Roar of Conquest: Version 1.5 news

Greetings! No long list of changes for now, I'm afraid, ( no, please, stop cheering in the comments, you're making me a sad modder :c ). Today I am announcing that Roar of Conquest 1.5 is now in the works. I make no promises of when it will be released, but I promise it will bring with it more changes to both units and factions, with the goal of creating a more fun campaign and better balancing between factions. Now, for a preview of changes to expect;

1) Citadel and Huge City population requirements. With the changes I have planned, it will still take time to upgrade to the max level for Cities and Castles. However, unlike before, it will now be much easier to upgrade to Huge Cities and Citadels. You will still need to work for it, of course, but by late campaign you should see most cities and castles upgraded to the max level, for both the player and the AI. I am well aware that this change goes against the goals of the original Stainless Steel modders, but from my point of view not being able to upgrade no matter what you do is a buzz kill. By mid to late campaign, the player would often be rather wealthy, but unable to spend their money on building upgrades simply because it was impossible to get the population necessary. Not only that, but the best units for most factions are available inly in the max-level buildings, so you would hardly ever see units like the Lancers, Royal Banderium Knights, Polish Guard, Scandinavian Guard, etc. for the whole campaign, even if you had played the 200+ turns in campaign to be able to get them.

Even worse, were you lucky enough to get them, you'd end up being extremely reluctant to charge into the enemy simply because they were so rare and hard to get, if you lost this one fantastic unit, you wouldn't be able to get them for 20+ turns, and then you would have to get them from your home regions, (usually the only place you get upgrade to the max), and get them to the front again. It's bad enough to not even be able to get the best units in the game; it's even worse to be crippled with anxiety if you do get them because you're paranoid about making one mistake in battle and losing them completely. With this change to population requirements, these problems should no longer exist. Hurray for shiny deadly units!

2) Revamp of Stables cavalry availability. With the changes I have in mind, all factions will have universal access to a early, light-tier cavalry unit no matter where they are on the campaign map. While a change that will mostly affect the early campaign, some later-game cavalry units will be made readily available for some factions, or at the very least be available for the entire campaign once they are unlocked.

3) Earlier availability for certain units. While I am a big fan in the system of having certain events unlock new units for factions, the waiting time for some these units is, in my mind, absolutely ridiculous. I have done changes like this before, (for example, the Janissary units for the Seljuk Sultanate), but now I plan on expanding these changes to other factions and units. Some of these changes will be for faction balancing, but others will simply be more for fun, so you only have to play 200 turns instead of 300 to use certain units. Some units I have in mind to change include Highland Pikemen, Stradiots, and Heavy Hussars, which you can see below.

4) Buffing out the rosters of some factions. There is no denying that certain factions have far more choices when it comes to recruitment. In some cases, some rosters still have certain holes in them. One example which has been already fixed was Poland, who did not have a dedicated professional spear unit in the castle line for Stainless Steel 6.4 until my mod came around. In some cases these holes are deliberate, (for example, Scotland and Norway do not have great late-game cavalry, which is part of their play style), but the mod does not compensate by having a powerful unit or two elsewhere. My goal is to flesh out some of these rosters, either by incorporating certain units that already exist into factions which do not get them, or by giving them mercenary units that they can now recruit from their recruitment buildings. Do not expect brand-new units made from scrap at this point in the mod.

So there you go, a general idea of where Roar of Conquest is going in the future! As I said before, I am making no promises as to when these changes will be completed, but I do feel safe in saying you will not have to wait for a year or more before 1.5 is released. For those of you who would like to start playing the mod now before it's 1.5 release, you can download it here: Moddb.com