The Hardcore Fantasy Battle campaign - An Expansion for Beginning of the End Times

[Pietrak]

Merkkari - the work on remaking the campaign hasn't started yet, Reiksfart is currently finishing the unit balance. And I can say that it's fine indeed.

[Reiksfart]

And last a Idea.
Handunners, AI cant handle them efficiently like player do putting them two men deep line. Build similar special formation ability for Musketmen but in "two men deep line" formatio and named as "Firing Line" and make this ability locked for AI. Dont know how this way handunners acts in city.

Thanks for the input, it is always appreciated.

I have already changed formations from the standard ReallyBadAI formations and using my own for each individual unit. Missile units all have much tighter formations and start in either two ranks (handgunners) or three ranks (archers,xbows). The formations are not too long because of the tightness of the formations and the AI handles them ok. Problem is the AI still sometimes takes them out of this formation as it moves, leaving them in more of a rectangular formation, which decreases handgunners effectiveness.

I'm not sure if there is any way to stop the formation change from happening, but another problem which happens is missile units not using their range and close the distance to their targets even further. This happens even if they start the battle within firing range. This is usually when the formation change happens.

I have a few questions posted on the ReallyBadAI forum and hope to find a solution to this. It reduces effectiveness of the AI too much when it does this. Since Empire and to a lesser extent, dwarves, rely on guns etc, it needs fixing. It doesn't matter so much if archers and crossbows break formation.

[Reiksfart]

Amazing what an hour of research can find out about the game engine. Missile unit issue fixed and lots of new coding to add to the EDU to take battles up another notch in quality. Only a couple of hours extra coding to do.


Pietrak suggested we add a few more testers to help with testing the campaign. Got to agree with him or the two of us will take forever doing it. There is no campaign to test yet, but could be only a few weeks before there will be something to start testing.

I'm looking for:

1) Testers who can provide constructive criticism about the submod as a whole. Mainly looking for campaign feedback, although battle feedback is welcome - IF you know about warhammer tabletop and the balancing there. Not interested in hearing about why empire halberdiers can no longer stand against chaos warriors or are now matched by orc boys and marauders. Or why trolls now can't win a battle on their own.

2) Active members of the forum, particularly those who regularly visit or post in this thread are preferred.

3)You play on medium/medium difficulty. Battles have been balanced around medium difficulty and will be the same for the campaign.

Will post more if needed. I hope at least a couple of people can volunteer. Only one person messaged me about testing the battles and that was Pietrak. Damn good tester with great feedback, he helped improve the battles with his suggestions.

[Ichon]

What was the fix for missile units btw? That might be very handy for me to know for 1390 where gunpowder plays a much heavier role.

[Ettore53]

I am interessed in testing campaign, I know very well empire with 1.44 less with 1.50

[machotacoman]

I think I'm pretty good at spotting fir balance. I've done some myself in my game. Making armies on average 20% larger, increasing the # of guns in an artillery unit, boosting Nurgle Chosen HP so they don't die as quickly as zombies against bloodletters.
As an avid modder, ah wood bi awnoared.

[Marcus Tullius Cicero]

I'd like to be able to test and give feedback - although, while I did avidly play WFB TT for 6 years, it was 4th until 6th edition, and I know the structure changed a fair amount in 8th that I haven't caught up on yet .

That aside, I have some time on my hands at the moment and so should be able to put that to good use, especially for a project that sounds so promising as a more true to TT (balanced!) COW.

[Reiksfart]

What was the fix for missile units btw? That might be very handy for me to know for 1390 where gunpowder plays a much heavier role.

I will message you later on. It isn't a 100% fix upon further testing, but a big improvement. Once I can find out how to move missile units into the rear with artillery in the formations file that could fix it or improve it even more. Gunners sometimes move forward when the rest of the army march through them. There are other fixes I'm trying alongside, but not sure if that would work in Stainless Steel where you want full realism.

I'd like to be able to test and give feedback - although, while I did avidly play WFB TT for 6 years, it was 4th until 6th edition, and I know the structure changed a fair amount in 8th that I haven't caught up on yet .

That's fine. I haven't played tabletop warhammer for over 15 years. Even if I wanted to play it, I couldn't where I'm living now. Not easily anyway. Not really looking for feedback on battles anyway, unless someone finds some glaring issues with one unit vs another. Might be difficult to fix though without upsetting balance with everything else. Army vs Army is what is most important, but of course individual units need to perform about as they should vs another individual unit.



Tested the new Marienburg garrison in campaign. That city is going to be much harder to take, as it should be. Will need more than the thrown together army I had at the start plus newly built cannons and mortars.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

[Ichon]

That would be nice, having Marienburg and Nuln and some other cities more difficult to take. I was a bit disappointed to be able to take Marienburg with half a stack in my Nordland campaign.

The most difficult part of guns is the LoS effect. Crossbows have this to a lesser extent. In real history the early guns were most effective when firing from a bulwark of some sort. Pavises locked together, wagons, other types of obstacles, etc. Something to keep the cavalry off otherwise shooting from behind infantry is going to result in FF. MTW2 only has stakes or siege equipment available as obstacles but I haven't been able to figure out how to get a script that allows siege equipment in regular field battles. I saw the submod that created war wagons but there is nothing more on that. I think it might be possible to create something using elephant model giving 1 melee and melee and massive HP or something but no way to know if AI could ever use such a unit correctly.

For WarHammer the lore is much bloodier and there is not much of guns using obstacles, more often they are mixed with the other infantry formations or shooting from afar (Hochlanders which to give them the TT range seems to make them unbalanced). Also alot of the larger guns in WH are a bit unreliable, even more than the early Renaissance guns of actual history.

I even thought to try giving pikemen gun as a secondary, lol- so really any fixes out there I am very interested in.

[boatie]

Amazing what an hour of research can find out about the game engine. Missile unit issue fixed and lots of new coding to add to the EDU to take battles up another notch in quality. Only a couple of hours extra coding to do.


Pietrak suggested we add a few more testers to help with testing the campaign. Got to agree with him or the two of us will take forever doing it. There is no campaign to test yet, but could be only a few weeks before there will be something to start testing.

I'm looking for:

1) Testers who can provide constructive criticism about the submod as a whole. Mainly looking for campaign feedback, although battle feedback is welcome - IF you know about warhammer tabletop and the balancing there. Not interested in hearing about why empire halberdiers can no longer stand against chaos warriors or are now matched by orc boys and marauders. Or why trolls now can't win a battle on their own.

2) Active members of the forum, particularly those who regularly visit or post in this thread are preferred.

3)You play on medium/medium difficulty. Battles have been balanced around medium difficulty and will be the same for the campaign.

Will post more if needed. I hope at least a couple of people can volunteer. Only one person messaged me about testing the battles and that was Pietrak. Damn good tester with great feedback, he helped improve the battles with his suggestions.

Reiksfart, I am in! (if you want me, lol). However, I will not be home until the end of next week. Let me know. I will be happy to test anything you want me to.

[UnknownLOL]

Hey, Reiksfart
I'm looking forward to your mod) btw, do you think it is possible to make dragons and griffins with the animations we have? I saw them in another sub-mod, which, however, wasn't ever released.

[IrishBlood]

Amazing what an hour of research can find out about the game engine. Missile unit issue fixed and lots of new coding to add to the EDU to take battles up another notch in quality. Only a couple of hours extra coding to do.


Pietrak suggested we add a few more testers to help with testing the campaign. Got to agree with him or the two of us will take forever doing it. There is no campaign to test yet, but could be only a few weeks before there will be something to start testing.

I'm looking for:

1) Testers who can provide constructive criticism about the submod as a whole. Mainly looking for campaign feedback, although battle feedback is welcome - IF you know about warhammer tabletop and the balancing there. Not interested in hearing about why empire halberdiers can no longer stand against chaos warriors or are now matched by orc boys and marauders. Or why trolls now can't win a battle on their own.

2) Active members of the forum, particularly those who regularly visit or post in this thread are preferred.

3)You play on medium/medium difficulty. Battles have been balanced around medium difficulty and will be the same for the campaign.

Will post more if needed. I hope at least a couple of people can volunteer. Only one person messaged me about testing the battles and that was Pietrak. Damn good tester with great feedback, he helped improve the battles with his suggestions.

I'd be happy to help If you want me

I dont know much about the table top rules, but I know alot about the CoW campaign and I was one of the beta testers for The Last Kingdom mod.

The only problem is Im coming up to the last month of my final college exams/assignments etc, so my progress reports etc would be slow, but after that month i'll have a lot of free time. That said you'll prob have enough volunteers and will have no need for my services by then

[Reiksfart]

Reiksfart, I am in! (if you want me, lol). However, I will not be home until the end of next week. Let me know. I will be happy to test anything you want me to.

Of course. There won't be any campaign to test for at least a couple of weeks anyway. I still need to code in border princes, generals, Tzeentch and Slaanesh, although the last 2 are same as the others with a few differences based on marks of chaos. Although I did code a full EDU for 1.44, the formula and EDU has changed massively since new year.

Hey, Reiksfart
I'm looking forward to your mod) btw, do you think it is possible to make dragons and griffins with the animations we have? I saw them in another sub-mod, which, however, wasn't ever released.

Griffons would be possible with the pegasus animation (if it works, I still haven't tested it), but they would be small griffons unless we can find out how to repack the animation folder without having the original one made available to us by the CoW devs. We'd also need a griffon model. I'm not even going to attempt to make one and I don't like to ask other mods to use their models.

Dragons, not without new animations. I wouldn't bother personally unless the animation was a walking dragon with flapping wings or flying dragon with only the rider attacking. Not elephant based either, which is the norm for these types of units. Very few units work well enough as elephants to be worth it. Rest will spend a lot of time doing nothing even when in combat.



When there is something to test I will mail out a download link to the testers. Pietrak insists on testing Dark Elves mainly. Every faction needs testing at least up until the point of the Storm of Chaos, which is what I will be focusing on for the initial tests. Need to balance step by step. Pre-Storm, Storm/Grimgor Waagh, Post storm. Post Storm will have a new invasion to keep the campaign interesting after chaos has been defeated. Loads of ideas and plans which will be going in, but it takes time and will all need to be tested and retested as it is added and uploaded.

I will be on a trip for a couple of days starting morning of the 11th. Wasted modding time

[UnknownLOL]

So pegasus animation is in the packs, right? What is it's name?

[UnknownLOL]

Lol, I have found it. That was silly, sorry)
Does anyone have pagasus model then?

btw, is there any way to edit messages here, not to doublepost?

[IrishBlood]

Of course. There won't be any campaign to test for at least a couple of weeks anyway. I still need to code in border princes, generals, Tzeentch and Slaanesh, although the last 2 are same as the others with a few differences based on marks of chaos. Although I did code a full EDU for 1.44, the formula and EDU has changed massively since new year.



Griffons would be possible with the pegasus animation (if it works, I still haven't tested it), but they would be small griffons unless we can find out how to repack the animation folder without having the original one made available to us by the CoW devs. We'd also need a griffon model. I'm not even going to attempt to make one and I don't like to ask other mods to use their models.

Dragons, not without new animations. I wouldn't bother personally unless the animation was a walking dragon with flapping wings or flying dragon with only the rider attacking. Not elephant based either, which is the norm for these types of units. Very few units work well enough as elephants to be worth it. Rest will spend a lot of time doing nothing even when in combat.



When there is something to test I will mail out a download link to the testers. Pietrak insists on testing Dark Elves mainly. Every faction needs testing at least up until the point of the Storm of Chaos, which is what I will be focusing on for the initial tests. Need to balance step by step. Pre-Storm, Storm/Grimgor Waagh, Post storm. Post Storm will have a new invasion to keep the campaign interesting after chaos has been defeated. Loads of ideas and plans which will be going in, but it takes time and will all need to be tested and retested as it is added and uploaded.

I will be on a trip for a couple of days starting morning of the 11th. Wasted modding time

Will the empires torment ever end!?!?

EDIT: after reading up on the lore of _____ (not gonna say who cos that would ruin it), Im pretty sure I know who the next invader will be

[shadow_thief]

Btw are the dwarfs able to not have an allience with high elves? there enemys from the begewnig and it should be that way in the game

[Ichon]

I thought man was the bridge between elves and dwarves so neither race liked each other but they recognized chaos or something other than empire would be worse so cooperated.

[shadow_thief]

They cooperated from time to time but most of the times when a dwarf sees an elf he wants to kill him or die trying. They would be very happy to destroy high elf home island. Once they kicked out the elves from the old world and i dont think they will let them estabish settlements there again.

[IrishBlood]

The dwarfs dont have the strength to carry out a war against the elves any more. Their under extreme pressure from the skavans and greenskins (the Storm of Chaos isnt helping that). The elves, despite raids by the Dark elves are pretty secure on Ullathan as far as i know.

Dispite their hatred for the elves, the dwarfs have bigger fish to fry, green skin fish