The First Patch is Released! news

An important message for all those engaged in the war between the states!

The first patch for the American Civil War Mod: Revived is ready for release!

With this patch comes the fix for the map camera, new advanced formation and fire orders, important fixes to new game scenes, trenches added to siege scenes, numerous fixes to the dialogue, redone musket sounds (they are way better now), changes to some of the music, and much more. See the changelog below for installation instructions and a more detailed breakdown of everything that has changed.

Patch Installation Instructions:

1. Download the winrar package containing the patch files.
2. Open the package, open the "ACWMR Patch #1" folder, and extract the "American Civil War Mod Revived" folder to your modules folder (C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\MountBlade Warband\Modules).
3. Overwrite all existing files inside the old mod folder with the files from the patch.
4. Start the mod and play! This patch is save game compatible.

Full Version Installation Instructions:

1. Download the winrar package called, "The American Civil War Mod Revived v1.1", to your desktop or wherever you want.
2. Open the package and extract the folder inside called, "The American Civil War Mod Revived", to your modules folder (C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\MountBlade Warband\Modules).
3. Start Mount & Blade: Warband, select the mod from the drop down menu, and play!

Changelog:

• New advanced formation and fire orders. Much thanks to DoDoCat!
• Map camera issue fixed. A big thank you to DarthKiller!
• Issue with soldiers using fists instead of melee weapons fixed. Thank you very much eawtan!
• Trench warfare is being introduced to siege scenes.
• Siege scenes without trenches have been tweaked to at least be more survivable for attackers. The only exceptions are siege scenes that require the use of siege towers, these remain unfinished for now.
• New game entry points fixed and the starting scenes are cleaned up a bit.
• Tournament scenes with strange buildings are being fixed. For now, I am just removing the buildings, so most arenas will just be a wilderness map. I am still not sure what to do with tournaments. I have one idea I am considering, to make them into fist fights that can be bet on, and you can of course participate in them and bet on yourself. I am going to keep thinking about it and if anyone out there has any good ideas, I'm open to your suggestions.
• Village scenes edited, all scenes with game breaking mistakes and invalid objects have been fixed.
• Made the musket firing sound effects quieter, and replaced two of the sound effects with higher quality recordings.
• Changed the sound effect for incoming bullets, they should feel a little more threatening now.
• Changed the sound effect of bullets hitting dirt.
• Changed references to "ransom" to "parole" to be more accurate to history, except for quests that involve criminal kidnappings where a ransom is demanded.
• Army of the Pensacola recruits changed from "Confederate Volunteer Infantry Recruit(s)" to "Confederate Home Guard(s).
• Confederate Experienced Volunteers upgrade changed from marksmen to skirmishers until they reach veteran tier.
• Tweaked dialogue for entering into a mercenary contract, to be more suitable to the concept of enlisting as a low ranking officer, leading a small company of volunteers you raise yourself. Becoming a "commissioned officer" with commanding generals changed to requesting or being offered a promotion to a senior officer's rank. If you or the commanding general accept, you will be "promoted to general". So basically, you start off as a lower ranking officer, such as a captain, you decide to become involved in the war and raise a company of soldiers. Pick your side, and you can either enlist with the contract, or just keep fighting until you are offered a promotion to general or can successfully request one.
• Changed references to your party being a "regiment" to a "company". The size of the player's party is not large enough to be considered a regiment. Reaching regimental strength (300 - 400 men) would take a long time to level up your character to reach that leadership skill.
• The player's starting leadership skill changed to 9, and charisma to 25 in order to accommodate 100+ soldiers, bringing the player's party up to company strength. (If reaching regimental numbers becomes common among players, I will change references to companies back to regiments again).
• Recruiting soldiers in "denars" changed to "dollars", along with multiple other references to denars.
• Lingering references to "marshal" replaced with "chief of staff".
• Changed dialogue option, "sneak into castle/town", changed to "sneak into fort/city".
• Changed dialogue option, "sneak through gates" to "sneak through picket lines".
• Changed dialogue option, "besiege castle/town" to "besiege fort/city".
• Updated character info screen. Replaced references to vassal, lord, fiefs, etc.
• Fixed grammar errors when joining battle.
• Numerous other small tweaks and fixes to dialogue.
• Whitworth rifle melee added to markets.
• Union and Confederate Lancers are now equipped with revolvers as secondary weapons.
• All cavalry units now only use horses with saddle bags.
• Added Morgan horses with saddlebags to markets and gave them to all cavalry units.
• All cavalry units now use several different horse breeds.
• Removed most of the Morgan horses without without saddlebags from markets. They will still appear in marketplaces but they shouldn't be as abundant. If you are loading a saved game, the markets will adjust over time, and the Morgan horses without saddlebags will still be common for a while.
• Removed the broken cannons and cannon balls from markets.
• "Defeated_by_neutral 2" music track and the "escape" track were the same song, so now the escape song is the same track, but cut shorter, and the defeat song is entirely new, and more appropriate.
• "Defeated_by_neutral 3" music track was too long, and has been shortened to less than a minute and a half.
• "Town_nord" music track replaced. This was a left over native track that I missed.
• "Town_rhodok" music track replaced.
• "Fight_as_rhodok music track trimmed.
• Main menu and launcher screen picture have received a small update, they look much better now.

Highlights of Some of the New Features:

With the addition of advanced fire orders, the ability for the player to order their soldiers to use fire orders that were used in the civil war has now become possible!

The most impressive example of this is firing by file. For those who do not know, firing by file is a drill whereby the line keeps up a continuous fire, by having one end of the line fire first and reload, while the men next to them fire and reload, and so on down the line. When the soldier who first shot must fire again, they will be finished reloading and ready to fire. A real life demonstration, along with a more detailed explanation of firing drills and their practical uses can be seen below in the following video. The end of the video is where you can see fire by file in practice.

Youtube.com

And here you can see how it works in game:

This is actually a very good tactic in game and works exactly as you would expect it to. If you need a continuous fire on the enemy, then now you have the ability to do so. Or, if you don't want everyone to shoot at a few scattered soldiers, or one guy close to your lines, having the ability to order only one part of the line to fire is very good for that. Of course, all fire orders have a time and a place for their proper use, and the player will still find the orders to fire at will and fire all at once to be helpful.

Siege Warfare is Getting a Big Change:

Trench warfare is coming to the mod!

Not all the scenes are done, but the majority have seen a big change so far, and they are much more survivable for the attackers. The only exceptions are sieges that require the use of siege towers, because I do not know how to remove them and then what to do instead. When I tried to edit the walls and siege towers, the mod crashed, so I still need to experiment and figure out what is the best way to move forward. I had the idea to remove the choice of building of siege towers entirely and change it to digging trenches, but since sieges with ladders already have trenches as well, it wouldn't make sense to have to wait what could be days for something that is exactly the same and takes only a few hours at other locations.

Players should be aware that there are also a few locations, such as Natchez for example, where the scenes are so terrible, I will most likely need to completely replace them with new scenes made from scratch.

Some scenes, such as Fort Wagner, are mostly finished already and do not need much more work. I have made it look more like it did in reality, being a fort made mostly of sand and earth. The trenches are also accurate, as this was the only way the Union forces were able to finally reach the fort, after numerous failed assaults, including the famous attack of the 54th Massachusetts regiment.

You will also find Napoleon cannons on many of the maps, and sometimes inside fortresses, waiting behind the gates.

Unfortunately, these are props only, but they do certainly add to the atmosphere. Standing behind walls with some good artillery behind it certainly makes things feel a bit more in line with the time period.

I also want to make a more formal announcement about the future of the mod, in terms of where it is currently headed, and what I would like to see happen.

The mod, for the time being, will continue to see small progress with dialogue changes and further refining of all the in-game scenes, especially addressing the worst ones. The trench warfare aspect of siege gameplay is going to be a major focus in terms of the scene editing. The next goal for the dialogue is to research period appropriate poetry for the wandering entertainers and poets to teach you, and ensure those works can seamlessly tie into the courtship dialogue, which itself will need to be redone. I will also work on redoing the pretenders dialogue, but I am still not quite sure what to do with them. If you are reading this and you think you have a good idea about what to make with the pretenders that will fit with the American Civil War time period, please let me know in the comments or post about it in the forums.

Now, there are some large issues with the mod that need to be addressed, however I lack the current knowledge and skills to get the job done. If you are someone who likes this mod and knows how to get some of the things done that are needed, the help would be very appreciated. You would be helping out not just me, but the mod itself and all the people that enjoy playing it. Just providing instructions would be huge. The things that really require the most attention are:

• British Canada (Khergits) and the Army of the Potomac (Vaegirs) start every new game being at war. Changes made to relations in Morgh's editor seem to have no effect.
• The player is unable to recruit their own faction's troops from captured villages.
• Musket fire sound effects randomly cut out.
• Some scenes need to be overhauled or replaced entirely.
• Some locations are in the possession of the wrong faction.
• Outlaw parties use their native names (Sea Raiders, Mountain Bandits, Looters, etc.)
• The last thing mountain bandits say before entering battle is broken. I have checked the quick_strings.txt for the problem, but have so far been unable to find where it is.
• The starting year is wrong.
• Generals will sometimes use the flag of the wrong side, or a banner from native.
• Generals will not wear their uniforms inside halls and castles, only waistcoats.
• Unbalanced AI army compositions.
• Disproportional casualties when battles are auto-resolved or the player is knocked unconscious.

One solution the community has suggested is to open source the mod, and I would like to allow the community to discuss this topic in the forums before I make a final decision. You can find a post there on the "Frontlines" board, made by myself to gather your feedback. I also put up a poll to get a more general idea of what everyone thinks about open sourcing the mod.

The community has many suggestions and features they would like to see in the mod, and I would like to see them one day as well. In the interest of keeping all of our ideas organized, below is essentially a wish list of what we would all like to see included in the mod in the future:

• Battle continuation.
• Freelancer
• Reloading muskets while walking.
• AI using formations.
• New weapon models.
• New faces for generals and NPC's. I haven't been able to save the changes I made to faces so far, for some reason they always reset, even when the new face code is saved in Morgh's editor.
• Make character creation choices more meaningful. For example, being from a poor or common background means you can only enlist as a regular soldier (will need freelancer for this), while being from a wealthier background means you can start the game ready to command.

That's all for now! Have fun with the mod, and please report any problems that you experience. I very much appreciate all of your feedback, both good and bad, it's all immensely helpful and I look forward to the future of this project. Godspeed good soldiers, keep your powder dry and your heads down out there.

Ever your obedient servant,

King85