Re: Bretonnia, Knights of the Grail v.0.9
 

Thanks for the quick reply. I will give it a go later this week :).

Re: Bretonnia, Knights of the Grail v0.9
 

This mod looks awesome, and I'm trying it for my very next game. My copy of Dom3 had been gathering dust for a while, but it's time to get back into it!

Minor quibble:
Those entries are all of the heroes that I see. Should the Beastmaster be added somewhere, perhaps as a multihero?

Re: Bretonnia, Knights of the Grail v0.9
 

Thanks. Uploaded a new version to fix the issue. (this is why I don't jump to v1.00 right away!)

Re: Bretonnia, Knights of the Grail v.0.91
 

Whoops, was hoping to get this in before your next update. Anyway, here are some typos / changes to awkward wordings. Line numbers are from the 0.90 version, so they may be off by a few vs. 0.91:


Hope you get a chance to plug these in; the mod looks great :)

Re: Bretonnia, Knights of the Grail v.0.91
 

Thanks, you are quite awesome. Expect to see v0.92 before weekend.

Re: Bretonnia, Knights of the Grail v.0.92 - Now with grammar!
 

Okay new version. Hopefully this will be stable one.

I also went ahead and made "Bretonnian Secrets"-file, much like the one I made for dwarfs. It is "hidden" in the graphic folder and explains many of the hidden mechanics of Bretonnia in gameplay terms.

Re: Bretonnia, Knights of the Grail v.0.92 - Now with grammar!
 

Burnsaber, you've done an impressive job in bringing the English language to medieval Britain.

:angel:

Re: Bretonnia, Knights of the Grail v.0.92 - Now with grammar!
 

Eh, Stavis L did all the work. I just implemented it.

Re: Bretonnia, Knights of the Grail v.0.92 - Now with grammar!
 

Heh. I just got Sir Rond of R'donj as a Questing Knight. Naturally, he's my newest Prophet. :)

(Of course, considering the high mortality rate of my prophets, that might not be a good thing....)

Re: Bretonnia, Knights of the Grail v.0.92 - Now with grammar!
 

:D

At least he has a better chance as a prophet than as a random plebe. Maybe.

Re: Bretonnia, Knights of the Grail v.0.92 - Now with grammar!
 

Heh. There are many more contributor names. "Sir Rond of R'donj" is just the most obvious of them.

Re: Bretonnia, Knights of the Grail v.0.92 - Now with grammar!
 

I'm sorry to tell you, but Sir Rond died in battle. Many of my prophets meet such a fate, especially the Bretonnians. Unlike other prophets, the Bretonnians insist on charging into the fray, often ahead of their own troops.

Sir Rond is merely the latest example. He spurred his mighty steed into battle with a mob of ill-mannered barbarians. Sadly, their warhammers managed to knock Sir Rond off of his horse and pound him into tomato paste. Alas, valiant warrior, he met his end too soon....

My newest prophet is Sir Burnsaber the Industrious, a Marquis. I hope that he will last just a little bit longer than the late, lamented Sir Rond.

Re: Bretonnia, Knights of the Grail v.0.92 - Now with grammar!
 

Alrighty, Trumanator gave some feedback in the "Sign of the Hammer" game. I decided to mreply to that stuff in this thread so that other people can comment on it.

Yeah, I can see how the peasant (note however that the archers aren't freespawn, expect as a very rare Lord domsummon) spam could have decimated you since you were playing with a nation that has really sucky recruitable troops, allowing Breton to overwhelm you. However there are many factors at stake here, like Llamabeasts sucky start, lack of gold and so forth. Ultimately, his peasant spam was a sub-optimal stragedy and he lost. I'm not really concerned about a clearly losing stragedy being very unbalancing.

Although you have a point about the summons being a bit problematic. You can easily concentrate on the spam in the beginning and simply overwhelm one player by literally drowning them in chaff. But I really can't see it working in the long-term, it's bit like double blessing EA Oceania in that aspect. You might win in the early game but you will simply be decimated in mid/late game when the chaff doesn't serve any purpose expect cost upkeep and make your armies more vulnerable to "flee kills" with their weak morale.

However, I'd be really intrested to hear more opinions on the matter (which is the balance of the peasant summons in MP).

Re: Bretonnia, Knights of the Grail v.0.92 - Now with grammar!
 

Burnsaber:

Apologies if someone has already mentioned this, but what would you think about bumping the Knights Errant up from their current "poorleader" status (10 troops) to "okleader" (40 troops)? I'm finally starting to play around with Errantry War, and it's bugging me that my commanders can't lead all of their own troops after the combat is over.

Re: Bretonnia, Knights of the Grail v.0.92 - Now with grammar!
 

IIRC, only the footed KE should have poorleader. The mounted one should be okleader. I'll look into it soon.

Re: Bretonnia, Knights of the Grail v.0.92 - Now with grammar!
 

I had the thought, particularly about Brettonia, but also in general for independent knights, etc, that mounted knights might possibly get the ability to dismount, via an application of Shapechange.

Re: Bretonnia, Knights of the Grail v.0.92 - Now with grammar!
 

You could do this, but given that it would be an incomprehensibly poor decision I don't think I would ever use said command. Dismounted knights just build too much fatigue too quickly. You would need to give them more gear than a mounted knight just to keep their fatigue levels from growing too much.

Re: Bretonnia, Knights of the Grail v.0.92 - Now with grammar!
 

I agree with rdonj. Dismounted knights would be possible, certainly -- but not practical. In addition to the Fatigue Factor, there's also the point that lance charges are a big part of why knights are so deadly. The lance charge is even more important for Bretonnia, because the Bretonnian lances have been upgraded over the "standard" lance. Why on Earth would I want to give up my lance charge?

There's also the Mobility Problem. Knights on foot are S-L-O-W. Yuck. I'd much rather keep them on horseback so they can run down fleeing opponents. :D

Lastly, there's a thematicness (is that a word?) problem. Knights on foot are just elite heavy infantry. Yawn.... Dom3 already has a lot of elite heavy infantry. Anyway, Ulm does it better. ;)

Re: Bretonnia, Knights of the Grail v.0.92 - Now with grammar!
 

I just checked the code, and the mounted Knight Errant is a poorleader. No big deal ... I can make the change myself. Thanks for responding, and thanks for making such a fun mod!

Re: Bretonnia, Knights of the Grail v.0.92 - Now with grammar!
 

One thing I noticed in the sign of the hammer game was that Bretonnia is HARD AS NAILS to siege. I'm not sure if this was intended, but with their freespawning of troops I couldn't get anywhere near cracking their walls, even with my own freespawn as Tomb Kings. This doesn't really fit with Bretonnia imo. I mean I get that forts are huge for them and maybe that they should have more of them, but unlike Dwarfs for instance, they shouldn't be so great at digging in behind the walls. I mean they're an agricultural society.

One thing you could try is making peasant level Breton troops animals. That's certainly how the nobles see them anyway.

Re: Bretonnia, Knights of the Grail v.0.92 - Now with grammar!
 

I finally had a chance to modify this mod to make it fit into my super mod and work well with Bogarus.

This mod is a lot of fun. I like the farsummons and the units. The graphics are really nice.

One thing I noticed is that the few mages you do have are very powerful. I think this is supposed to be offset by the high lab costs? Very early in the game a point is reached where the more expensive lab is a trivial matter using standard settings. I play with a gold modifier that is roughly about half the standard, so it did have an effect on my game.

Even though the mages are very powerful, really they are not much different than Tien Chi's mages, so I wouldn't mess with them.

Overall the mod seems fairly balanced to me. Powerful in the early game, evening out later on.

One more thing I noticed is there are several typos in the descriptions. I didn't make note of any specific one, but many of the descriptions I read had misspelled words.

Re: Bretonnia, Knights of the Grail v.0.92 - Now with grammar!
 

Hmm. That's a real problem. First, I'll take a look at their castles and see if I can give them castles that have ridiciliously poor supply and defence values. This should make using freespawn for castle protections hard.

That animal thing would look kind of odd, and make the peasants suspectible to animal awe, but it is an option if I can't tune the castles.

Yeah, Grail Damsels are very powerful, mostly for thematic reasons. Grail Maidens are sort of necessary evil you have to recruit for research, they have poor combat paths and are very expensive researchers.

The high lab cost is mostly to make it hard for Breton to get good research going (afterall, they are quite backwards nation).

Hmm, and I just implemented Stavis's typo fixes. Could you please elaborate?

Re: Bretonnia, Knights of the Grail v.0.92 - Now with grammar!
 

I don't think the fort defence and supply values will make that much difference, the issue is more they're getting free wall repairers spawned within the castle as an economy entirely apart from castles and territory.

I'm thinking of taking freespawn out of skaven in most cases even, because this whole spawn economy just causes too many problems. I'll leave them with spells and allow giant rats to be spawned though.

Re: Bretonnia, Knights of the Grail v.0.92 - Now with grammar!
 

@foodstamp: Couldn't the problem be related to you playing an undead nation? I mean undead suck at seiging, right?

Re: Bretonnia, Knights of the Grail v.0.92 - Now with grammar!
 

I think you meant to reply to me.

The answer is it doesn't matter what the sieging unit is, whether undead or mindless or whatever. That only matters when repairing walls.

See this thread for the full formula courtesy of lch:

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/showthread.php?t=37875

Re: Bretonnia, Knights of the Grail v.0.92 - Now with grammar!
 

Burnsaber - I forgot that the #animal tag does not factor in the siege formula, so there would be no point making peasants animals.

Re: Bretonnia, Knights of the Grail v.0.92 - Now with grammar!
 

Burnsaber:

I will do even better. I will try to list as many as I can find for you.

DISCLAIMER: Some of the corrections I suggest may not apply because of the minor differences in English in Europe.

Mounted Yeoman:
dishonourable ---> dishonorable
Labour --> Labor
manoeuvres ----> maneuvers
Armour ---> Armor

Knight Errant(2756):
Labour --> labor
vigour --> vigor
colourful --> colorful

Grammar: The are out to make a name for themselves, hoping to be granted a fief for their bravery. (The should be They)


Knight Errant (2757):
Honour --> Honor
Same grammar error as Knight Errant

Pegasus Knight:
Pegasii --> Pegasi

Brettonian Pegasus
Same as Pegasus Knight

Yeoman Outrider:
Maneuvers is spelled wrong again


Brettonian Lord:
anough --> enough

Marquis:
neighbour --> neighbor
Knight Errants ---> Knights Errant

Grail Hero:
Pegasii --> pegasi


Grail Maiden:
Magics ---> Magic


Grail Damsel:
Rumour --> Rumor
splendour --> splendor

Lady of the Lake:
Channelling --> Channeling

The Green Knight:
Bastonge --> Bastogne (Unless Bastonge is the proper name in WH?)


The Last Druid:
which allowed him to fend of the Ermorian invaders and build the Kingdom of Bretonnia. (of should be off)

Beastmaster (Should this be Beast Master?):
Pegasii --> Pegasi

Battle Gryphon:
agression --> aggression

Grail Crusade:
judgement --> judgment

Ride the Winds:
suprise --> surprise

Virtue of Nobility:
swordarm --> sword arm

Mist:
Bastonge --> Bastogne

Nation Description:
artefact --> artifact



Those are the ones I have found with a quick glance. I did not list the words that had extra Us like honour etc beyond the first instance because they may be intentional UK spellings.

Also I noticed the scout costs 0 gold. I changed it to 20. Was that intentional, maybe a CBM thing?

I hope that helps!

Re: Bretonnia, Knights of the Grail v.0.92 - Now with grammar!
 

I think #animal does count doesn't it, at least for sieging if not repairing? I remember learning that it counted and realising my years of using Call of the Winds for sieging had been futile.

Re: Bretonnia, Knights of the Grail v.0.92 - Now with grammar!
 

All those listed below are British English spellings. Not 'errors'.

Re: Bretonnia, Knights of the Grail v.0.92 - Now with grammar!
 

Nope, not according to lch. He has been in the code - see the thread I linked to above.

Call of the winds does suck for sieging, but not because they are animals. It's because the small hawks have an intrinsic -1 to their siege score. The entire call of winds has a siege strength of 6. The equivalent of 6 str 10 militia. Note this only applies to sieging - they are great at defending a siege.

Re: Bretonnia, Knights of the Grail v.0.92 - Now with grammar!
 

Where does the -1 come from?

Re: Bretonnia, Knights of the Grail v.0.92 - Now with grammar!
 

It's some sort of siegemalus flag I think - lch described it in the thread as an attribute of the unit.

But as I understand it, it's only coincidental with #animal and no other animals actually have it. So the birds were specifically made rubbish at sieging. The great hawk leading them sieges normally for example, despite also being an animal.

Re: Bretonnia, Knights of the Grail v.0.92 - Now with grammar!
 

ALL of them? I knew most of them were, but some look really wrong like artefact, channelling, manoeuvres. The spellings just look very bizarre to me.

Re: Bretonnia, Knights of the Grail v.0.92 - Now with grammar!
 

Thanks, I picked up those which are not based on the UK/US spelling differences. I wrote descriptions on a word with British language settings, so it fixed always suggested english spellings. I kind of like it, as a sort of reference to the Arthurian myths.

Although I'll keep an eye out for "Armour", since dom3 uses the american spelling for that.

I did to make it consistent with Sombre's WH mods. On about 99% of cases, recruiting a scout from casle is a absolute waste of a commander slot, so I agree with Sombre's view on that national scouts should just cost 0 gold.

That was a big help. Thanks a lot.


And about the siege/freespawn problem, I brainstormed some solutions. Opinions are welcome:

1) Make the freespawn cost more upkeep (by making them summon different units that the basic recruitable peasants).
2) Reduce the amount of freespawn to 2, but make the summons a bit better. Like Lord to 2 chain men-at-arms and Marquis to 2 Yeomen. I could reduce the gold cost of the leather men-at-arms further to see that they see use in Bretonnian armies.
3) Change the troops to domsummons -> the sieger can preach to get the freespawn in control.

Any of these changes could also be added with the castle change.

Re: Bretonnia, Knights of the Grail v.0.92 - Now with grammar!
 

I am glad I could help. I really like the UK spellings for this mod, I just wanted to make sure it was intentional.

Re: Bretonnia, Knights of the Grail v.0.92 - Now with grammar!
 

The impact is that even if you're gold limited, you would *always* recruit a scout from each castle that you would otherwise be unable to recruit from. As long as it's consistent across nations, it's not a problem, but otherwise, it's an advantage (even if a limited one.)

Zero upkeep scout units could then be used e.g. to cheaply break into blood via the scout hunting technique (vs. the upkeep on however many scouts you normally devote to such a task.) They'd also be great fever fetish hosts. Or anything else that just needs a unit with available slots as cheaply as possible.

As you point out, most of the time you'd still rather have a mage or commander unit, but it's something to consider.

Re: Bretonnia, Knights of the Grail v.0.92 - Now with grammar!
 

1) This doesn't really remove the problem and it would arguably add another level of annoyance because you'd be getting gold draining chaff whether you liked it or not and might even have to specifically suicide them to keep upkeep down. You know, when they aren't preventing sieges from working. They are still generated for free and still bypass the siege-stops-recruitment mechanic.

2) You mean summon allies? This doesn't change the siege situation since the besieged will have nothing better to do than summon dudes. Generally speaking I'm in favour of summon allies over freespawn though, because summon allies is never annoying - you have a choice about it. Even if it is technically worse.

3) The problem with domsummon is that on domsummon2 you still gets LOADS of dudes with high dom (basically you'll sit your domsummon commanders in your cap) while on domsummon20 you get so few it's a bit pointless (unless they're pretty powerful units like bat demons, vampires etc)

My advice would be to remove or otherwise heavily scale back the non recruitment creation of these units. When I started with the skaven I used a lot of summon allies and freespawn etc and over time I've realised it generally just causes more trouble than it's worth and creates a bizarre second economy based on hoarding commanders. If you look at the vanilla game it's really limited in application - cap only wolfherds for example. I suspect because of the warping effect it has on the game.

I think it's probably ok as a main feature of some nations, but bretonnia doesn't exactly feel like one of those to me.

Re: Bretonnia, Knights of the Grail v.0.92 - Now with grammar!
 

A very limited advantage. How often do you not build a commander? At which point in the game? How useful are a handful of scouts at that point in the game?

People recruit indy scouts whenever possible, but that's because they don't take a commander slot. Even with scouts costing nothing (or 1 as I costed them) it makes no difference to whether you build an indy scout or not. Like you said, people will scout up only when they have no gold or are trying to save every last scrap of gold (even at the cost of a commander slot for a turn). This doesn't happen very often and hence I think you'll still see very few scouts.

Indy scouts are way better for all of these things because they don't take a commander slot. You therefore have them in large enough numbers for the blood hunting without disrupting your main strat (no way scout blood hunting in anyone's main strat). It's true they're infinitely cheaper than indy scouts, but they have a far, far greater opportunity cost for the vast majority of the game. They are also inherently fewer in number.


Edit: It should also be noted one reason I made commanders 1 gold in my mods is that I play exclusively on NI maps where the commander slot is even more precious.

Re: Bretonnia, Knights of the Grail v.0.92 - Now with grammar!
 

I would have thought that might work reasonably well. I think that would be a sufficient change to make my "Recruit 3 marquis every turn and churn out freespawn like crazy" strategy pointless. It would be a shame to lose the freespawn altogether because you have done a good job of making it actually tempting to recruit commanders who aren't mages. Very few nations manage this and I think it is good.

NB I think both Burnsaber and I are using "freespawn" to mean "Summon Allies", somewhat incorrectly I realise.

PS Thanks for the hawk info Sombre, that's interesting.

Re: Bretonnia, Knights of the Grail v.0.92 - Now with grammar!
 

Yeah, I think scaling back the numbers like that and forcing you to use the summon allies command is probably sufficient to make it fair, while still being useful. I don't think you need to worry about the price of leather men at arms though... 6 gold is pretty cheap as it is, that's already lower than almost anything in dom 3. They're plenty usable as chaff. Not as good as skavenslaves, but what is?

Re: Bretonnia, Knights of the Grail v.0.92 - Now with grammar!
 

Am I missing something, or does this mod conflict with CBM 1.6 on weapon slots 715-721?

Re: Bretonnia, Knights of the Grail v.0.92 - Now with grammar!
 

Could be. Version 0.95 (it will be 1.00 when I can be 100% sure that the summon spawn is on a balanced level) is coming up in few days, I'll be sure to take a look in this conflict too.

Re: Bretonnia, Knights of the Grail v.0.95
 

New version with no conflicts with CBM.

Re: Bretonnia, Knights of the Grail v.0.95
 

Excellent.

Re: Bretonnia, Knights of the Grail v.0.95
 

Now that TheEarlyDays is ending, I'm likely going to start a new game to give Bretonnia a new chance at MP glory. If anyone of you is writing a guide or just wants to play the nation in the game, send a PM to me reserve the nation.

(The game will likely start around 24th day)

Re: Bretonnia, Knights of the Grail v.0.95
 

Bugs!

#newweapon 735
#name "Sword from the Lake"
#rcost 0
#att 3
#def 3
#len 2
#dmg 13
#dt_holy
#armorpiercing
#magic
#secondaryeffectalways 649 -- Heroic Blade
#end

The 649 should be 733.


#weapon 718 -- Heroic Blade

This is for the grail hero - it should be 733.

Re: Bretonnia, Knights of the Grail v.0.95
 

Is this mod going to be eventually compatible with Bogarus?

Re: Bretonnia, Knights of the Grail v.0.95
 

No.

The nation needs those 10 spell slots and it needs them bad. If I did not write over those Bogarus spells, it would seriously limit its compactibility in mod nation games. 28 spell slots would be a whopping 20% of the total allowed amount of modded spells.


On other news, I'll come back at this mod after UWGIM is updated. The biggest (and likely only) change will be to model the summonings of the Lord, Marquis, and Duke after the "Slann + Temple Guard" example set by Sombre in Itza. Basically they will then only give troops when you recruit them.

Re: Bretonnia, Knights of the Grail v.0.95
 

Just posting to note a few things I realized a while back about this nation. Not really balance comments here!

1) Grail Maidens are perfect dragon master casters... basically every n3 maiden can cast become spam either wyverns or ice drakes without boosters. The e randoms of course can do cave drakes, though those would always require at least one booster. This is a really good way to use air and water gems if you don't have Call of the Lake or Ride the Winds, and could be worth using later depending on what you need at the time.

2) Grail Maidens are also very similar to Oreiads, and can do most of what they can do. Which means you can consider using them as cloud trapezing thugs. Coupled with spells like Errantry War and Ride the Winds along with recruit everywhere pegasus knights, this nation has some serious raiding potential. Maidens are definitely not as good at this as Oreiads though, so you need to be a bit more careful when using them.

3) An awake or dormant mother of rivers could be a really awesome pretender for bretonnia. You can then summon (relatively) huge amounts of grail knights using your boosted W income. Grail knights don't really need a bless to be effective, but you can relatively easily get a decent one with this chassis (up to w9 dormant without being too painful). Actually in light of this as an available pretender, I am having a lot of trouble seeing why I would ever use the lady of the lake. The lady seems like a really niche pretender in her present form... anyone else feel a bit more generously about her?