Updated Story

The conflict beyond the southern desert that has been forcing waves of refugees northward has finally reached the borders of Calradia. Warbands flying an unknown flag have been spotted in the hills around Shariz and are moving north. While they don't appear to compose an organized fighting force the faces of wide-eyed travelers lucky enough to escape their onslaught tell the whole tale. Many a sleepless night plagues Lords and peasants alike as the region braces itself for confrontation with an unknown invader.


Expanded Troop Trees

Complete troop trees can now be viewed in the TROOP_TREES.htm file that will be in the folder you download.

An additional 2-3 tiers has been added to all of the faction troops. The first upgrade will be to about level 30ish and will consolidate the arms/armor to a single (usually best) option from amongst the item pool the unit previously used giving the unit a more uniform appearance. The 2nd upgrade will put the unit around level 40. Additionally each faction will have a single signature unit with a level 50(ish) version. Each faction will have their level 50 version built around a specific weapon/troop type:

Swadian: Heavy Calvary
Vaegir: Bow
Khergit: Light Calvary
Nord: 1H/Shield
Rhodok: Crossbow
Sarranid: Thrown
Northern: 2H
Southern: Polearm

Practically the difference between a level 40 and level 50 version is mostly hit points, obviously the goal isn't to make the level 50 versions that can run through everything else on the map, but nonetheless make them a solid desirable upgrade.

The two basic aims are to create an environment where a long-term commitment to building an army pays off with better troops, and where the costs/benefits of upgrading a unit comes into play at the higher levels. Ideally a level 50 version of a Swadian Knight will be an expensive unit, even in the later parts of the game. New level 30-50 troops will NOT be recruit-able in taverns. Established Lords and Kings have been sure to give those legendary warriors the golden handcuffs so to speak. However this will likely create some oddities where a level 30 version may be slightly cheaper to maintain than the level 27 version of the same unit.

In addition to to the vertical expansion many of the factions will receive a new troop type or two. At this point here's what's planned:

Khergit: Bow/Infantry - Khergit Bow/Arrows, with Lancer-like armor/armament.
Nord: Light Calvary - Big Huscarl on a little horse.
Rhodok: Separate Spear/Infantry trees - Pike/Sword or Sword/Shield.
Sarranid: Javelin Calvary - Sarranid Horse w/ throwing spears & melee weapon.

Permanent Injury

An altering of the script already in the game. There will be 50% chance of triggering on defeat, modified by the players luck, and current stat penalties will remain in place. Falling in combat and losing frequently is best avoided.

Blunt Ranged Weapons

This has a practical purpose as much as anything. In a mod where so many units are primarily obtained by combat and capture, facilitating this a little seemed like a good idea. All weapons will be relatively weak. Added weapons with units using them:

Sleeper Darts - 30B x6 - New Sarranid calvary will carry some.
Midnight Crossbow/Bolts - 40B/ +1B x30 - high level Sword Sisters will carry.
Kidnapper's Bow/Arrows - 17B/ +1B x30 - Male Kinaga calvary units.

In addition all items will be for sale at the arms merchants. New Bow/Crossbows will work with normal ammo as well, and the new ammo will work with the standard weapons, however using a new weapon with new ammo will be the only way to be certain your damage done is 100% blunt.

Roving Hordes

The Kinaga warbands from the south will replace the manhunters and should be found throughout the map menacing peasants and caravans. Minimum of about 130 mounted troops, levels 20-50, with maximum size about 3x that. They are fairly slow: fast enough to chase down caravans/peasants (as well as some of the more plodding Lords), but not fast enough to catch an average player group in the open in most cases.

Options menu on contact will be like the Sea Raiders, with no option to bribe them to leave you alone: fight, surrender, or ditch some troops and flee. One warband will spawn around a random town once every 24hrs, with a maximum of 20 warbands active at once.

Cosmetic Improvements

There are various resources out there that offer improve graphics and appearance for the game. Some of these resources are open-use, others are not. Ideally I want to wade through some of these options and find something that takes some the clunkiness out of the mod’s appearance.

At this point I've simply updated the facial textures for men and women, but hope to do more in the not-so-distant future.

Source code

I plan on continuing to keep the source code for the game available as we go forward. Source code is now available in a separate 'Source' folder you should see when you open up the folder you download from here.

Feedback

If you have any thoughts or ideas on the future direction of the mod please feel free to share them. I’ll try to provide updates as I go along as well. Obviously I can't put every idea into the mod, and contradictory things like making the mod both easier and harder present an interesting challenge. I'm also limited by what I can program, and some things are easier than others of course. All that said, a lot of good ideas have come from here, and many suggestions have found their way into the mod over time, so I'm always interested in hearing thoughts on the matter.