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iOS, X360, PS3, PC and Android. Historical role playing strategy game set during the hundred years war.

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IainMcNeil
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Post by IainMcNeil »

Thanks for feedback

- Option to turn of banners.
- Option to turn of the flankinglights etc. (could not find these in the options menu) >>> It is in the options. Turn of the battle feedback - bottom button on options.
- Option for increasing mouse zoomspeed
- Real banner carriers added to squads (As in the XIII series)
- An increased squad-size (not that much needed though) >>> This is not really possible - they have to fit on the tile and no more men would fit without looking too closely packed.
- Country and region borders in strat map, giving you a clearer view of where you have already conquered and to see your progression. >>> You never really conquer anywhere. Battles can occur anywhere as the concept of front lines does not really exist.
- Ability to name squads and characters.
- Ability to swap your squad order in the army camp (Did not find that already at least) so you can group your squad types. (archers with archers, spears with spears etc.) This would make it easier to manage your army.
- I would like to see more stats for each unit ingame. Every unit has got vast amount of stats, but you cannot see them ingame. That is a shame I think. >>> I'm not sure how we would do this - as you say there are a lot of stats. Ideas welcome.
- An advanced option for taking casualties with you to the next battle unless you replennish them at the cost of some gold.
- Limited arrows >>> I'm really against this. It means UI to show it, behaviour to change when they are out. Lots of balancing required not to break the game as well. I just dont find it a fun addition to gameplay.
comradep
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Post by comradep »

As for more stats: how about a visible morale indicator, described as a number between 1 and 100 where up to 33 is routed, 33-66 is shaken and the rest is normal. Or any other indicator of morale. I find myself wasting cards on units, as their morale doesn't increase one level when I use them and I find myself wondering how much the morale increased.

Another option would be to have the morale cards simply increase morale by 1 level (which I thought they did, but they don't).

A specific description of effectiveness vs dismounted knights would be nice, currently, you can only check that by hovering over specific skills.
adherbal
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Post by adherbal »

As for more stats: how about a visible morale indicator, described as a number between 1 and 100 where up to 33 is routed, 33-66 is shaken and the rest is normal.
Isn't this what the purple bars display or do you mean something else?
A specific description of effectiveness vs dismounted knights
Isn't it the same as effectiveness VS infantry? Atleast I believe it was supposed to be.
IainMcNeil
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Post by IainMcNeil »

Yes dismounted knights are just infantry with heavy armour. The amount of armour varies unit by unit depending on their equipment so it's nto really something we can feedback to the player in any sensible way. The problem is the UI would not know what question you were asking and to cover all the bases you'd need mountains of info which would become unuseable.
comradep
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Post by comradep »

Certain skills (such as Slipping the Point, I believe) give a bonus vs dismounted cavalry , specifically naming them as such, not as infantry. I would like to see a statistic to show how good my forces are versus those troops. Perhaps a "anti-dismounted cavalry" category could be added to the anti infantry and anti cavalry strength indicators in the army management screen.

During my playthrough of the English campaign, my infantry units with swords were good on paper but couldn't do anything against dismounted knights. I'd like to see a statistic which allows me to, at a glance, see how good my units are versus that category of units.
Isn't this what the purple bars display or do you mean something else?
The bar gives an indication of morale, but I'd like to see a numerical value expressed somewhere in the UI, perhaps covering the middle of the bar, which would allow for a much clearer description for the morale boosting cards, as the cards could indicate the number of morale points recovered by using it. Currently, using morale boosting cards isn't as effective as it could be as it gives me virtually no indication of whether my units will go up a morale level, thus making the card useful, instead of just remaining shaken or routed.


The other option would be to make sure the cards increase morale by 1 level (routed to shaken, shaken to normal).
IainMcNeil
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Post by IainMcNeil »

Dismounted knights are the same as far as Infantry unless there is a bug. Are you sure slipping the point does not specify both types?

Cards cannot always raise a morale level because routed untis can never rally from shaken and steady units need to get some benefit from it.

Adding numbers would clutter the UI in my opinion - you rarely would want to see them and there would be no way to turn them on/off. We could mark the bar so you can see where you would change morale levels. This might be a more elegant solution to the problem.
comradep
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Post by comradep »

Dismounted knights are the same as far as Infantry unless there is a bug. Are you sure slipping the point does not specify both types?
I believe it also gives bonuses for regular infantry, but there were some other skills too, I'll have to check the game, which can take a while as I might have to unlock some of the skills.

In any case, if dismounted cavalry is the same thing as infantry as far as the game is concerned, it might be a good idea to simply remove the information about what kind of bonus a skill gives against dismounted cavalry from the overview, as it doesn't seem to have a purpose currently (as in: you're saying they're the same thing as infantry, even though some skills seem to think they're not).
We could mark the bar so you can see where you would change morale levels. This might be a more elegant solution to the problem.
That would be a good solution.

The main issue is that the bonuses/penalties the cards give for morale are not clear enough, so if I can see where, roughly, I would change morale levels, that would help quite a lot, although I would still not be sure what would happen when I used both a Starvation and a Bad Omen card, one raising and one lowering morale.
IainMcNeil
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Post by IainMcNeil »

The problem is the system does not know that Dismounted cavalry and infantry are the same. We are trying to make the game entirely data driven so that modders can completely change it all and in some places it means you see slightly odd thigns like this. I think the ciompromise is worth it and you'll see some very cool mods.

I've added the morale bar issue to the wish list for a patch.
comradep
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Post by comradep »

So, just to get this straightened out, the bonus on attack vs dismounted cavalry is basically a bonus vs attack against >any< infantry?

BTW: I just checked the ladder, zachanscom has managed to inflict 255 casualties for every victory, and about 168 casualties per battle. The numbers for direwolf, longstreet and me are much lower. I'm sure it's all legit, but compared to the rest of the list it does stand out as a very, very high number. The only way to achieve 255 casualties per victory that I can think of currently is to box in every enemy unit and kill it entirely.
adherbal
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Post by adherbal »

He's probably modding the game. The ladder would probably make more sense if it only registered official scenarios played on normal difficulty. Not sure how the game would distinguish official from modded scenarios/data though.
So, just to get this straightened out, the bonus on attack vs dismounted cavalry is basically a bonus vs attack against >any< infantry?
Infantry and Dismounted are 2 different unit types, but all bonuses from skills and weapons against them should be identical. If they are not than that's a data bug.
comradep
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Post by comradep »

OK, now you've only added to the confusion adherbal :)

Iain says:
the system does not know that Dismounted cavalry and infantry are the same.
And now you say:
Infantry and Dismounted are 2 different unit types
, but that stat bonuses against them should apply to both categories.

One more try: Infantry and Dismounted Cavalry are different categories as far as the game is concerned (which makes sense, as you need to be able to give them their horses back), but the stat bonuses that apply to one also work against the other, because in essence they're all just infantry?
zachanscom
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Post by zachanscom »

comradep wrote:So, just to get this straightened out, the bonus on attack vs dismounted cavalry is basically a bonus vs attack against >any< infantry?

BTW: I just checked the ladder, zachanscom has managed to inflict 255 casualties for every victory, and about 168 casualties per battle. The numbers for direwolf, longstreet and me are much lower. I'm sure it's all legit, but compared to the rest of the list it does stand out as a very, very high number. The only way to achieve 255 casualties per victory that I can think of currently is to box in every enemy unit and kill it entirely.
it surprised me as well. i do mod the game, and often test it, that's why i have so many games.

not sure why i get so high casualty, i try to box them in, but often the weaker units will still rout.

edit: there was a period that i increase morale, maybe that's why.
adherbal
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Post by adherbal »

One more try: Infantry and Dismounted Cavalry are different categories as far as the game is concerned (which makes sense, as you need to be able to give them their horses back), but the stat bonuses that apply to one also work against the other, because in essence they're all just infantry?
The bonuses CAN be different because they are different unit types in the game but SHOULD be identical because in reality they're both infantry. In other words if a skill boosts attack VS infantry +5 it should also be set to boost attack VS dismounted +5. If it's not set up like that than that's a bug. Since the bonuses should be identical there should be no reason to ever mention both attack VS infantry and VS dismounted. As far as the player is concerned, dismounted cavalry = infantry.

IIRC some skills can only be learned by dismounted cavalry though, but that's a different matter.
DeathBunny
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Post by DeathBunny »

Like the game so far.

A couple nits to pick though. 1) Many of the battlemaps are very constrained_1 step left/right => contact; does not leave much in the way of tactical options; 2) Do archers or cavalry ever do what you tell them? Order archers to fire on x unit (usually an opposing missile unit)_uhm...no, we think we'll shoot at this unit instead Argh! :p Cavalry just seem unable to pass by anything w/o stopping to say hello; ok, medieval cavalry was not renowned for following orders but is this tied to their default aggression or unit type?

Thank you for an enjoyable game!
efr33t
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Post by efr33t »

Enjoying the game so far. Playing through on hard with no free healing, quite challenging but fun. Some questions/comments:

Information:
- Need more info on what all the stats are!
--- What are the formulas for armor, damage, attack/defense? Hard to choose upgrades and weapons without knowing these.
--- How does ranged damage of arrows relate to armor?
--- What is the formula for gaining experience?
- Relatedly, it would be GREAT to have info about the current state of an ally/enemy unit's stats. For example, mousing over a unit should show you its current stats taking into account the terrain, morale, flanking, etc. You could either make this an optional view or only have it appear after a second or two of hovering if you're worried about overloading players who don't want to see it.
- Ideally you'd also be able to see how your stats would change based on who you attack and which terrain you go into. I.e., if you select one of your units the detailed stats view would change based on what terrain/enemy you're currently mousing over.

Gameplay
- Admittedly I am playing on hard/no free healing, but I find that even with minimal losses all the money I won goes to healing. This means I have to grind the peasant massacre level in order to get gold, which gets tiring very quickly. Some options include: a) increasing the amount of gold given for no free healing mode, b) reducing the amount of gold needed for healing, or c) at least put in another gold grinding level to break the monotony :)
- The radial menu is rather tiresome when trying to switch weapons for a lot of your army. At least put in a keyboard/mouse shortcut for going back a level (right click?). Having armor/weapon packages you can easily apply to your units would be a nice to have.

Ok I realize this is becoming a long post, will stop for now :)
IainMcNeil
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Post by IainMcNeil »

Thanks foer the feedback - when equipping lots of units you should stay inside the weapon wheel and click the arrow to next/last unit - not back up and down the wheel menu. Much quicker!

Difficulty has not been balanced for the normal campaigns in blood mode. It really is intended for campaigns that were built for it like the "Honourable Knight". It's easy to create new campaigns so others may pop up when people start modding.
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Post by pipfromslitherine »

To agree with Iain, Blood mode is going to make things very tricky indeed on the standard campaigns! Especially if you already are playing on hard! :)

But I guess you'll be thankful I didn't decide to have squads which are reduced to zero men vanish from your army along with all their equipment ;)

Cheers

Pip
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Post by lordzimoa »

Some cool fan screenshots and feedback, thanks to Destraex. :wink:
This game keeps me coming back. I just love collecting the armour and weapons while customising my units and colours.
I just fought the battle of Poiters and earned as a result lances and half plate/half mail.

This game is just great when you have a spare 15minutes for a quick battle or just a bit of time upgrading your army skills etc in the army manager.

Shiny Half Plate... mmmmmmm

I think one of the reasons i like this game so much is that the men really do look like what you would expect historically.

Those Frenchies were everywhere! Next time I will be playing a campaign in blood mode..... so I will be more worried about losing good men.
Image

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Cheers,

Tim aka LZ
efr33t
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Post by efr33t »

Thanks for the ring tip, very useful!

I also found some of the formulas in the system.txt file for attack/defense. Does it work something like this:
- Check attack-defense to see if a hit is generated (~50% base, 5% bonus/penalty for each difference between attack-defense)
- If a hit, check to see if a kill is generated (~30% base chance)

How does armor and damage factor into this?
How does the number of units factor in? E.g., a general vs. peasants, does the general get 8 chances to hit vs. 32 for the peasants?

Finally, I'm trying to play this on both my laptop when I'm away from home and on my more powerful desktop when at home. Is there a way to copy my campaign save across the two? Tried looking through all the files but didn't see anything relevant.

thanks!
IainMcNeil
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Post by IainMcNeil »

Save games are in MyDocs\GBM
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