A Shield Lying on the Water

_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 HistorySmall 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-