The Journey to 1.6

[Walrusjones]

Hello all. Walrus here just pointing out that I just lost about an hour of work on AOC compatibility due to a... Software crash.... Of my file editing...

As such, I decided to take a quick break of some of the ideas I have been having regarding the 1.6 update, and some of the other minor changes that you may end up seeing.

Trimming the White Huns:
Flavorwise, the White Huns have incredible potential... The issue is that every reasonably unique cavalry unit from the base Huns ended up in their roster. This means that leaving them with the full CA granted roster would.... Uhh... Leave them in a unbalanceable state.

Fortunately, I have the power to trim them in a way that makes their flavor more apparent, and their balance considerably better.

Mounted Infantry:

There is some work being done on figuring out how to make mounted units that are suppose to fight on foot work well with the AI. If we can do this, expect a lot of units to be set up in this format, especially on the alans... And eventually on the nordic factions.

Ride to the fight, but fight on foot. Sounds fun?

Unit renaming:

Recently, I have gotten a surprising number of complaints about units that play well, and fit in their roster... But should clearly be a totally different flavor of unit because of their names....

I thought long and hard as to what the proper approach to handling these units... I eventually decided on a solution. Rather then tearing up hundreds of hours of unit balancing efforts to make units fit their names, I would be changing units names to fit their roles, as I have generally always focused more on functionality then appearances, but I will do my best to keep flavor high regardless. (Or just changing the unit names that are kinda booring.)

Germanic noble swordsmen became "Shield Brethren," Alani Shock Cavalry became "Young Lances," ETC ETC.

I would love to hear what you think of this, especially suggestions for replacing some of the less flavorful names in the base game.

On the Age of Charlemagne:

Expect alterations to the AOC campaign to be a feature that comes around in the later 1.6.x versions. As of right now, I feel it is solid enough for me to hold off on revamping this one campaign until everything else is in good condition...
Expect the submod support for AOC to be good, regardless. Dynamic garrisons, and the Scavenging submod will be the first parts of tuskmod to effect AOC.

On HP standardization:

It definitely is staying for the standard AOC campaign. While I have considered this as a feature for the tuskmod grand campaign, no definitive plans are in place yet. If I did start standardizing HP, it would almost certainly be in an experimental submod.

Experimental changes making it live:

Expect the rebalancing of pikes, shock infantry, heavy spears, and the like to make it into the live version at 1.6.-1.

In addition to this, the fix for units calling out as unit classes that are clearly not their own will also be making it in. (No more cohors talking about being spearmen.)

Some battle AI fixes will also be included, including the most basic modifications to how the AI constructs its formations.