April 22 update for version 2 work in progress news

I have added a number of new arms and armors, some of my own creation and some from OSP sets. I have also improved some of my previous work on armors.

I have recently add a new recruitment feature. If the player owns a castle or town, he/she may build a barracks, which will be somewhat expensive and when completed, will permit the player to recruit an elite faction troop in their town/castle. So instead of hiring tier 5 faction professionals, the player will be able to hire tier 8 elite faction troop. This elite troop does not upgrade from the tier 7 professional troop, so the only way to get the elite troop is to hire them or to rescue them when they are prisoners. This features seems to be working as planned. The second part of this feature is to make it so that factions leaders (i.e., kings) have a small number of their faction elites in their reinforcement templates but that other lords do not have them. This part is working well for both the player who has built the barracks in a town or castle and for the AI kings. So far so good.

I am also modifying some of the troops proficiencies using a set of regression equations that I have developed. While I have already modified troop attributes, skills, and proficiencies in previous versions (mainly to improve their polearm proficiency), I am trying to ensure that I have well-thought out troops proficiencies and skills that reflect each faction's historical strengths and weaknesses, as intended in the original game while still maintaining some balance across the factions. I am also adding a few more troops to each of the factions. I am also modifying the outlaw troops, as I recently noticed that outlaw leaders and some of the other outlaws are quite powerful relative to mercenary and faction troops at the same level.

I am also planning to add "custom kingdom troops" so that the player, on becoming king (or queen) can have unique troops for his/her kingdom (or queendom).

As far as I can tell, the current WIP does not have any old bugs or new bugs in it. I have replaced the scenes for Ashford and Akkedan (now called Aderkan) and they seem to be working well. I still want to expand the Edric Streona quest, and probably will, but I will save that part for early May when I have more time to focus. My intention is to release version 2 in mid to late May.