AxenMy avatar is Excalibur.Yes, the sword.Registered Userregular
I was surprised by the announcement. I guess I kind of just assumed this would be one of those, very common, cases where a game is in EA forever.
I am quite excited for it, mainly for all the mods that'll come. As much fun as I've had with the vanilla version, which has been a lot of fun for me, I am eager for mods.
A Capellan's favorite sheath for any blade is your back.
So this released out of early access recently without much fanfare that I noticed. My only clues were an official review at PC Gamer and getting a few Steam Cards for the game.
I fired up a new game and it both somehow doesn't feel that much different from when I tried the initial EA release but I also know a lot of tweaks under the hood have been made. A lot of features just still feel a bit barebones or things that were stated as plans never made it in/were canceled. I'm definitely enjoying myself but also finding myself annoyed at some things today that I didn't care about back in the Warband days.
I've purposefully been taking it slow as I try to familiarize myself with various systems. Probably need to become a mercenary soon though. Somehow a band of 20ish looters had a whole slew of mid and high tier prisoner units and doubled my party size the other night upon winning. I'm viewing it as a sign it's time to move on to bigger things.
Been playing this again past week.
No major changes compared to EA version so for.
But lot of smaller tweaks.
Economy is lot more balanced, it is harder to make huge profits through trading, meaning that i struggle to make the payroll of my party (1k a day for 56 people, 6 companions, my brother, his wife, and so many sword sisters) reliably (happily the occasional ludicrously expensive horse as tournament reward makes up for it).
Tournaments feel easier, there may have been rebalancing of weapons and the effect of skills have on them.
Levelling smithing feels slower, though that might just be me not feeling economically comfortable enough to sit on my ass for days on end to make coal and smelt weapons i have looted.
Voice acting is ok, but feels unnecessary addition.
Have not gotten to any sieges so far, very little wars going on.
Will need to join a faction soonish, will see how that works then (never really got into factions while playing early access).
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AxenMy avatar is Excalibur.Yes, the sword.Registered Userregular
Worth pointing out that a week or so before launch they released the Dev tools for modders.
I expect we'll see some quality mods before too long. Hell, even without those tools people were working on some impressive stuff.
A Capellan's favorite sheath for any blade is your back.
Its a lot easier to level a bunch of skills than ot was in EA. A general type character I built with charisma cunning and int has like 260 scouting leadership charm and like 130 tactics and roguery, steward always easy, but I just passed 250 medicine and am taking sieges to get engineering.
Been playing this again past week.
No major changes compared to EA version so for.
But lot of smaller tweaks.
Economy is lot more balanced, it is harder to make huge profits through trading, meaning that i struggle to make the payroll of my party (1k a day for 56 people, 6 companions, my brother, his wife, and so many sword sisters) reliably (happily the occasional ludicrously expensive horse as tournament reward makes up for it).
Tournaments feel easier, there may have been rebalancing of weapons and the effect of skills have on them.
Levelling smithing feels slower, though that might just be me not feeling economically comfortable enough to sit on my ass for days on end to make coal and smelt weapons i have looted.
Voice acting is ok, but feels unnecessary addition.
Have not gotten to any sieges so far, very little wars going on.
Will need to join a faction soonish, will see how that works then (never really got into factions while playing early access).
Factions feel much better than in Warband but that's not a high bar to clear.
Being a mercenary is pretty well done if a little weird at times. A certain amount of faction influence gets drained and converted to money each day which means that one of my perks made my faction pay me for winning tournaments or hunting bandits on the other side of the map. It does lead to transitioning into becoming a vassal smoother though as you can hit a point where you are accruing more influence than you get paid for and would be better served getting full use out of those points as a vassal.
I do like the various faction decisions that get put to a visible vote though. I saved one of my castles from being taken by proposing a peace treaty after the rest of the nobles in my faction had gotten captured. I also proposed and pushed through a kingdom policy that has significant economic benefits for vassals at the expense of some cost to the ruling clan. It's all nice stuff that makes being a vassal feel like a legitimate gameplay choice whereas in Warband it felt severely limited compared to becoming a ruler yourself.
I went the route of being a vassal rather than a ruler for my first playthrough (never played the EA version) and honestly I'm wondering why I would even bother with starting my own kingdom beyond just the challenge factor. By pushing for claims on just the fiefs that suit me (a continuous stretch along the former Northern Empire coast) I'm still picking up fiefs almost faster than I can properly staff and maintain them, and I have a kingdom's worth of lords backing me up. The only real thing is maybe controlling the war declarations a bit more, and I'm guessing you get to set a color and name with a new one.
I went the route of being a vassal rather than a ruler for my first playthrough (never played the EA version) and honestly I'm wondering why I would even bother with starting my own kingdom beyond just the challenge factor. By pushing for claims on just the fiefs that suit me (a continuous stretch along the former Northern Empire coast) I'm still picking up fiefs almost faster than I can properly staff and maintain them, and I have a kingdom's worth of lords backing me up. The only real thing is maybe controlling the war declarations a bit more, and I'm guessing you get to set a color and name with a new one.
From what I gather, the big thing is that the AI is way too eager to declare war and doesn't give itself time to build up conquered settlements. Being able to just shut that down gives a huge strategic advantage.
Another potentially useful advantage is making your own kingdom is being able to vassalize minor clans you have good relations with. Some have some really good units and having them loyal to you means both they help you out and won't do merc work for other factions.
It's definitely something I want to explore in the future.
That was the one thing that's been really bugging me, Caladog continuously declares wars on people we don't even have borders with, and we haven't had a moment of peace in ages. Real hard to find some free time to get knocked up in. Didn't know that about the merc companies though, I was wondering why they even bothered having rep scores.
...Okay, this 'AI loves declaring war' thing has started to make the game almost unmanageable. I can see what it's doing - it calculates that our numerical field strength is 13000 or whatever, and these other guys have a couple thousand, so clearly we can fight 3 or 4 of them at once, right? With absolutely no consideration of the fact that fighting wars on four fronts at once is a really bad idea. We only got this far because of how awesome I am, but it seems like as soon as I get to a new front suddenly another war's opened up on the other side of the country. Progress has slowed to a crawl because anytime we get somewhere on one side of the map we lose as much on the other.
It's gone from "I can't remember the last time we were at peace" to "I can't remember the last time we were only fighting one war at once" and is getting really close to "I can't remember the last time we were only fighting two wars at once".
Alright, yeah, I've hit my limit. We actually hit the point where we were at war with everybody at once and the AI lords didn't want to declare peace with any of them. We got through that period, but I've just spent the last two days of play defending and recapturing the same three cities/castles over and over, because everyone else in the nation is fighting on three other fronts and I'm trying to single-handedly fight off the game's second largest empire - every time I crush an army they've got a new one assaulting the other end of the border again. I'm making zero progress. I'm actually personally losing ground because we lost territory I owned and when I got it back they handed it over to other lords.
It's so frustrating because this would be a great game, but just one or two variables are fucking the whole thing up. The game's mechanics demand that there be times of peace, so you can upgrade territory, do the dumb conspiracy sidequests, and have kids, and I'd say it's probably balanced around the idea of being at peace 25% of the time, at war with one party 50% of the time, and at war with two-three 25%. Instead I haven't had a period of peace in literal years, I can't even consider trying to do half the sidequests, and I get to spend like 2 days a year at my spouse's city. Just give me like one or two sliders, for god's sake.
Scooter on
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Metzger MeisterIt Gets Worsebefore it gets any better.Registered Userregular
the kingdom political AI is not great, that's for sure. there's mods, of course, that purport to fix this but i haven't really dipped my toe into modding this just yet, i was waitin for full launch to avoid the constant updates etc, and i've just been playing other stuff lately (yearly playthrough of new vegas etc)
So I did try out the War AI mod, that's like, pinned to the top of Nexus so you know other folks were having the same issue, and it did fix the problems a lot. There was still one period where we were fighting way too much at once, and something is a little off with the peace calculations (it will say 129% support for peace and then you start the vote and it's 0%), but for the most part it did actually get things down to a manageable level. Ended up timing out into the big endgame war, at which point I maxed out the 'target peacetime' slider to make sure no one else tried to invade us from behind, and after a fair bit of effort, finally managed to beat the game. Would've never done it without the mod, for sure.
Well, good news, the patch last night (that doesn't even have notes) was enough to break all the baseline mods. I was getting close to the end of a campaign and now I get to wait for everything to get updated again.
I've been playing with the Beta branch after a youtuber/streamer mentioned it drastically improved performance. I can verify that the game runs much better than it did before. Enough to make me overlook some of the bugs, like the one noble that got a bugged rep change after I freed him from his captor and is now at -100 relation with me alongside his fellow prisoner that shot up to 100 relation.
Some of the new features are pretty neat too, like being able to directly set what troop formation companions/family members are in even if they're not the captain.
Others, I'm a little unsure about. The Fog of War for npcs makes sense in theory, but it does mean that unless you've got a guide on what companion titles align with what skills, it can make figuring out who to find and recruit a pain. Oh, and the beta update seems to have rearranged some of those skill spreads too. It also makes evaluating marriage proposals weird given you may not be able to look up the age, stats, etc. of the other party.
I didn't try out the criminal alley thing though as I was too busy filling out other companion roles first so I outgrew when it would have been useful income by the time I had room for a Roguery companion. It does still sound kind of barebones but I'm glad there's an effort to include that kind of game path.
like being able to directly set what troop formation companions/family members are in even if they're not the captain.
OH THANK GOD
That feature was a big part of why I installed the beta.
Another is that the game now tries to balance out the different types of Wanderers so there's always at least one around suited for a particular role. That admittedly has some quirks as, say, the one Engineer available might be pretty bad though I suppose you can always hire and dismiss them to make the game spawn a better one. Another quirk is that the one smithing or whatever wanderer spawned in might be a quest npc you can't recruit so you need to do that quest before the game fixes the oversight.
But the main one is that it got rid of a graphical bug where smithing a weapon that had the blade size changed caused it to detach from the handle model and just looked wrong all the time.
But the main one is that it got rid of a graphical bug where smithing a weapon that had the blade size changed caused it to detach from the handle model and just looked wrong all the time.
Update of the fucking year right here, that bugged me so much
My 1.1 game has taken great advantage of the AI not being great at governing conquered settlements. I'm an independent clan still but have 4 fiefs, 3 of them in Battania because the Sturgians, Empire, and Vlandia did a crap job of keeping them from rebelling. Sadly for my progress, it does seem like the Khuzait settled on policies to boost loyalty as they actually seem to be holding on to half of Sturgia. Still, I do enjoy having methods to create a domain without being a part of a Kingdom first.
Oh hey, the main branch has updated to have the 1.1 beta changes and even a few more fixes! Let's update and start a new campaign to incorporate the lessons I learned from my beta branch character!
*hard crashes upon talking to a companion npc at the tavern*
Okay, let's try that again. Didn't have a chance to save so I'll have to make a new character. Okay, thankfully it didn't crash upon talking to this companion but they kind of suck so let's go to the next town . . .
*hard crashes on talking to a companion npc at the tavern*
I think I'm going to wait for a few more bug fix updates.
Posts
I am quite excited for it, mainly for all the mods that'll come. As much fun as I've had with the vanilla version, which has been a lot of fun for me, I am eager for mods.
One button to make the horse run, one button to swing my mace
Seems doable
I fired up a new game and it both somehow doesn't feel that much different from when I tried the initial EA release but I also know a lot of tweaks under the hood have been made. A lot of features just still feel a bit barebones or things that were stated as plans never made it in/were canceled. I'm definitely enjoying myself but also finding myself annoyed at some things today that I didn't care about back in the Warband days.
I've purposefully been taking it slow as I try to familiarize myself with various systems. Probably need to become a mercenary soon though. Somehow a band of 20ish looters had a whole slew of mid and high tier prisoner units and doubled my party size the other night upon winning. I'm viewing it as a sign it's time to move on to bigger things.
Steam Profile
3DS: 3454-0268-5595 Battle.net: SteelAngel#1772
No major changes compared to EA version so for.
But lot of smaller tweaks.
Economy is lot more balanced, it is harder to make huge profits through trading, meaning that i struggle to make the payroll of my party (1k a day for 56 people, 6 companions, my brother, his wife, and so many sword sisters) reliably (happily the occasional ludicrously expensive horse as tournament reward makes up for it).
Tournaments feel easier, there may have been rebalancing of weapons and the effect of skills have on them.
Levelling smithing feels slower, though that might just be me not feeling economically comfortable enough to sit on my ass for days on end to make coal and smelt weapons i have looted.
Voice acting is ok, but feels unnecessary addition.
Have not gotten to any sieges so far, very little wars going on.
Will need to join a faction soonish, will see how that works then (never really got into factions while playing early access).
I expect we'll see some quality mods before too long. Hell, even without those tools people were working on some impressive stuff.
Factions feel much better than in Warband but that's not a high bar to clear.
Being a mercenary is pretty well done if a little weird at times. A certain amount of faction influence gets drained and converted to money each day which means that one of my perks made my faction pay me for winning tournaments or hunting bandits on the other side of the map. It does lead to transitioning into becoming a vassal smoother though as you can hit a point where you are accruing more influence than you get paid for and would be better served getting full use out of those points as a vassal.
I do like the various faction decisions that get put to a visible vote though. I saved one of my castles from being taken by proposing a peace treaty after the rest of the nobles in my faction had gotten captured. I also proposed and pushed through a kingdom policy that has significant economic benefits for vassals at the expense of some cost to the ruling clan. It's all nice stuff that makes being a vassal feel like a legitimate gameplay choice whereas in Warband it felt severely limited compared to becoming a ruler yourself.
Steam Profile
3DS: 3454-0268-5595 Battle.net: SteelAngel#1772
From what I gather, the big thing is that the AI is way too eager to declare war and doesn't give itself time to build up conquered settlements. Being able to just shut that down gives a huge strategic advantage.
Another potentially useful advantage is making your own kingdom is being able to vassalize minor clans you have good relations with. Some have some really good units and having them loyal to you means both they help you out and won't do merc work for other factions.
It's definitely something I want to explore in the future.
Steam Profile
3DS: 3454-0268-5595 Battle.net: SteelAngel#1772
It's gone from "I can't remember the last time we were at peace" to "I can't remember the last time we were only fighting one war at once" and is getting really close to "I can't remember the last time we were only fighting two wars at once".
It's so frustrating because this would be a great game, but just one or two variables are fucking the whole thing up. The game's mechanics demand that there be times of peace, so you can upgrade territory, do the dumb conspiracy sidequests, and have kids, and I'd say it's probably balanced around the idea of being at peace 25% of the time, at war with one party 50% of the time, and at war with two-three 25%. Instead I haven't had a period of peace in literal years, I can't even consider trying to do half the sidequests, and I get to spend like 2 days a year at my spouse's city. Just give me like one or two sliders, for god's sake.
Some of the new features are pretty neat too, like being able to directly set what troop formation companions/family members are in even if they're not the captain.
Others, I'm a little unsure about. The Fog of War for npcs makes sense in theory, but it does mean that unless you've got a guide on what companion titles align with what skills, it can make figuring out who to find and recruit a pain. Oh, and the beta update seems to have rearranged some of those skill spreads too. It also makes evaluating marriage proposals weird given you may not be able to look up the age, stats, etc. of the other party.
I didn't try out the criminal alley thing though as I was too busy filling out other companion roles first so I outgrew when it would have been useful income by the time I had room for a Roguery companion. It does still sound kind of barebones but I'm glad there's an effort to include that kind of game path.
Steam Profile
3DS: 3454-0268-5595 Battle.net: SteelAngel#1772
OH THANK GOD
That feature was a big part of why I installed the beta.
Another is that the game now tries to balance out the different types of Wanderers so there's always at least one around suited for a particular role. That admittedly has some quirks as, say, the one Engineer available might be pretty bad though I suppose you can always hire and dismiss them to make the game spawn a better one. Another quirk is that the one smithing or whatever wanderer spawned in might be a quest npc you can't recruit so you need to do that quest before the game fixes the oversight.
But the main one is that it got rid of a graphical bug where smithing a weapon that had the blade size changed caused it to detach from the handle model and just looked wrong all the time.
Steam Profile
3DS: 3454-0268-5595 Battle.net: SteelAngel#1772
Update of the fucking year right here, that bugged me so much
Steam Profile
3DS: 3454-0268-5595 Battle.net: SteelAngel#1772
https://www.moddb.com/mods/full-invasion-3/news/full-invasion-3-is-launching-february-26th
*hard crashes upon talking to a companion npc at the tavern*
Okay, let's try that again. Didn't have a chance to save so I'll have to make a new character. Okay, thankfully it didn't crash upon talking to this companion but they kind of suck so let's go to the next town . . .
*hard crashes on talking to a companion npc at the tavern*
I think I'm going to wait for a few more bug fix updates.
Steam Profile
3DS: 3454-0268-5595 Battle.net: SteelAngel#1772