Some suggestions;)

[Dionysos]

It might be a good idea if you include several campaigns with your mod, perhaps even a separate campaign for each faction. Excuse my ignorance of how much work this may entail, but the benefit of this is that it could allow (potentially,) every single state in Europe, North Africa and Asia Minor to be included. For example, the player might want to play as England, so states like France and Spain; states that often came in contact with England in this period could be represented as separate factions, whilst other states such as Poland, Russia etc., states that are much further away from England, could be represented as rebel states.
This would allow many other factions to be featured in the mod, ie. states like Ireland and Scotland which are much more relevant to England than those much further afield. Needless to say other states such as Russia and Poland (and everywhere else!) can have their own seperate campaigns featuring their neighbouring states as in game factions, and then England, France and Spain etc. can go over to the rebels. Thus playing different national/factional campaigns would feature a different selection of opponents -the rest would be appear as rebels.

It might also be nice a idea if Florence could be featured in the mod, as Florence was, as many sources claim, very important to the Renaissance;
["The starting place of the Renaissance is almost universally ascribed to Northern Italy, especially the city of Florence." -http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renaissance]

Florence was also where the notorious Medici lived, and was also the home of Michelangelo, Donatello, Macchiaveli, Brunelleschi etc., a great many important figures.


I'm not sure if you have any thoughts about what to replace the Cursus Honorum with, but might I suggest a list of positions in the church, as these were fiercely vied for! Perhaps also, families such as the Borgias and the Medici could also get incorporated some how into the mod; if its of any use/interest their family trees/lists can be found at; [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medici] and[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Borgias]

Well I hope these suggestions are of some use to you, and good luck with making your mod!

[Silver Rusher]

The feature you first suggested was actually the RTW "Provincial Campaign", a feature that was unfortunately never included. Adding factions that are not in the actual mod would not work, but if we were to create a new map for the provincial campaigns it may well be worth the effort.

Also, Florence has been merged with Genoa and Milan to create an "Italians" faction. I would rather not turn any of these states into rebels.

Thanks for the suggestions,
SR

[Uesugi Kenshin]

The only thing like this that I can foresee happening would if we finished this and moved on to create seperate mods using much of the same resources that focus on a specific area, suchn as Western Europe or Eastern Europe. That would make it possible to add factions with less influence on the large scale events but plenty of influence over their neighbors such as Ireland, Florence, Scotland and possibly Wales if the time period fits. However, this would be a project for afterwards if the team wants to stick together and go on to make more mods for the community.

[QwertyMIDX]

Have you contacted any historians of Early Modern Europe, you might be able to get some professors to do a lot of the historial research for you. It would make the mod better in the long run and also save you some time slogging through books and primary sources and prevent the mod using second class info.

[QwertyMIDX]

Also creating a single Italian faction is even worse in a Rennesiance themed game than it was in MTW, maybe there is a way you could avoid this? Using the three Roman familes and the Senate system, but replacing them with Florence, Venience Genoa and the Pope might work, but the Pope should have sway with factions other than just the Italians, so I'm not sure how that would work, maybe the mission system could be expanded or something, I'm not sure how much of this is hardcoded.

[GodsPetMonkey]

It's quite simply down to the restriction of the number of factions we can have in game (damn CAs hard coded limits).

Whilst many modding tasks have been boosted, they have overlooked some key areas, sigh.

But with Italy, it doesn't matter what route we take, people will complain, if we just choose one of the major states over all others, some will say 'city/region X was more important', and by taking the unified italy route, we get people saying its ahistorical.
We know that, but at this point in time, its the best solution we can come up with. If you want it changed, pester CA to give us a greater number of faction 'slots' ingame, as it stands, there is nothing else we can really do.

[QwertyMIDX]

Yeah well of course. What are the 18(?) factions you're using now?

[GodsPetMonkey]

Yeah well of course. What are the 18(?) factions you're using now?

Dunno, I just do the units ~D

I know a thing or 2 about the text files, hence my commentary.

[QwertyMIDX]

Fair enough, could you see if you could find out what the CTW factions are supposed to be?

[Celtic_Winter]

Qwerty,
the citadel total war thread, page 1, can answer your question about factions. As much as I would love to see the Italian states in the game, it is rather hard. Only by just including the important ones(Venice,Milan,Naples?) we would have to remove 3 other factions, and I think it is just overall, easier to just have one Italian faction instead of 3 or more. Makes the gameplay less limited and gives the player more options.

[Silver Rusher]

We don't have one Italian faction, we have two. Venice and Milan. All others are going to be rebels.

[Yggdrasill]

I have a suggestion regarding Strategic Forts.
If it is possible, we could change the graphics of the forts so that they no longer look like Roman like military camps, but an army encampment more suitable to the Renaissance - war wagons. So instead of timber walls we would have an intermittent circle of wagons. We could even include gunpowder weapons to shoot from it (if it's possible for arrows to be fired from towers this should be as well).
The Hussite wars made such tactics famous, but virtually every army of the period while on march would camp in such enclosures. What do you think?

[Silver Rusher]

That's more of an army camp than a fort. Remember, we're talking about spending periods of more than a year in those places. Do you really think an army would spend a year in a wagon circle? No, a fort is a fort, not a temporary encampment.

[Uesugi Kenshin]

Yeah, but we could make them look different, I would guess that that was planned already, maybe different style of walls or something if that is accurate. I do not know much about the forts of the time obviously, if anyone does are there any differences?

[QwertyMIDX]

The fortress of choice after the advent of mobile artillery, circa the French Invasion of Italy in 1494 was the Trace Italienne which appeared as early as the 1480's.

This is the best picture I could find in the quick google search I did. I'm sure there are much better ones out there that could help.

http://home.planetinternet.be/~ld100084/buskruit/buskruit_afb/buskruit_afb_43.jpg

[QwertyMIDX]

Basically low slopping (owing to the effect of cannons on tall stone castle walls, spectacular though they must have to been to watch I'd think the defenders might be rather unhappy at about it) and that distinctive star shape to provide a wide field of fire are the signature features of the Trace Italienne. It was pretty much the universal style for European forts from the late 15th century onward to the middle 19th so I think it should do for at least the second portion of the game. As far as I know more traditional looking medieval style castles remain prevalent before that although they were already becoming obsolete. The later stages of the Hundred Years War and the fall of Constantinople pretty much convinced all of Europe that the day of the Castle was over by the close of the 15th century. So if possible Castles from 1402-1500 and Trace Italienne from 1480 onward, becoming available to different factions at different dates. I have no idea about the feasibility of using two different types of forts with some sort of time trigger, if that’s impossible I would vote for the use of the Trace Italienne for the whole game to reflect the Early Modern rather than the Medieval theme of the game.

[Ignoramus]

Have you contacted any historians of Early Modern Europe, you might be able to get some professors to do a lot of the historial research for you. It would make the mod better in the long run and also save you some time slogging through books and primary sources and prevent the mod using second class info.
As I said in the "We need help" thread, I know loads of history and can do the research for you. Just tell me what you want, and I'll do it.

[Ignoramus]

That looks like a good idea!

[Saranalos]

I have a suggestion regarding Strategic Forts.
If it is possible, we could change the graphics of the forts so that they no longer look like Roman like military camps, but an army encampment more suitable to the Renaissance - war wagons. So instead of timber walls we would have an intermittent circle of wagons.

I found a model of a wagon fort in the battle map editor.

~D

[Uesugi Kenshin]

Cool, BTW what was the: That looks like a great idea! Bit referring to? Was it referring to the bit on new castle designs to depict the new style of forts or what?

[Saranalos]

If that was addressed to me
it is possible, we could change the graphics of the forts so that they no longer look like Roman like military camps, but an army encampment more suitable to the Renaissance - war wagons