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

[boatie]

Take your time Reiksfart, we are still lurking around and will be playing this when it is finished. I am kinda burnt out myself and playing other stuff for the moment.

[Klierowski]

Gimme this mod <3 damn 5 haurs of balancing stats and i will be in heven <3

[GreatSword]

Should have been months ago, or at least a campaign test/balance release to the volunteers. Haven't been able to, and at times not wanted (burnout) to focus on it, and been doing other stuff. Wife always comes first too.

Will update as I go, and sooner rather than later request another lot of campaign testers. Last time was a while ago and some may not even be around or not have time now.

I understand, if there is any way I can help i'll do it. No particular skills with modding but I can learn. As for me , im on a warhammer frenzy right now, ive started "relocating" factions, getting Wissenland past the initial beastmen/vampire bombardement, then moving my characters to the chaos wastes and starting a new territory, after which I give away my old territories to empire factions! So there we are, in the far north, surrounded, alone, but with many guns

[Reiksfart]

Gimme this mod <3 damn 5 haurs of balancing stats and i will be in heven <3

Haha, that is so hurtful when months and months of hard work, balancing, feedback, hundreds of battles and re-thinking elements to achieve as close to tabletop balancing as possible. Still improving too, but my main focus is A.I performance in battle now. Of course, you can do what you want with it privately, but I'd hope you would at least play a campaign as it is supposed to be before changing things.

I understand, if there is any way I can help i'll do it. No particular skills with modding but I can learn. As for me , im on a warhammer frenzy right now, ive started "relocating" factions, getting Wissenland past the initial beastmen/vampire bombardement, then moving my characters to the chaos wastes and starting a new territory, after which I give away my old territories to empire factions! So there we are, in the far north, surrounded, alone, but with many guns

I had never modded any game before this more than some coding in Rome/Med2 in 0'6/Med1. Just knew how to use photoshop and started with some really bad textures for CoW in early 2011. My texturing is only marginally better now, but at least improved. Milkshape isn't hard to use once you know the basics. Coding just needs you to understand what you are doing, and there's plenty of tutorials for most files.

Best help I can ask for when it's ready for testing is good balancing feedback/ideas for the campaign and battle feedback from people who know tabletop balancing.

[GreatSword]

Sounds good, my tabletop army just happened to be... The Empire! lol, I will give whatever assistance I can if it will help out some, I know most unit stats (for all factions) by heart from table top, wounds, str and all that, and a lil bit about how they perform.

From the existing game,

Vampires- Feel about right, vampire units themselves may be too numerous, though if reduced need buffing (barring blood dragons....)

Empire- Pretty good, Halberds a bit too strong(remove spearwall), elite troops a bit too weak, artillery pretty decent

Dwarfs- Perfect

Orcs- regular orcs need a lil buffing, same for gobo's standard unit, same for boar boyz, elites are ok, nerf orc archers....

Chaos- Elites far underpowered, rest of troops seem right on the money

HE/DE- fairly close to tabletop (cold ones need buffing, perhaps smaller units for elites)

Border Princes- no idea

Chaos Dwarfs- pretty close

Kislev- pretty close

Just my opinion I know there are many people out there who have alot of their own input! But if we all post on here and share how we feel it compares to tabletop we may be able to start seeing some lines cross and pinpoint some certain areas for tweaking.

[Reiksfart]

What is the consensus on rebel/slave starting armies? Should they be a tough nut to crack and be a challenge to your initial starting armies, or generally a walkover and little more than speed bumps in the start of game land grabbing? I'm leaning towards tough nuts to crack with varied and challenging garrison armies, but have yet to code or test it.

Finally debugged the problem I was having with a start of campaign crash, no thanks to the trace error log, so rolling again now.

From the existing game

That's where we'll have to disagree. There was almost nothing I felt was right about vanilla CoW when basing it upon tabletop performance. Also, in my opinion, one faction can't be right if any of the others are not. If you fix the other faction, then that effects the others performance. Endless cycle.

When I have next battle test version ready will let you know Greatsword, if you were interested in testing and giving quality feedback.

[Kahvipannu]

I would definitelly go with tough nuts to crack, maybe not in all (like not in the north in the wastelands), but most of them.

[Reiksfart]

(like not in the north in the wastelands)

Because of the limited time the player has to conquer the other chaos factions before the AI takes control of Chaos Undivided? That will need playtesting to find the right challenge level for the wastes.

[Kahvipannu]

Yes, that reason I was thinking too. What difficulty setting are you balancing the mod for by the way?

[Reiksfart]

Yes, that reason I was thinking too. What difficulty setting are you balancing the mod for by the way?

Everything has been balanced around medium difficulty, and will continue that setting for the campaign testing.

[Kahvipannu]

Happy to hear that, gives option to rank up or lower the difficulty.

[Fedual]

will this be compatible with Rage of the Dark Gods installation by Gigantus? or wont it matter if we use that one or the normal one

because the normal installation from the russian forum does not work for me on my new computer
(its been a looooong testing by gigantus to try and figure out what was wrong but we solved it by using his installation instead)

[Reiksfart]

Yes, everything is based on the latest Gigantus version and latest English voices add on by Galloper.

[Fedual]

Yes, everything is based on the latest Gigantus version and latest English voices add on by Galloper.

very good

Regards, Fedual

[konstar]

Hei Reiksfart. I dont know if i ask a stupid question with that, but i wanted to ask if u have something like a release date for this submod. i look at it since a lot of month know and i think u have finished a whole lot of stuff for it.
and by the way, if u need someone to test your mod.. it would be a honor for me

[Reiksfart]

I really don't want to suggest any dates because I don't want the pressure to hit that deadline. There is an end in sight to a test version being ready, which has given me more drive to work on it every chance I get. I'm currently finishing up the EDU, there was quite a lot I had not done previously, mostly coding merc generals, and I've been adding more hero/lord level characters in and updating the campaign script as I go.

So a test campaign isn't very far off. Will take longer to actually finish the submod. I still have a lot of plans for models and scripts, such as a new invasion at around turn 150 to keep the campaign going rather than just mopping up after the chaos invasion is repelled. All that can be added with patches.

[GreatSword]

What is the consensus on rebel/slave starting armies? Should they be a tough nut to crack and be a challenge to your initial starting armies, or generally a walkover and little more than speed bumps in the start of game land grabbing? I'm leaning towards tough nuts to crack with varied and challenging garrison armies, but have yet to code or test it.



That's where we'll have to disagree. There was almost nothing I felt was right about vanilla CoW when basing it upon tabletop performance. Also, in my opinion, one faction can't be right if any of the others are not. If you fix the other faction, then that effects the others performance. Endless cycle.

When I have next battle test version ready will let you know Greatsword, if you were interested in testing and giving quality feedback.

Sounds good to me, I'd love to test it out, and also if it gets overwhelming , let me know and whatever actual modding you need help with, i'll find out how to do it.
You are probibly correct about hardly any units being accurate, I think I had a more forgiving stance and only noticed the most outrageous discrepancies.
As far as rebel armies, I'd like to throw in there a suggestion of a mix of easy/insane stacks. There are certain cities/castles on the map that are more valuable, more strategic, and more fought over than the others. These should be incredibly tough. Because no matter how strong, A single AI army in a town will not pose a huge challenge, unless of course, you stack it full of chaos trolls!

[konstar]

Thank u for your answer reiksfart! I look forward awaiting your mod patiently

Dont forget me in your testinphase

[Reiksfart]

Because no matter how strong, A single AI army in a town will not pose a huge challenge, unless of course, you stack it full of chaos trolls!

That's the type of 'difficulty' I've moved away from with this campaign. Everything is balanced, 'realistic' and thought out armies, which are a far more fun challenge. Not to say there aren't a few oddities, like the scripted Doombull general heading an army of minotaurs, chaos hounds and a unit of chaos undivided giants, which add an element of 'wtf', but the majority are more 'real' armies. No cheap difficulty here, which is why everything battle oriented has been re-worked to tabletop balance levels.

[dowdpride]

that sounds beyond painful.