Wow, this is pretttty epic. The setting of the mod is wonderful; Instead of having a completely foreign culture for every single collection of villages, the factions look and play somewhat similarly, although with enough variety for enjoyment. The units are well-done and looking like what one would expect from a 14th century army, although through a slightly romantic modern view. Each faction has a "specialty" which is reflected in the armies they field; The Nordic influenced faction has incredibly sturdy heavy infantry. Uxhal fields heavy cavalry focused armies, which can smash through a lesser foe. And so on and so forth, but perhaps more enjoyable is the similarities within the armies. Unlike Vanilla, where the same peasant farmer you can upgrade to a sellsword would become a Mameluke if recruited from his village, they all have relatively similar troop trees and appearance, heraldry aside.
I only have a few issues with balance, which I'm sure will be fixed later in the mod's development. First, the ranged units in this mod are next to useless. I personally prefer to charge headfirst at the head of a company of heavy cavalry, but when on occasion I attempted a slightly more defensive strategy, archers completely failed in every way. They consistently were unable to pierce any sort of mid to high tier troop in any meaningful way, leading to the only damage being dealt coming from my infantry.
I met the same problem with the Mercenary Handgunners. I jumped into cheatmode (sue me) and found the recruiter in a tavern, got a company of 100 handgunners, 30 heavy spears, and 20 Uxhal Knights. I faced off against a Praven army of around 180, and set up on a hill with my spearmen in front of the gunners, hoping to see a cascade of cyan text the moment they came into range. I was, however, incredibly disappointing to see 3 volleys have no effect but the loss of a few enemy militia and recruits. The gunpowder units, which are pretty much only useful for killing armoured targets, were too weak to actually take down men-at-arms or knights. While I am aware you must retain some balance for 14th Century warfare to not be completely uprooted by a mercenary with 30 gunmen, It's kinda silly that they are useless against the very targets they are meant to counter.
Another slight issue I encountered is the order of armies; for many of them, high tier units are lower in the roster, leading them to field relatively squishy initial armies without their signature units (Lumbar Pike/Guards, Kahlburg Axemen) to counter an enemy charge. It makes it a bit too easy once you get a good army going, and let's you just steamroll them. This one doesn't even qualify as a bug, it's just a matter of rearranging army lists.
tl;dr good mod, can't wait for full game and the quest of king harlus.
meganoob30
Hermann joined
This member has provided no bio about themself...