I've downloaded the mod. My next game is going to be using it

Have you fixed the error with fire elementals from the MA?

Secondary Sean had idea on how to fix the missing militias in mulitple battles per turn, you've got that implemented already?

for the further change you go the way of sean ie tweak the rules but leave the content unchanged? or you go like HF that is leave the rules but add a lot of content.

If it is the first case, you might consider tweaking the monsters further so they'll get abilities as they level up. like upgrading venom 2 to venom 3 for tenth level etc. other idea was to give 0.5 or 1 attack/defence per level on top of equipment bonuses not only hitpoints. and the last idea was to change the horses into more costly to upkeep but also giving base hitpoints instead or in addition to dodge.

If it the second you might consider adding mercanery units appearign as a quite often event - I've started a thread on this, and HF even produced a rough draft of xml, that should work it out, but I haven't yet the time to develop it any further. I will but I'd be happy to share it with someone.

Well, I am glad to have someone finally talk ideas with me so I have an idea what needs to be done.

I don't think fire elementals will be a problem here. I think that was related to the lairs right? Sean had a file that was for lairs only but this mod doesn't use it. I do not use his changes to goodiehuts. I use the normal goodiehuts file but with Sean's changed monsters so that monsters will be challenging but won't actively come after you or grow ridiculously fast. I like it, but let me know what you think. Also, let me know if there is an issue with the fire elementals, I haven't noticed any.

I changed the rules quite a bit because it required it. Having large groups meant I needed to figure out a way to balance heroes, smaller groups and these much larger units. It was the most difficult thing but I have gotten it down I think pretty good, but more testing would be nice.

I will look into monsters leveling up and what skills they get. I didn't really do too much to the monster file, only some minor changes. I don't really follow the MA thread that often so I missed some of the ideas pushed around. I caught some of them though.  

Upkeep is not high in this mod, the reason is that I want empires to be able to field a lot of units, large armies. Also, it takes much less time to train units, this is actually for realism. Since turns are broken up into weeks and months, it just isn't realistic for it to take several weeks to train small amounts of men. The larger groups, 100 and 300, will require more time depending on armor, weapons and such but will still be a lot less then vanilla or MA. I haven't really looked into horses and not sure if anything needs to be done to change them. First try things out and then give me feedback because this mod will play very different from MA in some aspects. 

I hadn't thought about the issue with the militia not being there in multiple battles. I remember reading about it a while back but completely forgot about it, I will look into it. Can you reference where it is discussed so I can look into it? 

As for mercenaries, I am not sure what the issue is? What purpose do mercenaries serve or perhaps I am misunderstanding what you are saying, please explain a bit because I am uncertain what you mean, sorry.

I am starting up a new game with the mod now and will think about what you have said here. Let's keep the discussion going so I can fix stuff and get good content in.

Noticed some problems with the ability bonus options in faction creation so I fixed them. Should I add more weaknesses to choose from and perhaps more bonuses?

Also fixed the [ViewUnit] Go To button 

and also fixed the backgroundinfo in sovereign creation was showing the wrong thing.

The problem was, that when fought they disappeared. I think the problem was that the fire elemental wasn't planned to be in groups, but a single figure monster

You perhaps implemented dodge reductions of champions when attacked by larger trained units?

it's not difficult to train a person in wielding a weapon (especially in army, when a limited number of moves is necessary) the main problem that takes time is drilling - ability to move and fight as unit, especially for cavalry units, when you talk about units of 100 and 300 you need a lot of time to synchronise their movement. it takes a few missteps to break such unit into incoherent mob. Half a year for such unit is a reasonable time IMO. three months for a crash course.
basically I think rushing should be disallowed for training or at least with a minus several levels penalty.

I need to find out the exact threads, but the issue is that if you face several attacks on a city, there is a 50% chance you will defend the city with no city militia. Sean solved the issue (but I don't think he implemented it) by summoning the units onto battlefield instead of setting them as city defences.

Look here: https://forums.elementalgame.com/438334

sure

Sentinemodo, I will give you some examples, in regards to training and drilling, etc. Are you familiar with Romance of the three kingdoms? I am a huge fan so this is where I get my inspiration from in regards to this. It is true that it takes much longer to develop a elite fighting force but units you are training aren't necessarily elite and also the amount of soldiers being recruited is very low and therefore requires a lot less time. Thousands of soldiers can be recruited in a relatively short amount of time and even trained in basic training relatively quickly as well. It took about 7 years for Cao Cao to train an elite army of approximately 70,000 men (and these were the best of the best) which defeated Yuan Shao's much larger army of a few hundred thousand. 

Training 100 men in basic to moderate level training really only requires a few weeks, perhaps a month to a month and a half, depending on the ability of the trainer. We are not talking the elite of the elite here. Also you have to assume that most people have some basic level training in weapons and such as the world itself is a very harsh world and would require people be able to defend themselves. As time goes by and the world becomes more civilized, people will tend to be softer but at the same time you have a much more well oiled machine to more efficiently train and equip units which could also equal less time. Putting together an army together of several units will take months of in game time, which it should. It should not take years though. If you think about it this way, I think it makes sense.

Now if you want to look at a more modern example (well somewhat more modern) think about the revolutionary war. An army of basically untrained peasants was trained into an elite force over a few months at valley forge, and you are talking a size-able army, not just a few hundred men.

As for militia defending cities, militia are in fact summoned so I think Sean did implement it because I just checked the coreimprovements and militia are in fact summoned to battle.

I implemented new code which I came up with for having large units do less dmg to smaller units and heroes actually. I did not go the way of dodge. Not sure if that even is realistic. I don't see how a hero could dodge a large group of soldiers heh.

I actually have code that makes units do a percentage of dmg, this way smaller units will still do meaningful dmg but larger units are capable of doing a larger amount of dmg. Armor still of course has significance. A smaller unit with good armor will still be capable of defeating a larger unit with inferior weapons and armor. The downside to this is that I had to use one unit slot for chosen abilities to do this, so when designing a unit, you only get to choose two abilities rather than 3 but after trying it out, I didn't think it was so bad. You have to really consider more what traits you want to put on your units.

I haven't seen any problems with fire elementals yet, I will be sure to watch for it this play through.

I see what you mean with the mercenaries thing. Actually there is a world resource already in the mod you can build on which will give you mercenaries every 10 turns or so, a random force of mercenaries which are actually pretty good. Also, there are other world resources that give you units when built on randomly every 10 turns or so like wildlings and such. I am not sure if this does exactly what you want, but it could supplement your forces.

If you want more, perhaps a more robust system can be worked out, I read the thread and see Heavenfall had an idea in the last post. 

After you spend some time playing, let me know what you think about soldiers, upkeep, training times, cavalry, etc. Feedback will help me improve. Also, keep this in consideration, acquiring gold is much slower in this mod as I lowered tax rates significantly. The cost of goods and such have also decreased but can add up and more powerful armors and such will be costly given how much gold can be acquired. I wanted gold to be more of something you use on your heroes, or perhaps to push your workers to build buildings and such rather than there to support your armies, although your units do require upkeep, it won't be so large that you can't build up your forces.

I found one problem but I don't understand why it isn't working. The Tower of Dominion is supposed to give 2 grain, 2 material and 1 essence to your  city but for some reason it isn't giving the 2 Materials. It gives the grain and essence but not the materials. It has always worked before and the code seems fine. Very strange.

---edit--- Okay, I got it to work now, have no idea why it wasn't working for me at first but now it is working. If anyone sees that the tower of dominion in their game isn't giving materials as it should, please let me know.

Did, you verify it's compatibility with 1.2 already?

I am actually going to look into that right now, get back to you soon.

checked the files and it should work just fine without any update necessary.

firing up then, btw. do you overwrite such changes as population costs for pioneer?

Pioneers cost population, I think 25 population per pioneer, but I forgot. Every single unit costs population.

some notes as I play:

1. really do invest some time in making this mod ModManager compatible, this would really help making it more popular, there is even template for MA done, you'd only need to modify it a bit for the files you added.

2. Wraights got +20 dodge bonus through various changes, did you reflect that in the mod?

3. The kraxis are without fortify bonus, not sure hwo I feel about it, but no sign of AI knowing how to use it properly

After much deliberation (never been fond of custom made sovereigns) I've choosen Verga, Large map, everything balance/moderate, except monsters and resources. Sentinemodo difficulty level, 5 opponents, conquest victory as the only option. Archsummoners left out ie. Ceresa and Procipine not among enemies.

I've added Large UI, tentstyle and riverbridge mods to the lot.

--------

whoa, 28 attack right from the start? Verga is a killing machine

I'm loving the levelup traits, had to choose both my sovereign and champion the path of warrior (Craul Gravehands as a trog make very good warrior). However level-up options for level 3 are no choice - you get +5 HP/level from path of warrior. taking driven (+3 init) is no brainer against extra 10 hp that you'll gain in two more levels without wasting a pick. IMO of course, +2HP/level would make it much more difficult choice, and a better suit for further path of defender levelup.

more to come

might be, but in your mod 25 is not material, should 300 to match the current patch

So far I like it.

Got my second town up and running, with two more outposts around. I like that trademark of MA - one turn army build.

There is something disappointing however in the damage done. I mean I got armies that have multiple memebrs (granted this are most basic units) and in combat against simple ruffians with defense 5, I am doing 2-3 damage per strike. I'd expect 5 men do on their very begining 10 or so damage per strike, in such case.

I guess that it might be tough to balance though. I'll see how that plays out in the mid game

One more comment on that minimum damage - when you look at groups of bandits (5 men squads) they do not have that military damage limiting trait. When looked from outside, my units were vastly stronger, in actual combat, they were significantly weaker. Also since champions are not limited this make them an order of magnitude stronger in comparison (and they were in vanilla much stronger than trained).

Im not quite sure what you mean by this: 

"might be, but in your mod 25 is not material, should 300 to match the current patch"

To create a pioneer, you need 25 population. Are you referring to something else? Sorry, a little confused.

The problem with balancing the damage is that there is no way to effectively limit the units, trust me I tried. Ultimately what I did was have to apply a percentage to every unit (except heroes). So units will not do the full damage amount. On the strategy map it will show a much higher number for damage but once you enter battle, the actual damage done will be less and yes, they will do low damage to units with armor. Once you have units of 100 and 300 though, the possibility to do a lot of damage is there. 5 man squads are going to be weak and best used against similar sized units. 

If the 5 men squad bandits weren't limited by the damage then that is a bug which I will look into. They should definitely be limited.

It is true that heroes are going to be stronger then a 5 man squad. Once you start to get larger squads, the heroes wont be as strong and large units should do some serious damage to heroes, depending on armor of course. If this is not the case, I will have to look into it more to balance but from what I have seen in my playthroughs, it worked out okay. Heroes are going to be able to easily take out 5 to 20 guys just like in stories, but 100 and 300 man units will be tough for them. Let me know though if this isn't the case.

This is sort of the idea of how the game should flow:

Early game ---} by far most important units are your heroes, they will do the most damage and are exploring and killing monsters, units mostly there as support

Mid game ----} Units are going to become much more important while heroes are still important but you might need to be more careful

End game ----} Units become very important and heroes will take a more supportive role except magic which of course is always very powerful. Heroes need to be careful though, large groups of archers can take out lightly armored mages and other soldier units should be doing a lot of dmg even to warrior heroes.

Now it may not end up like this and might need balance, let me know. Ive played a few times but i always play a custom mage so I havent tried many different ways of playing.

Oh by the way, you may think that heroes are way more powerful but when you have a 300 man squad with over 4000hp, you might rethink that heh. Heroes do get a bonus to attacking large squads though. I might need to balance that out a bit. Let me know if they are slaughtering large groups. They aren't supposed to be able to so I can lower the bonuses.

I am still in early game , enjoying immensely

all right... moving into mid game slowly

There is something utterly funny, when you see miss ie. unit dodging attack when it have 20 men in the units.

really, unless you can't see at all, you need to hit something in such mass.

There should be two mechanics in place.

first, larger units get penalty to dodge, not sure how severre, but -100 at the largest squads possible seems about right, they have the hitpoints to soak anyway.

secondary, this units should impose penalty to dodge on attack, meaning out of 100 people somebody really have to hit and once you get hit, other blows will follow - nec hercules contra plures. so the larger squad the larger dodge penalty of the enemy (I'd rather that choice than accuracy boosts, as that comes from training, and will not affect extremally high dodge units)

confirmed, bandit groups don't have military trait, while darklings do.

also darklings with charge are NASTY

the darklings on wargs however also should have that trait.

I am fairly sure that number of traits available is a varaible that can be changed. since limting to two traits limit the units somewhat

You know what, I might have purposefully left out the military traits with the 5 man group bandits and darklings on wargs so that they would pose more of a challenge early game for your heroes. They become nonfactors once your heroes level up a little and you get 20 man groups. I think it is more fun that way but tell me what you think.

Now, I didn't think about dodge for some reason. It does make sense that large units of men should not be able to dodge attacks and should also be able to hit smaller units easier because of the sheer number. I will look into it, gotta think how to apply that.

As for number of traits, I tried looking for what affected that variable and couldn't find it. If you know where I can find it, I will change it. Or if anyone knows, please let me know.