Seether's Gameplay Notes

[Seether]

In the latest patch, a minor mistake was made that did not allow for the custom battle models of two major characters involved in the Liu Bei missions.

(If you don't want any spoilers for the Liu Bei missions, do not open the spoiler)

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Zhuge Liang and Pang Tong

I have made a hotfix to correct this. Download the attachment in this post and extract to your Medieval II Total War/mods/Three_Kingdoms folder.

It is NOT SAVEGAME COMPATIBLE, so you must start a new game for it to take effect. This will be included in Patch #5, so whenever that patch is released this will become obsolete.

EDIT: New Hotfix by Gigantus includes this. Upload taken down

[mischadc]

Played about 15 years with Kong Rong, managed to secure my corner of the map from Cao Cao for now at least... I had a few comments and this is the closest thing I saw to a general feedback thread. Comments are based on this game plus about a 10 year game as Liu Yan and a 3 year game as Yuan Shu. Bear in mind I am NOT a modder, so if anything below is simply un-moddable due to game mechanisms, sorry to ask about it:

-I love the special city buildings! They really add to the immersion.

-Cities grow too fast. In the vanilla game, they grow over a period of hundreds of years. Here, within under 20 years, I had nearly all Large Cities. Is there a way to slow growth substantially -- a city of 2,000 people should not be a city of 10,000 within a generation -- while still allowing at least some improved buildings in smaller cities?

-Can forts be modded in any interesting ways? Some of the major battles of the era -- Guandu comes to mind -- were basically battles over encampments, granaries, etc. rather than city sieges or pure "field" battles. Related to this, more "objects" on the battlefield would be interesting. (I know in vanilla there will sometimes be small farms, un-enterable castles,...)

-Losing generals nearly always die. The first battle that I encountered Lu Bu, he personally trashed 3 infantry units but we ended up outlasting him and then my Pikemen killed him. In an aborted start as Yuan Shu, I killed Guan Yu in my first battle. With AI doomstacks there are so many battles, and so many AI-vs-Human defeats, it's really hard for AI generals to survive more than 1 or 2 battles against a human player.

-That said, and I don't remember reading about this in the mod summary, but the battle AI feels marginally improved from vanilla. They seem to use their cavalry more conservatively rather than slamming everyone into your lines and just getting flanked, they seem to hold their cavalry back a bit more. Maybe it's all in my head, but it's good.

-Maybe beef up archers? Their kill numbers are on the low side - I usually got between 25-40 kills per archery unit per battle, on "normal" unit size, even with decent archers. More than that, they just don't feel like having an impact. Even with Crossbowmen, I never really thought "I'd trade any of my front line infantry or any of my cavalry for another one of these." Maybe that's the way it should be, or maybe I should play as Han Xuan and then reconsider.

-Possibly slow down unit movement on the map. With the AI doom stacks it can get a bit like, AI siege / defeat / here comes new stack from somewhere else / AI siege / defeat / new stack from somewhere else / AI siege / repeat. It's very easy to rush reinforcements in the densely-packed northeast. If units moved a bit more slowly, there would be greater risks of overextended lines and getting caught without easily-available backup.

-Not sure if this is vanilla behavior, but I would estimate a 75%-80% success rate of AI merchants in eliminating my merchants. Whereas I normally had 15-25% success rates. It got to a point where I put 3 merchants in Taiwan where the AI doesn't go, 3 in the far northeast corner protected by 3 cities I held, and 1 on a gold mine in Beihai protected by an assassin who just stood there watching for enemy merchants. It was easier at first in my short game as Liu Yan, but even then, once they discovered Yi, all my good trade spots suddenly belonged to Liu Biao and Han Xuan.

-Sun Ce doesn't really expand. Could be a small sample size, but I never saw him go after Liu Biao or anywhere beyond his little corner.

This is an amazing mod, the beta with patches feels almost "finished" already. Keep up the good work!!

[Seether]

Played about 15 years with Kong Rong, managed to secure my corner of the map from Cao Cao for now at least... I had a few comments and this is the closest thing I saw to a general feedback thread. Comments are based on this game plus about a 10 year game as Liu Yan and a 3 year game as Yuan Shu. Bear in mind I am NOT a modder, so if anything below is simply un-moddable due to game mechanisms, sorry to ask about it:

-I love the special city buildings! They really add to the immersion.

I think we could do some more on this, but that is a project for a later time.

-Cities grow too fast. In the vanilla game, they grow over a period of hundreds of years. Here, within under 20 years, I had nearly all Large Cities. Is there a way to slow growth substantially -- a city of 2,000 people should not be a city of 10,000 within a generation -- while still allowing at least some improved buildings in smaller cities?

I agree. Perhaps the base growth rate needs to be changed. In the latest patch I re-balanced all of the starting cities, but even so (depending on the governor) cities can explode in population.

-Can forts be modded in any interesting ways? Some of the major battles of the era -- Guandu comes to mind -- were basically battles over encampments, granaries, etc. rather than city sieges or pure "field" battles. Related to this, more "objects" on the battlefield would be interesting. (I know in vanilla there will sometimes be small farms, un-enterable castles,...)

I'm not sure if how forts are used is hardcoded or not. I assume it is, as is the battlefield objects.

-Losing generals nearly always die. The first battle that I encountered Lu Bu, he personally trashed 3 infantry units but we ended up outlasting him and then my Pikemen killed him. In an aborted start as Yuan Shu, I killed Guan Yu in my first battle. With AI doomstacks there are so many battles, and so many AI-vs-Human defeats, it's really hard for AI generals to survive more than 1 or 2 battles against a human player.

To me that is because they don't tend to retreat when they should. But the thing is, as in all M2 mods, if a general goes into battle there is a likelihood that they will die. I know people want the "favorite" RTK characters to live on and yada yada, but because we are using the M2 engine and its limitations, characters (even the famous and favorite one) can die very early in the mod. Its just the way it is.

-That said, and I don't remember reading about this in the mod summary, but the battle AI feels marginally improved from vanilla. They seem to use their cavalry more conservatively rather than slamming everyone into your lines and just getting flanked, they seem to hold their cavalry back a bit more. Maybe it's all in my head, but it's good.

I agree. Not only that, but cavalry also tends to attack vulnerable units (other cavalry, archers, and non-spear/pike infantry) while generals tend to not suicide themselves.

-Maybe beef up archers? Their kill numbers are on the low side - I usually got between 25-40 kills per archery unit per battle, on "normal" unit size, even with decent archers. More than that, they just don't feel like having an impact. Even with Crossbowmen, I never really thought "I'd trade any of my front line infantry or any of my cavalry for another one of these." Maybe that's the way it should be, or maybe I should play as Han Xuan and then reconsider.

Archers probably won't get beefed up, but perhaps crossbowmen will. In all practicality, the crossbow was a much, much better weapon for a footsoldier in ancient China than the bow.

-Possibly slow down unit movement on the map. With the AI doom stacks it can get a bit like, AI siege / defeat / here comes new stack from somewhere else / AI siege / defeat / new stack from somewhere else / AI siege / repeat. It's very easy to rush reinforcements in the densely-packed northeast. If units moved a bit more slowly, there would be greater risks of overextended lines and getting caught without easily-available backup.

Instead of slowing down movement, I am going to readjust the recruitment rate of many units, especially the low-tier units like Volunteers and County Spearmen. That should limit the AI spam, but I have to actually test it first.

-Not sure if this is vanilla behavior, but I would estimate a 75%-80% success rate of AI merchants in eliminating my merchants. Whereas I normally had 15-25% success rates. It got to a point where I put 3 merchants in Taiwan where the AI doesn't go, 3 in the far northeast corner protected by 3 cities I held, and 1 on a gold mine in Beihai protected by an assassin who just stood there watching for enemy merchants. It was easier at first in my short game as Liu Yan, but even then, once they discovered Yi, all my good trade spots suddenly belonged to Liu Biao and Han Xuan.

I have noticed that as well. Gigantus had thrown around the idea of tossing out Merchants. But, if we don't, we will look into those success rates as they seem unfairly stacked against the player.

-Sun Ce doesn't really expand. Could be a small sample size, but I never saw him go after Liu Biao or anywhere beyond his little corner.

In the latest patch (Patch #5) a descr_faction_standing file was included. Not saying it will work as we want it to right now, but it is a start. We will have to adjust it depending on how it works.

This is an amazing mod, the beta with patches feels almost "finished" already. Keep up the good work!!

Thank you. We try our best

Like 'mischadc' said, this looks like the closest to a general feedback thread, so here it goes.
First of all, I really enjoy this mod. After a CTD while trying to start my first campaign, the second time it worked. I started a campaign with Ma Teng, and here are some things I noticed. I never played vanilla Medieval 2 (yet), so some things might not relate to your mod. I also play version 0.1.310 so some things might have been fixed yet.

I would highly suggest updating with Patch #4 and #5 as (I believe) some of these issues have been fixed.

- The description of the XiLiang cavalry tells that they can be retrained at Huge Cavalry Camps. I could only retrain them at Imperial Cavalry camps;

I believe there was an issue with that before but, at least with the current Patch #5, it is indeed Huge Cavalry Camps that they can be retrained at.

- My assassins don't get any traits. After some succesfull assassinations nothing happens;

Future plans are to rework assassin and spy traits, as well as add traits for princesses.

- When I send a stack with no general somewhere, they usualy turn rebel the next turn (byebye costly imperial units...). I don't make that mistake again;

That happens, yes, and it can be annoying. I'm not sure what the chances are for that to happen, but best to ensure you have a utility general or two to move troops around where they are needed, as well as have multiple generals in a stack.

- In some battles I can't even reach my enemy, of reinforcements can't arrive because there's a huge mountain in the way of something;

We know of this issue and it is something that will be worked on in a future patch. The west, south-west, and south-central regions are notorious for this.

- Some characters have 'dishonor 0'. When I scoll over it a text appears that I shouldn't see that;

Just a missing text entry when a character has 0 honor (chivalry).

- Rebel stacks with no general look weird (they have their face on their back, there sword is purple, ...);

I'm pretty sure this was fixed as of Patch #4. Also, in Patch #4, the "barbarians" were given entirely new rosters and textures.

- Sometimes I get a CTD during a battle or after a battle;

An ongoing issue, related to either missing or corrupt battle_models or settlements located too close to rivers. Gigantus is currently working on this.

- It would be nice to have other voices than default. When a diplomat of Lui Bei tells me 'do you have something for France' feels kinda out of place;

It does, yes, but we do not have any Chinese voice actors on our team. Somewhere in this forum Gigantus discusses using vanilla voices.

- Volunteer Cavalry riders don't sit on the saddle, they are slightly above.

I will take a look at that.

That being said, I do really enjoy the mod so far. I don't mean any feedback in a negative way. It's just what I noticed (and propably some more but I forgot).

Feedback is always appreciated, as it allows us to correct errors and bug and add new content to make this mod better!