Comments - Bmary55

Can regular Zombies (not zombified stalkers) be re-added in 1.5 to the normal game and not just Survival mode? Or can we please get the option of adding them back in?

Playing as MJiddenheim it's still exceptionally difficult, though apparently not as hard as RotDG. There's still a lot of stack spam, too much for my tastes, but it's fairly necessary due to just how rudimentary M2TW's campaign AI is, and you can always tone it down or disable it completely with quick script tweaks.

I will look into this. Thank you!

Then we can agree to disagree, I suppose. Regardless, I appreciate the reply once more.

I do appreciate the reply.

However, could you at the very least explain then why the Free Cities have such massive armies and why certain city-states are at war with the Empire? Also, why having an option for a unified Empire isn't present?

Additional thoughts on the Empire and diplomacy:

the Empire especially isn't unified enough to handle the threat posed by the stacks either, and by the looks of it the AI nations westward aren't either. At least start with all the Imperial provinces in Trade Agreements and/or sharing Map Information, something like that to show some semblance of unity. They may've not always been close buddies in lore, sure, but at this time they were at least formed into an Empire, hence the name "The Empire", but Call of Warhammer portrays them like a bunch of independent states that have never contacted each other before ever. Franz feels like the Emperor of Reikland rather than the Emperor of a connected nation. Maybe make some of the city states like Nuln neutral to the Empire rather than hostile.

Also as adrianmartinez412, this balance extends to Chaos, Skaven, and other related players as well, but especially Chaos. Playing them even on VH is simply too easy. The Empire AI doesn't even put up a fight half the time against you. This is especially odd, because some other factions do if you attack them, but the Empire seems not only mechanically gimped when playing them or working with them, but also when fighting them. For a Chaos player taking the Empire should feel like a hard-fought and satisfying victory, rather than a map painting simulator, which is ironically something that has been told to players NOT to expect, yet playing as Chaos makes it very much one as far as the Empire goes.

People have asked for an option akin to TATW to be able to select at the beginning if the Empire is unified, forced into alliances, etc., and I see no reason not to include that. There's never harm in at least including the option for it and similar features. Why does it not only have to be completely disorganized and separated to begin with, and why especially should there not be an option to change that at the beginning depending on player preference?

My closing thoughts are once again worrying, seeing other similar comments, suggestions, or complaints met with "you need to learn to play the game." There's nothing to learn here, though. You cannot, literally, cannot defeat 5,000+ elite units with fewer than 1,000 low-tier militia, especially not with the admittedly excellent stats that reflect the fluff of the varied units. Some units are terrifying, and that's good, but it again hammers home the fact that maybe the balance isn't a matter of people needing to learn how to play, but something simply being wrong with the way the campaign is balanced and how offensive scripts work.

I mean no disrespect by any of this to any of the mod team, but I just don't think that deflecting suggestions related to difficulty should be the go-to solution. Check things out, see if it really is balanced or not, then we know whether or not we really do need to just get good at it. I've played Total War games for a very long time, and while I'm not saying that I'm right, it's my opinion that the difficulty issues lie more with the mod's own balance than the players' own skills, from what I've seen of things.

From this perspective too, it seems like only playing certain factions results in these balance problems, as some factions are far easier because of the spawn scripts being affected by the faction at hand. This may be why Middenland seems impossible, but why I've heard Bretonnia and others are on the opposite end and almost too easy.

Now on turn 22, there are four stacks of Chaos and one stack of Skaven just running around the Empire destroying everything. By now I really don't care what the mod testers say - this is not balanced, it is not fun, and it is not lore accurate. This early in the game under no circumstances should this be the odds the player has to fight. The other Empire AI factions have almost crumbled already, and none can expand because of the doomstacks of Free Cities factions. These in particular do not make ANY sense. There were city states in the Empire, sure, but in the time the game starts they weren't at war with the Empire. It doesn't even feel like the Empire is an Empire. Because of the massive numerical advantage the Free Cities have, it feels like the Empire is some tiny renegade faction fighting the real Empire.

You may think "It might not be so bad. Turn 22, the enemy stacks are probably just swarms of cheap units." No. More than half of each army is elite units, and many have Silver+ experience levels. You mean to tell me someone out there thought it was balanced that, by turn 20 when an Empire player and Empire AI both are just getting their economies going and can afford maybe a very small force of good troops, they're expected to defeat multiple stacks of late-game elite units that just appear randomly on their borders? I want to know who the testers were who, supposedly, said they loved 1.5's changes. I want to know what cheats they used to win, or why any player would say they love stackspam, the most criticized feature of nearly any Medieval mod that has it.

This really needs to be looked at. The stack spam scripts need delayed by dozens more turns at the least. Early ones shouldn't be full of elites. The Free Cities shouldn't have single army stacks that outnumber the entire militaries of Empire factions. I like difficulty and I love a challenge, especially if it's lore friendly, but this isn't challenging. It's absurd artificial difficulty that goes against lore and balance, not only for the player but for the AI as well. The other Empire factions seem ready to fall apart at turn 30 or 40, so if a faction is by the very mechanics of the game forced to lose and be destroyed, what's the point of the faction even being there? Just start the entire Empire controlled by Chaos Undivided, because that's what happens just over a dozen turns in. Neither the player nor the AI has a chance to even begin building their economies, let alone throwing out hordes of end-game high-ranked units that annihilate anything in their path.

I really enjoyed 1.0 and outside of some monotonous stack scripts later on, I had a great time with it, and I liked that the challenge scaled. When I had really good units, I was fighting really good enemies, and the AI was actually holding its own, contesting cities and winning victories and losing some bad defeats at the same time. Now it's a flat-out curbstomp for anyone playing the Empire, and I fail to see how even the best of the best players could do anything here, and even if they survived, the Empire AI can't even field an army anymore, let alone take back settlements. It's completely pointless to have the Empire in the game if this is all intended mechanics of the campaign, for it to lose before a fight even begins.

Let the stacks come, let the desperate battle begin and the struggle for dominance commence, but not 20 turns into the game when you maybe finally have a post-1,000 positive income and the AI is just becoming stable. I understand that Medieval's AI isn't very top notch, and wasn't even in its time, and I understand that the stacks are necessary to facilitate danger, but I think at this point in time they're just too much too fast.

This is a long post, I know, but after my own comments before and others were dismissed with claims of "just play it on Easy" or "our testers loved it", I can't lie that it's a little worrisome to think that constructive criticism might be being ignored here. If multiple people report balancing issues, you don't have to cater to them, certainly, but at least looking into it and giving balance a little review would help, checking to see if the claims are valid rather than just writing them off entirely.

For reference, my experience here was playing Middenheim, H/H, and I do like a lot of the other content in the new version; for example, I love the AI. It's actually tried flanking me and using anti-cav units when it needs to, something I never saw before in Call of Warhammer, and its flanking tactics are something I've never seen in any Medieval mod. My experience isn't 100% negative, but I do feel as if the Empire Campaign is simply unplayable at this point.

The thing is, I myself did recapture my city and secure my borders. The problem is the AI doesn't, and the problem is this happened on turn 7, on Hard difficulty. What am I or the AI supposed to do when multiple stacks show up not even 10 turns into the game? It's artificial difficulty that doesn't even have lore backing and feels unbalanced.

Saying that it's fine and there's no issue because your testers had no issue with it isn't a very fair attitude on suggestion and criticism from your other players. And it isn't like getting allies is science. You just offer money, wait a while, then get allied. It's not like it's something no one knows how to do, it's just pointless that the Empire is in a disunified state without even passing unity while Minor Factions and City Starts hold 10k-20k troops, while the Empire as a whole barely has half of that. It really isn't that lore accurate or balanced, if I'm being honest, and I don't like the idea that the AI is forced to be in a losing position where only the player has any chance of defeating script-spawned stacks. It really takes a lot out of the world if I know my potential allies are all gimped, apparently by design.

I like the huge amount of content in 1.5, a lot more since I last played, but very early in my campaign I can tell that you guys may have gone a little too far on the difficulty for the Empire.

No more than 7 turns in and two Chaos stacks appeared in the middle of it, taking one of my towns and one of the AI's. I managed to get mine back by using more or less every unit I had but the poor AI seems clueless. The Empire provinces start with very measly armies and no income to support them. Meanwhile the Free Cities Minor Faction has near-full stacks running around everywhere occupying too many settlements. Down south Wissenland has it particularly hard, since Nuln is occupied by tons of elite engineers and artillery. As Middenland, nearly every settlement around me is occupied by thousands of Marienburg Guards. It's also a little frustrating that there's still no option to have forced friendly diplomacy in the Empire. It leaves it in too weak of a position that doesn't even match up lorewise and leaves you overrun before the campaign even starts.

I see where you were going with this, having to unify the Empire and secure your own borders, and that's fine. I also know that, indeed, Nuln was a free city, and Marienburg too. However, Nuln wasn't fighting some huge war with the Empire, and Marienburg didn't have tens of thousands of troops across the Empire's lands either. Even Reikland is hopelessly outnumbered and I can only watch as within 10 turns the AI is losing settlements and going bankrupt, while big stacks of Chaos Beastmen, some of which include nearly half the units as Bestigors, and also some have Minotaurs this early! are rolling over everything. It's just absurd from both balance and lore accuracy standpoints. I'm all for a difficult campaign to unify the Empire and work towards victory, but 7 turns in the player should under no circumstances be fighting multiple stacks of enemies while its AI countrymen get stomped on.

This is on Hard campaign difficulty too. I can't imagine Very Hard, though I'm really hoping this is all just a bug that'll be fixed. Otherwise, some balance tweaking would be great, and I'm happy with the newest version overall. The Battle AI seems a lot smarter, in particular.

I know space combat has been overhauled and looks great, but what's being done to land combat?

The Hapans are pretty weak actually and will go down 1v1 against an ISD 2 or even an ISD 1. It's the Rebel tendency to swarm them that makes them lethal, which is accurate as far as Expanded lore goes.

I agree on the Jedi though. I could see making Jedi and Sith very, very strong, but Obi-Wan or Yoda can chop through an entire army of Black Sun or Imperials if you aren't careful. On the other hand, Sidious (one of the strongest Force sensitives ever) is incredibly fragile and deals little damage, and the Sith Warriors are so weak that you're better off never investing money into them as the Empire anyway. Army Troopers (around 300? credits) outperform the Warriors (over 10,000 counting the buildings you need for them). The Jedi heroes need a nerf, or the Sith need a buff, I'd say.

Two more things.

1. I think the idea of Recruits should be removed, or at least consolidated. You've got to build so many buildings just to get average infantry as any faction, and as any faction there's no point in using anything less than Rank 2 troops. Anything less falls apart and deals no damage.

2. For the Empire, I think shipbuilding capacity needs to be improved. They're incredibly limited on where and when they can build even basic frigates and support ships. It's a bit weird to see the Rebels pulling capital ships from every possible planet, while the Empire has around 4 planets for ship production and the rest of their planets can only build the piddling IPV.

This is by far my favorite EAW mod. I do have two comments though for the next release, which you've probably already heard by now.

1. Shuttles have a ludicrous amount of health. I beat an enemy fleet and got them down only to about four Alliance shuttles, and even to destroy one it took two ISDs and a bunch of TIE fighters attacking it all at once, and EVEN THEN it took around 10 seconds out of game with fast-forward on to blow it up. I'm not sure if it's intended that they can soak up so much damage or not.

2. Space stations have a tendency to disappear, leaving only their hardpoints behind. For me this happens mostly on Endor, very rare elsewhere.

I take back what I said about the AI. Maybe it's just due to 2.2 being a work in progress, but the AI doesn't screw around in 2.1. In fact, I've actually been kept on my toes pretty well so far.

I hope this is still being worked on!

Will there be any AI improvements in 2.2? Watching some of the "preview" videos of 2.2 gameplay the AI especially in space battles seems to be really push-overy, moreso than I remember it being.

So the upcoming Vong mod will apparently have diplomacy features. Any chance we'll see that in 2.2? I played 2.0 a long time ago and it was fun, but late into the game it just became a meat grinding fest as the Pentastar Alignment. I just sat three fleets at three chokepoints while infinite Rebel fleets kept coming in and dying to them while I couldn't push out because my fleets would then get destroyed. Having some method of peace or making alliances would be amazing.

This is looking good!

Absolutely fantastic mod.

I'm having issues with mutants not attacking in the latest patch. A group of Tushkano came up to me and another Mercenary and didn't attack, just sitting there. A Chimera also didn't attack other than by its jumping.

A change I've made in regards to the Ecologists is making them Allied, 2000, with the Military at the start. They're government-funded and supported, so it'd be weird if the Military wasn't actively helping them out. I'd still like to keep them from going to war with each other though.

Grenades are missing descriptions.

It might be hard to do, since the player was never intended to act peacefully in the main Military base in the base game so there may not be the right configuration for that section of the map. However, I'd love to see it.

Arsenal Overhaul. I had a shotgun. Mossberg, I think.

I used a Medkit and couldn't switch back to my weapons at all, even after equipping and unequipping.

Is this gonna be updated for the new patches?

It's odd that some peoples' MSE's detect it. Mine doesn't, and Microsoft doesn't report it's a virus on VirusTotal. Quite strange.

Only problem I'm noticing is that the only option is to have traders buy them all the way to 0%. The other version still lets you pick from 0 to 30.

Another minor suggestion that could work well is to add travel messages when transitioning levels. This is something that the CS mod, The Faction War, did. When you transition a level you get some flavor text, such as "Encountered bandits and hid" or "Stopped to eat lunch". Things like that. Some would even take away small amounts of supplies depending on the event. "Ran into zombies and fought them, lost 6 rounds of 9x18mm". I think something along these lines would be excellent to have in the game.

Will this be updated for CoC 1.4?