I have made a few major coding changes.
1. Implemented my modification of the JRider expanded nobility title kit. This coding assigns different titles to the vassals depending on whether they hold a village, castle, or town or are a fief-less lord. Each faction has it's own titles. I modified the code so that it doesn't reflect the relationship between the liege and the vassal since I felt that it made the titles too lengthy. More information will be included in when I release the next version.
2. Implemented a new start option to start as a vassal. This permits the player to choose a faction to join, assigns the player the faction's culture, gives the player one village, increased relations with the faction king, 10,000 gold to start and experience points to level up to level 8. If you don't wish to start as a vassal, you have the option to start as usual. I have disabled the starting quest to make this change possible.
3. Implemented a change to village recruitment. If you are affiliated with a faction, as a lord or as a mercenary, you can hire regular faction troops from villages. If you are not affiliated with a faction, you can only hire the peasant (commoner) troops that are available (if you can hire any troops at all from the village). Think of the commoner troops as peasants taking refuge in the village while not actually part of the village's culture. The commoner troop tree includes footmen, archers, and light horsemen. They are decent troops that should not be shunned. These are the same troops that can be rescued from outlaws who have taken them prisoner (i.e., farmers and peasant women).
4. I am looking for a fix to the buggy outposts coding. I fixed a few of the issues that people have brought to my attention and have fixed the outpost demolition bug but haven't been able to fix the other problems. If I am not able to figure it out, I will disable the outposts option when I release the next version. If I find a fix after I release I will include the fixed outposts as a patch to the next version.
5. I have made a few changes to the troop trees. The main changes include adding a level 25 infantry to the Khergiz and giving all the Eastern Province peltasts mounts. The Eastern province also has two lines of professional mounted troops: lancers (armed with lances) and heavier koursores and Kataphracts without lances but with heavy armor and heavy maces. This is meant to reflect the diversity of the Byzantine cavalry troops of the period. Speaking of mounted troops, the Sarranids now have a level 25 mounted archer and mounted peltast. I added a line of Geroian swordsmen to the Geroian commoner troop tree. Now they have 3 lines of footmen: pikemen, spearmen, and swordsmen. I did away with the extended line of Geroian skirmishers- now they have just one low-level skirmisher who upgrades to crossbowman.
Anyway, I believe I have made good progress and once I build my list of changes I will be able to release the new version.
