was an intentional nerf reflecting the design philosophy of the developers, so maybe if not 4 slots for all huge cities, additional slots as an added bonus for the handful of Imperial palaces (that can be built in only a few key cities) would be a good compromise.

3) Some of the upkeep costs for regular cavalry and late-game infantry units seem a bit imbalanced; the starting light cavalry with mediocre stats costs 276 upkeep, but the end-game 'Han' line of armored units costs 20% LESS, the most powerful of which is the 'Han Shock Troops' unit which is one of the only mainstream AP units for Han-Chinese based factions, has heavy armor and excellent stats all-around, and is anti cav. Yet this unit has the same upkeep as the other, more niche 'Han' line units - about 225. For only 40-50 more upkeep than generic heavy infantry swordsmen, you get a unit with like +4 all around stats that's AP AND anti-cav; this entire line of units should probably be a bit more expensive, maybe around closer to 300 upkeep, to reflect their power, imo. Not necessarily saying cav upkeep should be nerfed, as it is very powerful, but there's a ton of cheap, effective anti-cav infantry in this mod, much of it available relatively early/easily.

4) pet peeve observations, may be balanced overall in game, just seem a bit counterintuitive lore-wise:
-Light cav no longer has even 'good' stamina
-Feathered forest cavaliers (imperial cavalry) have no stamina bonus, either?
-Cataphracts, clad in full heavy armor, including the horse, have very good stamina (only stands out due to the 2 above lacking it)

Not too much of a complaint as these units may be better off this way for balance reasons (though I'd argue light cav would be better off having its stats nerfed but retaining at least good stamina), which is why I assume some were changed... but... heavily restricted Imperial FFC being close to if not statistically worse than available-everywhere Cataphracts (and after a few minutes in battle, they definitely are) does feel somewhat off.

5) Some late-game buildings, such as the final 'roads' line building, seem to do nothing at all - no increase in trade or movement speed; both the 2nd-tier 'Paved Roads' and 3rd-tier 'Traveling Avenues' are listed as 'highways' on the game map, and no additional trade/movement bonuses are visible in the settlement details when Traveling Avenues are queued. IIRC, one of the final farm improvements in the previous version of the mod also had a similar problem but I think it's fine now.

6) It seems editing unit/building stats in the data folder is not save-game compatible. Most every other M2TW mod i've used has been fine with that, but even with careful testing, just a single alteration to a unit stat renders my current campaign unplayable. I think it works for new campaigns/custom battles, or I hope it will, anyway.

Everything else so far is great, perfect even. I'm playing as Xiliang and I like how Han Sui and a couple of his generals were recruited after I destroyed his faction, because of course he and Ma Teng were originally bros. It's also nice how recruited generals now have the same title as in their biographies. There's so many well thought-out improvements that make this mod very polished, and the little details make it so much more enjoyable.

[TomMills]

Not gonna have answers etc for you, am not one of the creators but this is my take on it too.

1. That's true. But what I find is this also happens with a lot of the bigger factions, mainly Cao Cao for me in my games. Once you get so far in you're gonna be fighting big odds because of the TW AI and their stack spawning.

The thing is it's always going to be really hard to do well with limited resources since the ai can get stacks out of nowhere and there are 25+ factions etc. It's personally really hard for me to tow the line between making profit and recruiting units that can withstand the ai, but that I think is part of the challenge!

[Seether]

Just wanted to say that this is an amazing mod and I'm glad to see it's still around and in fact updated and improved since the last time I played it years ago! The game is full of nice little touches and scripts that make it feel so polished, and I'm really glad I rediscovered this mod.

I'm happy you like it. We're still developing it and there should be a new update coming out either today or tomorrow.

That being said, I wanted to make a post about some minor QoL changes that could be made, and some other miscellaneous observations, in no particular order, to both potentially improve the mod even further, or at least improve my knowledge on certain aspects of it.

I'll address each below, but those things I could change have been done for the upcoming patch.

1) The Wu stack spam is apparently still a thing lol. Turn 95 right now and Wu has like 10x more military than anyone else , I toggled FOW to have a peak at them, and they have like 50 stacks despite having only a medium-sized domain of around 15 cities. By contrast, I have 35 provinces and have been neurotically cranking out elite units as much as possible, have 3x the military strength of the next closest faction, and Wu is still overwhelmingly strong compared to me. I'm not even sure how they have the money to support their army - they only have a couple large cities, and economically don't look to be doing much better than the other top factions. I was reading some older posts here about a stack spam script, so I'd be surprised if what I'm encountering in-game is an intended feature. ( In case it was not clear, I wasn't comparing them to my faction because I'm annoyed they are stronger lol, idc about that so much, was just using my faction as a benchmark for how, within the normal means of the game, they should be nowhere near as strong as they are). I might just turn them rebel so they don't break the endgame when it's down to like 5 factions xD.

Yeah, this has been a pain in my ass for a long time. I honestly can't confirm that the stack-spam script is working fully as intended. I do know that stack-spam is not as bad as previously, but there is obviously an issue when the Sun Clan has 400+ units when the script should have them limited to half that. It is Gigantus' script, that I tailored for this mod, and a year or two ago he looked it over and didn't see anything that would make it fail. So I'm not really sure what can be done about it. In conjunction with this, the upcoming patch reduces the Sun Clan's starting settlements to 2, reduces their starting generals by about 1/3, and reduces their starting armies by nearly half. So hopefully that will help with them running amok (especially so early in the game).

2) imo, recruitment slots should scale from 3 to 4 from large --> huge cities. The amount of free upkeep units scales appropriately, but it doesn't feel like the recruitment does. Both lore and gameplay wise, I feel like huge cities probably should have more recruitment slots than large; I think it was like that in previous versions of the mod (with maybe even more), and it's definitely a bit disappointing that a fully developed Chang'An/Luoyang has the same recruitment capabilities as some random run of the mill settlement that just barely managed to make it to a large city, lol, especially with the advanced/imperial/generals units that huge cities are primary producers of, and especially considering how long it takes to make most of these units. I assume this was an intentional nerf reflecting the design philosophy of the developers, so maybe if not 4 slots for all huge cities, additional slots as an added bonus for the handful of Imperial palaces (that can be built in only a few key cities) would be a good compromise.

Obviously recruitment capability is based on city level, population, and infrastructure, but the recruitment slots didn't make much sense. I have changed it to 3 slots for City and Large City and 4 slots for Huge City.

3) Some of the upkeep costs for regular cavalry and late-game infantry units seem a bit imbalanced; the starting light cavalry with mediocre stats costs 276 upkeep, but the end-game 'Han' line of armored units costs 20% LESS, the most powerful of which is the 'Han Shock Troops' unit which is one of the only mainstream AP units for Han-Chinese based factions, has heavy armor and excellent stats all-around, and is anti cav. Yet this unit has the same upkeep as the other, more niche 'Han' line units - about 225. For only 40-50 more upkeep than generic heavy infantry swordsmen, you get a unit with like +4 all around stats that's AP AND anti-cav; this entire line of units should probably be a bit more expensive, maybe around closer to 300 upkeep, to reflect their power, imo. Not necessarily saying cav upkeep should be nerfed, as it is very powerful, but there's a ton of cheap, effective anti-cav infantry in this mod, much of it available relatively early/easily.

I've overhauled this by balancing via unit type and tier. In general, late game units are now much more expensive and have higher upkeep.

4) pet peeve observations, may be balanced overall in game, just seem a bit counterintuitive lore-wise:
-Light cav no longer has even 'good' stamina
-Feathered forest cavaliers (imperial cavalry) have no stamina bonus, either?
-Cataphracts, clad in full heavy armor, including the horse, have very good stamina (only stands out due to the 2 above lacking it)

This was overhauled as well. Light units now have very good stamina, heavy units have good stamina, and armored units have no bonus. There are exception, like Nanman units having better stamina throughout their roster, unique units having very good stamina, and Feathered Forest units (despite being heavily armored) having good stamina.

5) Some late-game buildings, such as the final 'roads' line building, seem to do nothing at all - no increase in trade or movement speed; both the 2nd-tier 'Paved Roads' and 3rd-tier 'Traveling Avenues' are listed as 'highways' on the game map, and no additional trade/movement bonuses are visible in the settlement details when Traveling Avenues are queued. IIRC, one of the final farm improvements in the previous version of the mod also had a similar problem but I think it's fine now.

There was an error in EDB that nobody caught until now. Essentially the road levels went 0, 2, 2, 3. The issue is that there isn't a level "3" road; there are only levels 0, 1 and 2. So I removed the 4th road "building" and corrected the levels to 0, 1, and 2 for the three remaining road buildings.

6) It seems editing unit/building stats in the data folder is not save-game compatible. Most every other M2TW mod i've used has been fine with that, but even with careful testing, just a single alteration to a unit stat renders my current campaign unplayable. I think it works for new campaigns/custom battles, or I hope it will, anyway.

Yeah, I don't know. That's why it is extremely difficult for me to test mid to late game stuff, as every time I make any changes I have to start a new campaign. I guess it is what it is.

Everything else so far is great, perfect even. I'm playing as Xiliang and I like how Han Sui and a couple of his generals were recruited after I destroyed his faction, because of course he and Ma Teng were originally bros. It's also nice how recruited generals now have the same title as in their biographies. There's so many well thought-out improvements that make this mod very polished, and the little details make it so much more enjoyable.

Again, I appreciate your praise and feedback. As I said previously, these things you pointed out (that I could change) have been put into the upcoming patch.