- shalcar
- Oct 21, 2009
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At my signal, DEAL WITH IT.
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Taco Defender
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The new Steel and Statecraft patch for Thrones of Britannia is out:
https://www.totalwar.com/blog/the-steel-statecraft-update-patch-notes
Patch notes for those on mobile or at work:
quote:
The top highlights of the update were revealed in a blog post last week but, just in case you missed it, we’ve repeated that information below along with many additional tweaks, fixes and improvements.
Important Notes
“No save games were harmed in the making of this patch!”
Feel free to start a new campaign or pick up one of your saved games, it won’t break with the patch. However, please make sure you don’t have any mods enabled, otherwise compatibility cannot be guaranteed.
(However, if you do wish to continue using the current version of the game for your mods, you can do so by right clicking Thrones of Britannia in your Steam library, selecting Properties and then Betas and choosing the allegiance_patch option in the drop-down menu)
Mac and Linux
The Steel and Statecraft Update has been deployed today for PC. The update is also being developed by Feral Interactive for the Mac and Linux versions of the game. We’ll update you on the deployment date for that as soon as it’s confirmed.
Estates Overhaul
The purpose of Estates was to add challenges in managing a kingdom where each noble is playing the game of intrigue, looking to grab more power and land for themselves. However, the system didn’t have as much impact as we’d have liked, which is why Estates have received a rework to better represent a king granting land to his more important lords, thus ensuring their devotion to the crown. With the power of land ownership comes a responsibility for the owner to properly tend to his holdings – each Estate will offer a positive effect if given to the proper lord, or a negative one if the noble is not suited to presiding over such lands.
The nobles in turn do not sit idly, hoping for deeds to fall in their lap. The Estate Desire traits, which characters previously gained, have been replaced with requests, directed towards the crown in the form of missions. Every so often a lord in your faction will ask to be granted Estates, offering a reward in return. But if you deem the noble ineligible or sense malicious intent, and you ignore their request, their loyalty will start to waiver.
We’ve added more weight to managing your Estates, and to help with that we’ve reorganized the Estates interface. Each lord will list the effects that they provide from Estates they own. Moving Estates around has been made easier – clicking on an Estate will grant it to the selected character on the left. Beware, however, of dealing with Estates that are not in the king’s possession – nobles are quite attached to their lands and will rarely part with them without repercussions.
Traits
Traits depict the story of each character; their upbringing, their personality and the events that have occurred in their lifetime. Sifting through each character’s history can be cumbersome, which is why we’ve stacked traits into groups. Each trait group is now represented by a banner, with all effects of the traits within listed underneath. Clicking on a banner will list all traits within that group, giving a detailed account of the noble’s qualities.
As mentioned previously, each trait group will list how it affects a character’s Estates. The group with the most traits will be marked with a large yellow icon, showing the lord’s dominant characteristics and what effects they grant to the noble’s land ownership.
Recruitment Revamp
Recruitment in Thrones of Britannia is chance based, similar to the way in which mercenaries worked in previous titles. While it’s an interesting challenge to build armies with imperfect composition and size, it has downsides too, such as elite units appearing scarcely, and losing your painstakingly assembled army can be a devastating blow to your campaign.
We’ve replaced this chance-based system with cooldowns. When a unit type is recruited, there’s now a set number of turns before another becomes available. This retains the sense of choice limitation, but rewards planning and removes the random punishment of not having enough units simply because they didn’t appear in the recruitment pool.
The time it takes to build a full army can be lengthy, so recruitment events have been added, granting a quick supply of units to help with defending territories, or adding a helpful push to your conquering.
Buildings, technologies and faction mechanics have all received new effects to improve the recruitment times of units. We’ve also eased the unlock requirements of military technologies, to make meaningful choices in army management more accessible.
General patch notes
Politics
Political Difficulty Slider
For more challenge or to avoid meddling in politics too much, players now have the option to adjust the political difficulty of the game (separately from Campaign and Battle difficulty).
Secure Loyalty Tweaks
We’ve rebalanced the existing secure loyalty dilemmas and added a few new ones.
The system will now take into account the political power (Influence and Loyalty) of the target character and give the player an appropriate set of choices.
‘Torture’ is no longer the go-to way to express appreciation to highly loyal, long-time battle-brethren!
Buildings
Alternative Building Paths
Players now have the option to specialise their villages in one of two directions.
All village buildings have been updated to branch out right at the beginning (level 2) rather than at their last level. The old building paths have been left unchanged (save for some balance tweaks), to make it easier for existing players.
New building icons have been added to represent buildings with dual sources of income (e.g. CHURCH/COMMERCE).
Balance Changes
The effects of certain buildings have been tweaked to make each building a viable choice.
Church Crafts building now grant a bonus to income from LEAD villages.
Church Crafts now grants income (CHURCH), instead of modifying it.
Round Tower has been buffed to have half the maintenance cost and twice the buff to income (CHURCH).
Bullaun’s public order buff has been doubled.
Book of Traits (Trait Browser)
With the added importance of character traits, we believe there is more purpose to managing your characters, seeking their best development. All traits present in the game are now listed in the Book of Traits along with the condition of their acquisition.
The details of a trait will be locked until the player acquires that trait for the first time. (We still want players to experiment and discover traits on their own, but unlocked trait information will now be readily available)
The Book of Traits is persistent between campaigns, allowing players to hunt for a specific trait in a later playthrough.
Environment
New Major Settlement Maps
Map 1 – based on Bebbanburg Castle (used in-game for Bebbanburg and Eidenburg)
Map 2 – based on Rock of Cashel (used in-game for Caisil and Grianán Aileach)
New Viking and Anglo-Saxon Buildings
All settlement maps (both major ones and villages) have been updated to include new buildings.
Viking Gatehouse
Viking Long Hall
Viking Turf-roof Hall
Viking Drinking Hall
Viking House 1
Viking House 2
Viking House 3
Viking House 4
Anglo-Saxon Chieftains House
Anglo-Saxon Great Hall (under construction)
Texture Updates
Old roman fortifications now have unique textures that properly represents the building materials and techniques used for their construction and repairs.
Battle
General Attributes in Custom Battles
Players can now increase the attributes of their general (Command and Zeal) in custom battles. This costs army funds, not unlike experience upgrades of units.
The general’s ability is now chosen from a drop-down menu.
This addresses the issue of bodyguard units being too small in size and weak (in Thrones of Britannia bodyguard unit-size scales with Command).
Battle AI Improvements
Defending AI in sieges improved to respond better to attackers.
Improved unit selection and prioritization on walls to favour missile units when fortified position is not under threat.
Improved unit allocation to threatened sections of walls and breaches to favour heavy infantry.
Updated siege equipment and wall gap pathfinding.
Performance Optimization
Improved the general performance in battles, especially during sieges
Unit ‘stutter’ decreased significantly.
Visual Enhancements
Added ocean shader foam and edge
Added (optional) vignette and film grain post processing effects
Added (optional) god ray effects
UI Improvements
Governors and Estates
This window has been redesigned to make it easier to use. Simply select a character and then the Estate/province you want them to have.
Notifications
The notification system UI has been redesigned to improve its readability and ease of use.
The notifications are now located at the bottom right corner and can be ‘snoozed’, hiding them completely until they are needed again.
Miscellaneous
There’s now a large faction emblem present on the screen which opens the ‘Faction’ window. (similar to how it works in Rome 2). The old Faction button now simply redirects to the ‘Family Tree’ tab.
All missions now have a ‘Zoom to location’ functionality, giving players a more detailed information about the target.
The art element used for armies on the campaign map has been tweaked slightly to make armies a bit easier to distinguish from settlements.
Players can now choose to minimize the window with an overlay option that appears when the Space key is pressed, so it doesn’t block their view on the battlefield.
During battles, there’s now an alert when the model count of the general’s bodyguard unit falls below 40% (which makes the general himself vulnerable).
Shield Castle now properly articulates that units in this stance tire at reduced rate.
Mod Support
The Recruitment window can now accommodate any number of custom units (with a scroll-bar).
Retail pack files now contain exported binaries for all basic UI components, in addition to the already existing composite templates.
Other Changes
Inactive Achievements
Fixed certain achievements that become unobtainable with the Allegiance Update.
Stone of Destiny Missions
Rewards increased significantly.
Other Fixes
The unit cards of Northumbrian Mailed Thegns and Northumbrian Thegns have been swapped around.
Fixed an UI issue where the game didn’t properly display the name of the selected map in the custom battle lobby.
Fixed various UI issues with window priority which resulted in soft lock.
Adjustments have been made to the scripted declarations of war from the AI. We’ve balanced the weight of the different factors that lead to a war, so that it is more contextual and relevant to the current state of the campaign.
Fixed Hadrian wall ‘holes’ in some of the wall components.
Fixed several issues with misalignment of houses, fences, and gates in battle maps.
All missions now properly specify their target.
Fixed a UI issue with the Food bar not displaying its effect properly.
Fixed issues with Decrees not applying their effects properly.
Fixed an issue where the adoption of faction leaders caused their family tree to merge with the player’s.
Fixed an issue with the main menu disappearing after leaving a multiplayer lobby.
Fixed a crash related to the disbanding of armies and replacing a general.
Another nice little bit of polish for ToB. The choice for each village building is nice and are interesting, while the recruitment changes look like they make what was already an excellent system into an even better one.
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Dec 18, 2018 16:15
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Apr 26, 2024 10:41
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- shalcar
- Oct 21, 2009
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At my signal, DEAL WITH IT.
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Taco Defender
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I've been playing Shogun 2 a lot recently and I've got Taiko Shuffle permanently embedded in my brain.
Jeff van Dyck is a musical genius. The entire soundtrack is on point.
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Dec 19, 2019 15:21
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- shalcar
- Oct 21, 2009
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At my signal, DEAL WITH IT.
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Taco Defender
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Yeah I got 40 minutes into Shogun 2 before finding myself trapped on an island and completely lost on what to do next.
Life as Chosokabe in a nutshell. Long story short, build some boats, slam a stack on them and invade the Shimazu to the west. Or if there are some easy target one/two province minors to the north, invade those and spread out from it. You just need to take a beachhead and work from there.
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Apr 29, 2020 16:19
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- shalcar
- Oct 21, 2009
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At my signal, DEAL WITH IT.
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Taco Defender
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You understand that "as effective as it looks" is virtually meaningless, right? I'd just like some actual numbers to work with.
Based on my incredibly scientific test of an archer unit in loose vs an archer unit in standard, the outcome is 30/120 remaining vs 53/120 remaining of the loose formation with all arrows expended. That would be a total of 67 kills vs 90 kills or a reduction in damage of ~25%.
This test was done on flat ground with a front on facing, but since as Fangz points out there are a bunch of confounding variables it's not anywhere near hard and fast.
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Mar 29, 2021 16:31
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- shalcar
- Oct 21, 2009
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At my signal, DEAL WITH IT.
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Taco Defender
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See, that's good. Personally, I'd rather have the same 16 units (say, roman archers) firing at... 4 hastati - two in loose formation, two in regular formation... and just for kicks, both are forward facing towards the archers, but in different directions - i.e, two archers are back to back, each firing at a unit facing them. Don't know it that changes anything, but just in case. Same deal for 4 velites, 4 equites, 4 legionary cohorts.
(But of course, that requires a multiplayer partner, so that all these units just stand and place and soak up ammo, which is why I'm asking for one)
Record the results, then try the same when shooting into the back, left side, right side. (Compare shielded and unshielded units). See if drawing a unit out into a very thin line but without turning loose formation on changes anything versus a relatively packed square. See how much of a difference different heights or ranges do as far as accuracy and damage are concerned.
Then move on to checking out what wedge formation or testudo do. Just take an hour to test things out.
God knows I run enough tests and theorycraft Total War games to within an inch of their lives but... why?
What would knowing this to anything more than the most basic degree change about your tactics or battle plan? Just about everything you want to test you could say the answer to because these are all emergent properties of the system. The game has model collision, so shields do best from the side that they occupy the most area (the front), doing little from the sides and nothing from the back. You were already going to point the shields towards the enemy, so it's really just is it worth changing facing if enemy ranged units are flanking you and the answer is no because any models you save from dying won't matter because you will still lose the melee fight if it's a flank charge.
Thin lines take less ranged damage than thick blocks but they turn much slower to deal with flanking threats and don't have the depth to stop cavalry where a thick block might. Loose thin units take less damage again but are even worse at dealing with cavalry or rotating and like thin units it's a trade-off between survivability and volume of fire which will depend entirely on the battlefield situation.
Height is good, you want it, but you typically don't get to choose if you have it. Closer is better for accuracy but that's true of your opponent as well so you need to weigh up what's the best in your current situation.
Wedge changes the formation shape and allows the models to push enemy models out of the way to ensure the most models are able to attack during the charge bonus duration. Since this is based on model displacement, it's very effective on charging heavy cavalry and absolutely useless on cavalry that hasn't got up to speed. Testudo just changes where the units put their shields (front, sides and top) which changes the area a projectile would need to hit to do damage in exchange for severely reducing the speed and manoeuvrability of the unit.
With the exception of height, all of these are emergent properties, not modifiers so everything is really going to boil down to the exact situation you are in.
To quote a better poster:
There are no numbers. It doesn't change any values at all. All the effect is in the literal dispersal of troops resulting in less chance for the projectiles to hit a model.
I guess if you are coming from Total Warhammer/Three Kingdoms and everything being statistic modifiers then you might not realise that the older engines were pretty heavy on the simulation aspect and didn't really do modifiers, in which case I apologise for being snippy.
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Mar 29, 2021 18:06
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- shalcar
- Oct 21, 2009
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At my signal, DEAL WITH IT.
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Taco Defender
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How is troy total war? I'm finally all warhammered out and have been thinking of trying out shogun 2 again. It seems like a lot of people have been getting into it and I've been looking at mods for it to revitalize it.
Edit: I see this has been asked recently. Instead I'll ask what's better, a massive rice surplus of 30ish? Or upgrading my markets. I've been toying with trying to get every single town growth upgrade possible to become super rich but it seems I should focus on military tech more.
Depends on your game state, I did a bunch of modelling in my S2 LP here:
Shogun 2 Economic Analysis Part 1 - Overview
Shogun 2 Economic Analysis Part 2 - Farming
Shogun 2 Economic Analysis Part 3 - Markets
Shogun 2 Economic Analysis Part 4 - Other Economic Buildings
The long and the short of it is though, that before about turn 60ish you want to upgrade those markets as hard as you can in Metsuke provinces and in non-Metsuke provinces before ~turn 30. If you capture a fort that's already upgraded your market is free money so slam that in that as hard as you can (Since you can never get the food back, so it's a sunk cost so you may as well get some money for that sunk cost!).
Improved Irrigation is always a priority no matter the fertility, Terrace Farming is worth it if you expect the game to go more than 30 turns and Land Consolidation is a good way to turn money into food but a very poor way to turn money into money needing the game to go more than 50(!) turns before break even.
Growth feels very attractive because it scales into infinity but you don't have infinite turns and it's rear loaded in a game where front end loading lets you get the troops that gets you the land that can improve the value of growth. Better troops means you can conquer more or conquer the same while spending less on upkeep but it's a hidden benefit that feels tricky to quantify while growth = number always goes up feels really nice.
e: The golden rule of Shogun 2 is to always have Metsuke in your 5 richest towns. Always.
shalcar fucked around with this message at 09:56 on Aug 27, 2021
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Aug 27, 2021 09:46
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Apr 26, 2024 10:41
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- shalcar
- Oct 21, 2009
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At my signal, DEAL WITH IT.
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Taco Defender
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With the Total War series on sale for the next few days, I was wondering what DLC's would be good to get for Three Kingdoms if I just want to play the RoTK campaign. The DLC's look like they add a bunch of new start dates which I'm not really interested in and I was wondering which ones add content to the main campaign and are worth it.
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Sep 27, 2021 11:53
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Dec 18, 2018 16:15
