Greetings once again, everyone!
The previous update was supposed to be the last iteration of Rise of Three Kingdoms, however my OCD kicked in and I found numerous things I needed to either update, fix, or improve upon. One issue that needed to be fixed was AI factions declaring war upon the Unaligned forces. Not only would this gradually kill Unaligned characters on the map and deplete your character pool as you expanded, but it would also cause noticeable stability issues. Essentially the Unaligned faction, outside of the dozens of characters scattered around the map, was unassailable and caused the Campaign AI to freeze. This only started happening in v5.0 because of the implementation of z3n's Skynet AI and the different way the Unaligned faction was treated in calculations. However I have fixed that and now the AI no longer declares war on the Unaligned faction.
A second major issue was the Recruitment Limitation Script - the part of the script that limits how many units a faction can have based on their size. Because I'm an idiot, I put in some numbers that caused the script to never fire and factions could recruitment endless amounts of units. Some of you probably ran into a mid-game Cao clan or Sun clan with several hundred units which, in my opinion, made the mod unplayable at that point. So after looking over the numbers once again, I found where I made the error previously and played numerous test campaigns to both make sure the script was working and making adjustments to the numbers for calculations. It was extremely time consuming (a total of at least 60 hours), but I feel like the script is in a good place and will improve the playability of the mod in the mid to late game.
Outside of those two (what I consider) major issues, there was a lot of work done on the finer details. A newscript I added will make sure that any incompatible temples and 'migratory' buildings will be destroyed when you capture a settlement. That way you will not have buildings that you either cannot use or, as in the case of another belief system's temples, will be detrimental to your faction. In regard to temples, unless you looked in the building browser, you would not know what the differences were between the various temples you could build. As another QoL improvement, I gave each tier 1 temple a small bonus that relates to the overall bonuses that chain of temples would grant at higher tiers - so now, at a glance, you can more easily distinguish between temples and what you want to build in each settlement. I also made a few minor changes to the campaign map, with the most noticeable change being the addition of roads between the settlements of Zhuti and Yunnan and also between Zhuti and Yuexi, as well as making the eastern chokepoint of Hu Pass being closed off so that it is now actually a chokepoint.
Perhaps the most work that was done in the v5.1 update was to battle models, in regard to either fixing issues with them or making improvements to their quality. All of the bandit-type models had their proportions fixed, namely lengthening the arms and legs, and also narrowing the waist. Something similar was done to the Huainan Guard, as their limbs were disproportionately short. I also fixed all of the faces and hands of the tier 2 Shanyue units - previously their faces were entirely different, and skin tone much darker, as compared to the rest of the Shanyue unit roster. A minor detail I made was, for Cheng Pu's model, to have graying hair to better fit with his portrait aesthetic. I also made sure to fix (as much as I could) the weapon hand placement for several units, such as all of the Shanyue axe units, all of the County Militia units, and the Formation Breakers. Also, I made some major changes to the Peasant Conscripts unit, specifically the 2nd armor upgrade tier of the unit. Not only did I fix a handful of issues with the model itself, but I also made improvements to the textures and added a 3rd armor variation for that unit. Below you can see the new 2nd armor upgrade of the Peasant Conscripts, followed by the improved model of the Huainan Guard.
The Version 5.1 (Tianxia) Update can be downloaded here and has instructions on how to properly install the patch (point installer at Medieval II Total War folder).
IMPORTANT NOTE: You must have the Rise of Three Kingdoms v4.5 Full Release installed prior to installing this update. The previous versions of v4.6, v4.7, and v5.0 are now obsolete - the v5.1 update incorporates all of the content of v4.6, v4.7, and v5.0, so if you were already running any of those versions you can just patch in v5.1 and start a new campaign. This update is NOT save-game compatible (will break saves)
Happy gaming!
amazing work!! this is much better than Total war: three kingdoms!
You're the gift that keeps on giving!