One of the current knocks on the game right now is that trained units tend to be glass cannons. In my experience, this is true up until you get to Leather Armor and 5 ppl per unit. After that the survivability improves considerably. I find Chain Armor and above and units become very, very hard to kill.
To improve the early game, I'm creating a Patchwork armor with a prerequisite of Standing Army. This should give early units a bit more survivabiliy without unbalancing things too much. My early testing is pretty positive. Right now, I'm only creating Patchwork Chestpiece, Chaps (greaves) and Hood (helmet).
Part of the problem is, I don't want to have to mod the Core files and force to load from local. Yet Leather armor in vanilla is so whimpy, it's impossible to come up with a Patchwork that is less effective than leather. So to make the Leather technology an upgrade over patchwork, I'm adding Banded Leather Chestpiece, Greaves and Helmet to give the Leather tech a full upgrade on those armor pieces I'm creating in Patchwork. Plus this will enhance Leather armor slightly, again making early Leather units more survivable without making higher level armors not feel like an upgrade.
Version 1.0 can be downloaded from here or from the External Link at the top of this post. (For some reason I'm not able to add an embedded link) After spending some time looking for art that didn't look like leather, I decided to give up until after the next Beta release. The next Beta might make this mod unneeded so I didn't want to waste too much time on it.
Just unzip it into your Mods folder and make sure Mods are enabled in your Options.
Patchwork Mod v1
Added link to Version 1 of the mod in top post.
You should include it in the body of the text. Many people may miss that. It is called "External Link" for those that don't see it. I like the idea here.
I tried to Sean, but I'm not able to add a Link meaning the "link" button (the one that looks like a chain link) is disabled for me. If you have a suggestion on how to enable it, I'd welcome it.
What I do is write something, highlight it, and then click the insert link button. You then can paste in the URL and choose open in new window as the link function.
sean why not include this in your beta mod? seems like a feasible addition
Because you don't build units until later in the game in my mod. I have each player starting out with some midgame units. By the time you need anything besides them, you will already have Leatherworking. It is already a good tech to rush, since it will make your city defenders get leather armor.
I agree in principal that the vanilla is strange to not have any armor on start. My opinion is that the leftover armor from before the Cataclysmic event would still be scavenged and sold to adventurers over the years. Since you are this powerful leader, it makes sense that you would have a guard of well equipped units. In the future you will learn to make these items for yourself. While these mods aren't mutually exclusive, they do handle the issue in different ways. Honestly the armor levels from Patchwork Armor will not keep you alive in my mod. You need chainmail to survive.
ok just a suggestion
Thanks Sean! I wasn't swiping text first. Thanks for the tip!
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