_A Shield Lying on the Water_ (_ASLOW_), in its current and no-story-implemented-yet form, is a re-imaginining of Mount&Blade with the character beginning in the role of a prince rather than a wandering adventurer. Towns collect taxes, produce military parties, train garrisons, and can be fought over; the PC can conquor territory, make and break alliances, and so on.

---

Features

---

• City-conflict system, with internal economies, party and garrison production, and attacking and conquest of towns
• Limited diplomatic system, incorporating a generous number of factions
• Complete new unit collection, setting, etc.
• New/revamped weapon system, with a broader range of uses for most weaponry, particularly spears/lances -- although there are significantly fewer types, in a more CRPG-ish hierarchy (which is a fault)...
• Town-morale system.
• And, hopefully, the beginning of considerably more than this.

---

File History

---

Small set of fixes and re-balancings from the original.

Thu, Jun-22-2006

Town treasuries and rates of income increased, to allow more parties to be purchased and put into the field.

Player ability to get money from towns dramatically reduced, and prices for hiring soldiers from stewards increased. (Use the taverns! Credit Yoshiboy.)

Giving away towns significantly harder to do accidentally, and impossible for Baheisir. (Credit HHUK)

Incorporated Chel's horses, at his suggestion.

Cruciform swords are no longer produced by Honseli cultural influence, and two-handed swords are less common in Soltalline cities.

Sat, Jun-24-2006

Last references to Swadia and Vaegirandom (the deserter parties) removed. (Whoops.)

Tutorial messages removed, as well as Zendar and all things related to it. (Module_dialogs looks empty now...)

*Probably* fixed the problem with factions turning friendly after one of their cities was taken -- I haven't observed this myself, but I certainly believe that it could have happened.

If the PC learns to use a family of weapons (in initial chargen), he starts with appropriate equipment.

I had thought that the heavy armor of the game wasn't actually a problem, but was mostly just a function of placeholder graphics.
I hadn't fought in Sivas.
Ick. (Sivaic troops should be less tank-like now...)

Broader variety of textures for shields (I think).

Cities should produce fewer parties now.

Morale system. Attacking a city decreases morale, as do the operations of recruiters and defensive foragers; morale increases with successful raiding parties and the passage of time. Low morale leads to the appearance of bandit parties, rebels, loyalist revolutionaries, and so on.

In this version, morale is hyper-sensitive, just to demonstrate that it's there and it works; future versions will have more reasonable values -- particularly once I've figured out more-often-encountered ways of decreasing it.

Mon, Jun-26-2006

Cuirass-kantis reduced to strength level of cuirass-kasja; extravagant variety removed. Galine plate armors weakened; the main differences in varieties are now in weight and strength requirements. Feminine iron through extravagant (and ancient) armors removed.

Morale now on a significantly narrower range than the previously-planned percentile scale. Cities significantly less volatile nonetheless.

The broader varieties of appearances for horses and shields should be working now.

Rebel peasants have a broader range of armors.

Map smoothed and river crossings considerably improved.

Borcha, Four Ways Inn, and the two castles removed. (By the way, did NPC parties ever attack the castles? If so,
what happened when and if the castles ran out of troops?)

Kukri can no longer be used to stab. (Bet you didn't notice...)


Mon, Jun-26-2006

Fix of a single bug, but an epochal one. Discovered that scripts don't preserve register state -- if you've used the Official Module System, you'll comprehend why not knowing that could lead to serious trouble; if you aren't, all you really *need* to know is that it was extremely bad.

Town restocking no longer produces a deluge of error messages (driving everything off the screen indefinitely), nor does it run nearly as slowly now. Other areas of the mod, likewise, are significantly more stable.

Thu, Jun-29-2006

Comprehensive rebalancing of the internal economy and party templates. The game is now playable without cheating, and moreover, we no longer have storms of a hundred parties at a time on the map.

The map will look disconcertingly empty for the first day or two; give it time. The various border cities *will* mutually inflame each other into a state of wild panic, producing relatively large numbers of stacks, but they can't do it instantly.

A few other little things have been addressed, too -- see the forums for details.

Sun, Jul-02-2006

Bandits and deserters now appear, to a certain extent, regardless of morale. Also, conversations with deserters work now.

Merchants now sell food reliably.

Some new graphics incorporated -- view credits.txt.

The chest in Baheisir now works.

Wife faces improved.


Thu, Jul-13-2006

"Invasion Forces" finally function as intended, and actually attack towns! (It's ai_bhvr_track_party, by the way.) Towns can now be conquored -- but the feature isn't much balanced yet...

A few NPC allies have been implemented for the player.

Much better faces, especially for Honseli men.

NPC allies now get bonuses on victory in battle, in the manner of _The Island_ and Janus' script.

Somewhat more story and characterization in the opening game menus.

Incorporation of the Weapons Expansion (the one with the huge variety of Valentine Armories-style swords).

Tue, Jan-16-2007

Port to .808 -- my first port, and I hope I don't need to do that too terribly often...

Much better opening menus.

A few new items, and much more thorough helmets.

Some miscellaneous bugs fixed -- the player no longer disappears from time to time, for ex. -- although I seem to have introduced one with deserters. Don't try to make a treaty with them...


Sat, Jan-27-2007

Joining battles with cities in them no longer crashes the game.

Several cities renamed (though the kingdom of Sivas is still in need of renaming, as is Baheisir).

Recruitment of troops from stewards now limited by population concerns of a sort.

A more varied set of terrains on the map.

Many shaders improved.

A rare but massive bug in the cost for peace treaties has been fixed.