O'hea's Rookie Mod

[O'Hea]

I'm new to modding, but rather than pace myself I intend to dive straight into making a total conversion mod. This mod is purely for my enjoyment and will reflect my particular mindset, but if any interest develops I'll be happy to share whatever I get done. I also plan on asking for lots of help, so I figured I'd best formally announce myself.

The Concept
The heart of this mod will be two alternative history campaigns featuring fictional factions, all based on and representative of different military and political cultures. The point of reference is the period roughly between the Italian Wars and the War of the League of Augsburg, when armies were starting to develop a modern organization but still had those badass swords and spears I've grown so attached to. However, anachronism is the name of the game. At 1500, the Holy Roman Empire has disintegrated, Spain's Moorish overlords are battling a Christian insurgency, and confederation of Italian states are attempting unification 300 years before the time of Garibaldi. Fun stuff like that.

The Factions
At this point, I intend to use the original MTW map with some minor modifications, mostly reshaping/splitting regions and adding land bridges. Factions come in four flavors: Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox and Muslim.

These factions are set in stone (in one form or another):
Kingdom of England
Kingdom of France
Al-Andalus (The Moors)
Barbary States (The Berbers)
Egypto-Syriac Caliphate (Egypt)
Hiberno-Scottish Kingdom (The Gaels)
The Netherlands
The Spanish
Brandenburg
Austria
Roman Empire (The Byzantines)
Tatar Khaganate
Muscovy
Poland-Lithuania
Rumania
Italian Confederation
Kalmar Union



Possible factions (depends mostly on balance):
Confederation of the Rhine
Great Britain

The Tech Tree
*Note: Everything in this section is subject to change*
I intend to organize the tech tree based on the notion that each faction will have certain 'regular' units, and regardless of where they're recruiting men from they will normally organize them into those units- however, local and regional varieties of troops were widely used to support these regulars.

Regular troops represent the professional or semi-professional soldiers of a faction and will tend to be good quality but expensive. Regional troops, recruitable across many provinces, will be more cost-effective, and will represent troops that are, say, Eastern European in general rather than specifically Russian. Local troops will include groups like Scots or Swiss, who are found in only one or two provinces but have distinctive military skills. At low tech levels local troops tend to be roughly the same as regional troops in cost and quality, but at higher tech levels produce elite units that are among the best in their class. Provinces with local units will be scarce, but very advantageous to own.

The Armies
For the sake of convenience and balance, I'm organizing troops into 6 categories (7 counting Artillery): Infantry in Light, Heavy, and Pike varieties, and Cavalry in Light, Heavy, and Lance varieties. Every faction will have access to a Regular unit in each category at any given tech level (we're going by Fort level here), with their particular traits and overall effectiveness varying from faction to faction. Regional armies will be more lopsided- don't expect to find much good Light Cavalry in western Europe, for example, or many good Pikemen in north Africa. Local units even more so, with Switzerland yielding almost exclusively pikes and heavy infantry and the Crimea yielding mostly light cavalry and lances.

*More to come as work progresses*
EDIT: Edited to reflect current Factions, and that there will be two, not one, campaigns

[Raz]

Sounds ambitious. More detail will get you more of a response, but it's got me interested nonetheless.
I'd be glad to give a few pointers when if you get stuck.

All the best with the mod.

[O'Hea]

Well I've already hit a bit of a technical roadblock- I had just installed MTW on my new computer and the game crashes every time it goes to the campaign map (battles work fine). If worst comes to worst I can work on this on the old computer, but I wanna see if I can't get it to run on the nicer machine first. I was browsing the technical help section and it seems like it's a fairly common problem.

[O'Hea]

While this is still in the brainstorming stages, I'll go ahead an elaborate on how the armies will be balanced. Since the tactics and technology being used in the mod's timeframe have very little in common with those in use in the vanilla game, balance has to be taken from the ground up.

In my first post, I stated that there would be 6 main categories of troops. They are:

Light Infantry (LI)
Heavy Infantry (HI)
Pike Infantry (PI)
Light Cavalry (LC)
Heavy Cavalry (HC)
Lance Cavalry (LA)

Light Infantry and Light Cavalry are typically Fast, can Skirmish, and are in the loose 'rabble' formation. Some of the better ones will be able to hide in the open. They'd be no match for their Heavy counterparts in direct combat, but they have superior mobility and flexibility.

Heavy Infantry and Heavy Cavalry are slower but tougher. They will often have missile weapons, like pistols or occasionally carbines, but they will be unable to skirmish. They fight in close order and can form Wedge.

Pikemen and Lancers are more specialized than the others, but can vary wildly from unit to unit. Pikemen are infantry that have bonuses against cavalry and gain rank bonuses from their formation. Lancers specialize in charging and are the most effective cavalry to use against infantry. Some are fast and lightly armored, some are slow and heavy, but they all fight in close order like Heavies.

I'm currently working on getting Regular rosters for each faction as well as rosters for each region, I'll expand on this as work progresses.

[Sundae]

How are you developing? Any news?

[O'Hea]

Sorry for the lack of updates, I keep changing my mind on how exactly I want this mod to play out. It was briefly moved to Medieval II, since I kept getting CTDs whenever I tried to run old-school Medieval, but as of tonight I have MTW running beautifully, I'm on vacation, and I'm hoping I can get some work done in earnest. As soon as I can get some tools, I'm getting cracking. If any of the more experienced modders here are willing to give me guidance, I'd appreciate the help and be sure to credit you if the mod ends up getting released to the public.

Fortunately, the MIITW stage has given me a lot of fresh new ideas that can help differentiate this mod from the already excellent selection of quality MTW mods. For example:
-Buildings representing Mercenary companies, including Landsknechten, Condotierri, and Swiss Pikes
-Addition of Military Academy line of buildings offering Morale and Discipline upgrades, new elite units, and stat-boosting Titles for your family members
-Creating "dead zones" to limit connectivity and make the map feel "bigger" (cutting land access between Egypt and the Murabitun, etc)
-Possibly implementing a P&M-style Colony system (where colonies are represented as buildings in coastal provinces)

More to come as work progresses! Any and all support, input, or feedback is welcomed and appreciated!

[Raz]

I'm here to help... well, as best as I can.

I've replied to your post in the other thread regarding tools.

I recommend that you focus your efforts on small parts of the mod and expand from there. That way you won't get too deep into the details and then suddenly "Wait, I've changed my mind...".
Start simple and expand from there.

Heh, I've also considered putting dead zones into mods. It sounds like it could work, just blank regions that cannot be built upon and have no income. I've never gotten around to actually implementing it though. It'd be ace if you did because AFAIK no MTW mod has been released with these "dead zones".

A feature: I would really like to see the whole split in the building tree between Fortresses/Castles and Towns/Cities like in M2TW. It'd be extremely difficult to do and I don't recommend jumping straight into it, but if I ever saw that implemented into the MTW engine, it'd be grand!

Hmm, there's some other things I'd like to say, but details escape me.

Keep at it. If you ever need help, you know where to ask!
... no really, just ask. I don't mind.

[O'Hea]

Wow, that site's a goldmine. Thanks for the links :)

And I was actually looking at ways to use the city/castle split during the MII phase- I mean, they wouldn't exactly be "castles" because of the timeframe, but the idea that you would have settlements that are rich but vulnerable and others that are centers of military activity would definitely add to the game. It should be pretty simple to implement code-wise, you would just have Castle (or, let's say Redoubt) build trees and City build trees that would be mutually exclusive. Design-wise, however, it would add a lot of work to balancing the maps and to designing new buildings. I guess at this point it's a "I'll cross that bridge when I come to it" situation, I'm prioritizing map design and factions for now.

Also, just to see how this idea goes over- having read around a bit more, I'm starting to like Asai Nagamasa's approach to handling ships, namely getting rid of them. To compensate, I'd be increasing the base trade income of territories substantially, increase the rate that Trader buildings increase that income, and have Ports generate their own (possibly fixed) income. I'd also be adding lots of land bridges. Honestly, the idea is appealing to me because it removes the opportunity for the player to exploit sea trade and keeps the AI focused on its immediate neighbors, as well as better preserving the Old School Total War chess-type feel.

[gollum]

Interesting stuff, good luck O'Hea.