I recommend the Native Compilation Mod. Guess my post was too long and people didn't read it (
), but it has all the nice features without all the cosmetic stuff. The cosmetic stuff makes my game unstable (too many sounds, something apparently wrong with some of the textures, etc).
As far as Surgery, I swore off taking it because it makes the game too easy. I even modified my npcs to not have it. The NPC lords don't use it, so your mere presence at a battle totally tips the scales into your faction's favor even if you don't fight, because your side will get mostly wounded while the other side will all get killed. It's too gamey imo. For instance, that big battle I participated in vs the Vaegirs with the Nord host - the Nords took loads of casualties like the Vaegirs, but still won due to my help. If I hadn't been there they would have lost, but even with me and my troops the nord army still took enough of a beating to temporarily break it up to recruit more troops. If I had surgery it would have really unbalanced things, making my side win and keep most of their soldiers and would have just moved on and wiped out the Vaegir stuff while their army was gone.
If the AI lords used it to keep their own troops from all dieing I'd be all for using it, but the way its implemented it gives too big of an advantage to the player.
Similar reason why I don't use horses, the AI doesn't respond well to mounted tactics, and it makes the game too easy if you're all mounted. It doesn't respond very well to foot soldier tactics either for that matter, but going foot vs mounted troops at least makes it a challenge.
I guess when you've been playing M&B for six years, you start to come up with personal challenges to make the game more fun
. With surgery and armies of mounted troops (swadian knights or whatever) I could roll over everything and conquer the entire map in no time without even stopping to replace my losses, and the game would be boring. Instead I use the other features in the game to quickly replace troops (in the Compilation mod theres a feature to send out recruiters to bring back troops for you, and I make use of the trainer skill on me and my companions to quickly train troops up to the 3rd and 4th tier, where they're plenty good enough to act as foot soldiers). It makes the game more about managing your resources than just curbstomping everything in your way repeatedly.
After a big battle I have to go back to base and recruit more men, same as the AI lords have to do. The time taken doing that gives the AI more time to act, and I get more interesting situations. Instead of my side just sweeping the map, the other side has time to gather their forces and put up a fight of their own. I prefer longer campaigns where I'm acting as just one of the armies on the map instead of me being the superhero and marching through slaughtering the enemy and conquering them single handedly.
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Topic: Mount and Blade (Read 656528 times)