Calradia 1050 A.D.: Mercenary Uprising mod for Mount & Blade: Warband

1. As I am working on version 3, I have decided to create another mercenary faction in deference to the name of this mod: Calradia 1050 A.D.: Mercenary Uprising. I am creating a Geroian mercenary faction that will hold the town of Bariyye in the east of the desert, the nearby castles, and associated villages. The lore says that the Geroians are from the East, so this change is consistent with that. Plus, I felt that the Sarranids shouldn't be as strong in terms of number of towns and castles they owned since they were an up-and-coming kingdom at the time. The Geroian faction will be a small faction of king and 10 lords and 10 ladies. The Geroian troop trees will be different from all the other factions and will emphasize their throwing capabilities. The skirmisher line will be well-developed and the mounted troops will have throwing weapons but not heavy cavalry. The Geroians will also have good crossbowmen. I am also considering adding another small faction, this time in the north and east. I have completed the addition of the Geroian faction. Am considering how I want to implement the other faction.

2. Refining the special manor troops (scouts and veteran scouts) the player can hire from their village manors. In the current version, these special troops are better equipped and more proficient archers (or crossbowmen). The exception is that the Khergiz scouts and veteran scouts are footmen. I have considered several options in regard to these troops: a) leave them as they are, b) make these troops customizable so that the player can choose their equipment and decide whether they want them to be archers or footmen, c) make them all footmen that are better quality and better equipped than the faction common foot troops at the same level. Option b is the most coding intensive option but is one I am leaning towards as this time.

3. Adding recruitment opportunities at training grounds.

4. Expanding the types of mercenary troops that can be gotten. For example, in v2.52, if the player has honor of 10 or higher, they will occasionally be sought out by 3 different types of troops for hire. I want to create another higher level of troops that can only be hired when the player's honor is 20 or higher. These troops would be higher tier troops and well equipped. This item is complete.

5. Expand the Nord professional skirmisher line by adding a Nord Thane (level 30) and changing the Nord Hirdmann to level 25 instead of 30. The Nord Professional will branch into either the Nord Warrior or Nord Hirdmann.This is complete.

6. Allow the Eastern heavy skirmisher to update into the mounted skirmisher (as in current version) or into an elite skirmisher (this troop would need to be added). I would provide the same option for the Sarranid skirmisher line. This is complete.

7. Expand the Edric Streona quest to include at least one more adventure and possibly two. I am thinking that the final quest will give the player a fortress for his troubles. I just need to figure out the coding for this.

8. Permitting player to have feasts for troops at owned castles in order to improve morale (this will work similarly to the feast script that exists for tavern keeper).

9. Adding merchants of special weapons and armor that you will find in the taverns.

10. Looking at the faction troops trees, the top two tiers of troops have quite heavy armor. I am considering "down-armoring" the faction troops so that only the elites will have the heavy armors (for example a mail hauberk with scale vest). The level 25 professional troops will have something like mail hauberk with cloth or leather vest. The level 20 professional troops will have something like a mail hauberk, and so on to the bottom of the troop tree. The common troops will be down-armored as well, with only the level 25 troops having metal armor (the special manor troops will have better armor than the common troops at the same level). This "down-armoring" will be more in keeping with the earlier time period of the mod. It shouldn't pose a modding problem for me, as I have made many armors and have access to a number of OSPs.

11. Making some random battle maps for the steppe battles. I hate fighting in the steppes near the mountains because the maps are so stupidly steep. I will make some maps, perhaps 3-5 that will be selected at random to take the place of the engine generated maps.

12. Fixing any bugs I find, including looking into the issues with the Outpost Kit.

I will be working on these changes and any others I think of throughout the summer so that I can complete the final version of this mod. One final important note: since I will be using the new flag "guarantee_polearm" for some of the troops, version 3 will only work with Warband versions 1.168 and above. The good thing about this is that I will be able to get rid of my script that forces all melee weapons. I think the performance will be improved and the troops will be less likely to rapidly switch back and forth between side-arm and polearm. I thank Hoboistice for his suggestions about this issue.This part is complete. An unintended consequence of this change is that troops with two side-arms in their inventory (e.g., a sword and a mace) may only equip with one of the two. It's not too big of a deal and I think I can live with it.

You can follow my mod at the Taleworlds forum: Forums.taleworlds.com

I am looking for volunteers to do some scene-making for this mod. Ideally, I would like to have 4 khergiz style forts to replace the castles I am currently using. For these forts I envision something like hill forts with concentric ditches and palisades or something like a simple wooden fort. I have dabbled in fort-making but my PC is not particularly capable and crashes from time to time while in edit mode. Let me know if you are interested in helping.