Call for beta testing

Ixor_Drakar wrote:Galloglass were never cavalry though and a Schiltron is phalanx type formation of pikemen.

^
I was just noticing Gallowglass building in this mod is light cavalry based even though the retinue is heavy infantry. And yea Schiltron are pikes (and the awesome tactic they get revolves around pikes). Unless I'm mistaken, and vanilla as well. It shouldn't be hard for me to edit though and thank you this is cool.

Yeah I think the building was like that even before Grallonshpere's work. So the most accurate buildings for each 3 would be Ceitherne(light infantry) for the Irish, Gallowglass(gallóglaigh) heavy infantry for Norse and Schiltron pikemen for the Scots. For Retinues the Scots could have light infantry and pikes, Norse heavy infantry and archers or pure HI and the Irish light infantry and cavalry.

Ixor_Drakar wrote:Yeah I think the building was like that even before Grallonshpere's work. So the most accurate buildings for each 3 would be Ceitherne(light infantry) for the Irish, Gallowglass(gallóglaigh) heavy infantry for Norse and Schiltron pikemen for the Scots. For Retinues the Scots could have light infantry and pikes, Norse heavy infantry and archers or pure HI and the Irish light infantry and cavalry.

Looking at how he scripted it, I like the time based evolution and it seems more accurate given that the Gallowglass were expelled from Scotland and became very much Irish within a few decades afterwards. Anyway, I altered the file to contain correct units as I confirmed through some research that Gallowglass were typically claymore weilding footsoldiers with a wide range of alternative weapons that they actually brought onto the battlefield with them. Pretty interesting stuff, I knew they were versatile but lugging an arsenal into battles is just insane lol.

Edit: I also created a new battle tactic for the Irish weighted on heavy infantry and light infantry called Gallowglass Javelin Barrage, haven't thoroughly tested it but it lasts just 6 days during, in class of charge/advance, and in phase melee, increases gallowglass offense by 200%, light infantry offense by 280%, and cavalry offense by 280%. Based this on the fact that they sent their more mobile troops in right afterwards to take advantage of the scattering and gaps in lines the javelins cause. Whereas, the gallowglass would fall back and follow them in.

jquinn914 wrote:

Ixor_Drakar wrote:Galloglass were never cavalry though and a Schiltron is phalanx type formation of pikemen.

^
I was just noticing Gallowglass building in this mod is light cavalry based even though the retinue is heavy infantry. And yea Schiltron are pikes (and the awesome tactic they get revolves around pikes). Unless I'm mistaken, and vanilla as well. It shouldn't be hard for me to edit though and thank you this is cool.

The schiltron is the name for the formation that Scottish spearmen/pikemen adopted when confronted with cavalry. It involved the spearmen/pikemen arraying themselves into a circular formation with the spears facing outward, so any attack (especially by horsemen) could only be conducted with great difficulty.

So the concensus would be:

Kerns as light infantry for early Ireland
Alban Gallowglasses as heavy infantry for Norsegaels
Irish Gallowglasses as a mix of heavy infantry and light cavalry later on for Ireland
Scottish Schiltron as Pikemen for Scotland later on

?

Cultural Variations 2

Now if you can direct your attention to the rest of the building system we should be able to make solid progress I'm especially interested in your views on the organic development of the holdings; on how each chains is tied to the others and if you find the bonuses/maluses well calibrated.

1. The scribe cell and tinkerer cubicle seem rather weak for their cost and upkeep. 1-3% technology growth rate is negligible.
2. The holy grail and shroud temples seem to be incorrectly localized displaying their script names like cb_grail.
3. Buildings that effect percentages of tax seem rather weak as well, your average duke ranked land holder starts out with 0.4-0.6 monthly gold income, single digit percentages of that are incredibly miniscule.
4. Everything seems to be rely on a timber fort upgrade to be built, not sure if this is especially logical and it certainly can break the flow of things especially on small starts (spending ages to get that thing up just so you can spend ages to get your next tax upgrade up)
5. There are buildings/upgrades that only net you like 0.2 tax at a costs between 40-65 gold, if my head math is sound this would mean it takes like 240 years just for it to pay itself off. Seems a bit pointless.

Each building and upgrade should have more value per cost IMO, ATM it's 100x more profitable (war), easier to grow your army, and acquire technology through claims and expanding personal demesne while ignoring building all together at least until much later in the game. War profit is intended to be counterbalanced by the destruction of buildings, but when your acquiring 20+ gold per siege at the cost of losing buildings that could only hope to match that value (and I'm not just talking gold here) in years if not decades. The only time it might matter is when you could potentially be scoring yourself a fully upgraded castle building from an enemy which is then destroyed in siege, and again a risk I think anyone would be willing to take.

4. Everything seems to be rely on a timber fort upgrade to be built, not sure if this is especially logical and it certainly can break the flow of things especially on small starts (spending ages to get that thing up just so you can spend ages to get your next tax upgrade up)

The whole point of the system is to simulate a coherent and realistic social development over the course of 400 years. As much as the engine will allow of course. Personally I dislike seeing a super huge fortress sitting in the middle of nowhere with no support population centers or economic infrastructure. That is immersion breaking IMO since the game is more than a wargame. I wanted the building up of holdings to be a goal in itself. That is why everything is tied up in building chains with triggers and prerequisites. Still, your suggestions make sense for the early game so I am rewriting the code to lower down the costs and build time as well as to beef up some of the bonuses. However we must be mindful of the fact that there are a lot of money making facilities scripted - and their revenues all stack up.

Integrating events linked to buildings would actually be awesome and give an incentive beyond numerical benefits to build things. In the mean time, linking a prestige income to how developed (in buildings) your realm is would again create a good incentive to focus on building and seems logical. Lastly, focus on national tax modifiers on city buildings as atm what should be your most lucrative holding is nerfed to hell by base laws, opinion modifiers from your burghers/bishops for spending your own gold to build in their holdings would help this as well.

-why cities start so developed?its intended?

-in Constantinople there are two theodosian walls

iago6666 wrote:-why cities start so developed?its intended?

-in Constantinople there are two theodosian walls

They are hardly developped - especially for the large cities of 1066 - but the game put limitiations to what can be displayed when using triggers and prerequisites.

There shouldn't be 2 Theodosian Walls - are you using the test mod alone and with nothing else?

A new ammended version will be published here this weekend. Prices and duration have been changed according to the above suggestions.



G.

the test mod plus the fixes

I will reinstall it ,maybe its my installation,i will check it

Confirmed it was my installation.

some thoughts about resources:


-wine: Logroño(Rioja)and Valladolid(Ribera del duero),and maybe move the wine in sevilla to cadiz(Jerez)

Fish:half of the Spanish float is from Galician,if you want add at least one,Santiago(Rias Baixas)

-marble:Lunigiana(Carrera),Almeria(Macael)and Ossory( Kilkenny)

iago6666 wrote:


-wine: Logroño(Rioja)and Valladolid(Ribera del duero),and maybe move the wine in sevilla to cadiz(Jerez)

Fish:half of the Spanish float is from Galician,if you want add at least one,Santiago(Rias Baixas)

-marble:Lunigiana(Carrera),Almeria(Macael)and Ossory( Kilkenny)

Thank you for the suggestions. I shall add them. I'm also working on a numbered map - a useful tool that doesn't exist yet.

iago6666 wrote:
-wine: Logroño(Rioja)and Valladolid(Ribera del duero),and maybe move the wine in sevilla to cadiz(Jerez)

I am not sure about these wines. I am no expert on Medieval wine making, but things have changed a lot in the wine making scenario in 1000 years. Carthage and Egypt made enormously reputated wine in Roman times, but we know nothing of it. The French-Catalan region of Cerdanya was widely known for its ham and pigs. Nothing remains of that, the famed Ceretane ham was forgotten already in the Xth Century.

Before assigning famed winemaking regions from the last 200 years, let's check it out, to see if wine from La Rioja, Ribera del Duero and Cádiz was really that famous. I already suspect of Cádiz, being it under Muslim domain and thus very different from post-Reconquista Andalusia.

After all, before the Phyloxera plague there were hundreds of different wine kinds that we don't know as of today, and regions that had long vineyard tradition lost all of their momentum when their crops died whole.

***

I can say, however, that Barcelona produced its fair share of salt (mines in Cardona), saffron and ropes early on. Barcelonese ropes for sailing were very appreciated in the Western Mediterranean. Catalan and Valencian saffron was also appreciated, although produced in lesser quantities compared to the shipments the Venetians made from Crete and the Orient.

Later, around the late XIIIth Century, Catalan textile started massive exportation. It was not luxury textile like that of Flanders or Lombardy. It used Castillian or English wool late in the XVth Century, with the victory of the great exporters in the instestine merchants' wars in Valencia and Barcelona, but early on, it used local product.

Still, trade in CK is something rudimentary, best used as an abstract number representing a province's wealth and trade flux (both productive and mercantile value), since some things, like the enormous strategic importance of Palermo, could not be represented.

Palermo was not only the biggest city in the Western Mediterranean up until the late XIIIth Century, towering over Rome, Milan, Florence, Avignon or Genoa; it was a financial center, a node of money trade and change, the Mediterranean Wall Street, if you will. Merchants from Venice, Pisa, Genoa, Barcelona, Valencia and northern Africa had (most of the time) access to it, making trade-related business its top occupation.

Althougn Cagliari in Sardinia later inherited Palermo's open doors policy (thus becoming less Wall Street and more Tortuga, being an open door to smugglers and pirates from all countries, due to the continuous state of chaos and disorder reigning in Sardinia), Palermo kept on being a major currency business center.

***

By the way, Malaria was endemic in Sardinia. Many historians consider it the Mediterranean Vietnam, since it was a death pit of illnesses and attrition for armies of all sort. Could something like that be modelled into the game, preventing these way too easy conquests of Sardinia and Corsica? They were hard to hold for a reason. One was rebels and the general unruly-ness of the population and its leaders; the other was Malaria.

Jerez seems legit from the wiki(sherry wiki):

Jerez has been a centre of viniculture since wine-making was introduced to Spain by the Phoenicians in 1100 BC. The practice was carried on by the Romans when they took control of Iberia around 200 BC. The Moors conquered the region in AD 711 and introduced distillation, which led to the development of brandy and fortified wine.
During the Moorish period, the town was called Sherish (a transliteration of the Arabic شريش), from which both Sherry and Jerez are derived.
Wine production continued through five centuries of Arab Empire's rule. In 966, Al-Hakam II, the second Caliph of Córdoba, ordered the destruction of the vineyards, but the inhabitants of Jerez appealed on the grounds that the vineyards also produced raisins to feed the empire's soldiers, and the Caliph spared two-thirds of the vineyards.

Another Quote in Spanish(Historia del vino Wiki)

En la península ibérica durante la Reconquista se re-plantan nuevas vides a medida que los reinos cristianos van tomando el control del territorio en detrimento del dominio musulmán. La mayoría de estas viñas fueron anteriormente devastadas por la guerra.Tras la Reconquista empiezan a plantarse viñedos en torno al Camino de Santiago donde empieza a surgir los vinos de la ribera del Duero y de la Rioja. Ya en los siglos XII empieza a cultivarse vides en zonas de Cataluña dando lugar a viñedos del Penedés y de Tarragona. El vino de Jerez (vinos de Sherish) empezó a alcanzar una fama en la zona, este vino fue denominado posteriormente sherry por los ingleses. El Ribeiro se empieza a exportar a gran escala hacía Inglaterra a partir del año 1386, embarcado en toneles de roble o castaño en naos en los puertos de Pontevedra y A Coruña, siendo el más caro de los vinos que van a entrar en las Islas Británicas

I can try to translate the most important(shakespeare surely would not be proud):

In the Iberian Peninsula during the Reconquista was re-planted new vines as the Christian kingdoms were taking control of the territory at the expenses of Muslim rule.begins around the way of Saint James,where wines are beginning to emerge from Ribera del Duero and Rioja
in the XII begins to cultivate vines in areas of Catalonia resulting in Penedes and Tarragona vineyards.
The sherry (wine Sherish) began to achieve fame in the area
The Ribeiro starts exporting on a large scale to England in 1386,it was the most expensive of the wines that went into the British Isles

Ribeiro is located in game in lemos.

Penedes I think in barcelona, cesar sure he knows better

Google translator i owe you one

Sold.

The Penedès is a march between the county of Barcelona and the March of Tortosa. Home to monks, rebellious barons and, it seems, old winemakers.

The amended version of the Test mod is on the 1st page - in the 1st post. It reflects the suggestions made above. I have also added a new unique structure: the Mont Athos Monastery - for Byzantine players.



G.

Any more comments, suggestions, criticisms after this new version?



G.

I'd love to test it, but when I try to start game as Byzantium it loads forever (waited 5 minutes and nothing).

You have to load it alone. You can also empty the graphic cache.

Grallonsphere wrote:You have to load it alone. You can also empty the graphic cache.

I did both things already. Still not working...

It loads fine here - I have it on right now to complete the map I'm making. You used the 2nd version right? The one you can download from the 1st post?

Yes, of course.

Before updating everything seemed to work fine. Will your work be held off a version so we can test it with the new technology system of 1.1?

Yup we're gonna have to adapt it first (and everything else). The next beta will likely be more of a real beta including the full scope of pre release (would be hard to do otherwise).