Faction member names

[barocca]

I am working on lists of samurai at the moment

the object is to give each clan at least 120 unique members (40 leaders and 80 generals) plus at least half a dozen hero's

we do not know if the game engine can handle such huge lists,
but i believe it can

possible clans (depending on just how many real names i can locate)
(29 possibles so far - will have to test just how many the game can handle at one time)

Amako		Asakura-asai	Ashikaga	Chosokabe
Date		Hoganji		Hojo		Honda                
Hosokawa	Ichimonji	Imagawa		Maeda
Minamoto	Mogami		Mongol		Mori
Oda		Otomo		Ryuzoji		Sanada
Satake		Satomi		Shimazu		Taira
Takeda		Tokugawa	Toyotomi	Uesugi
Ukita

I will post lists in this thread as i finish them.

anyone wishing to expand on such lists is free to do so
(please dont post lists of people until i ask for them,
i have plenty of lists - now i have to read and sort them all)

[barocca]

The game can "hold" 32 clans at once, including rebels,
that gives me 31 "active" clans possible,

Today I have added Hatakeyama to the list,
despite only being 60% through sorting my resources i just keep running into details about Hatakeyama that have given me more than enough members to make a clan,

some others are still running"short"

(i have 20MB+ of text files, each with lists and dates and heirs and events, they need to be read, names compiled into lists and then the lists cross-referenced to avoiud duplicates)

30 proposed active clans (still room for one more)

Amako		Asakura-asai	Ashikaga	Chosokabe
Date		Hoganji		Hojo		Honda                
Hosokawa	Ichimonji	Imagawa		Maeda
Minamoto	Mogami		Mongol		Mori
Oda		Otomo		Ryuzoji		Sanada
Satake		Satomi		Shimazu		Taira
Takeda		Tokugawa	Toyotomi	Uesugi
Ukita		Hatakeyama

Cheers,
B.

[Yoshitsune]

With the inclusion of the Taira, Minamoto and Mongol factions I guess this is the list for all planned eras including the earlier ones. With the Sengoku-jidai being the most popular era for gamers it makes sense to have a preponderance of the well-known later clans.

[barocca]

well the inclusion of minamoto and taira allows for earlier campaigns,
Onin war, Gempei war and so on,

of course i dont know much about those,

Naturally we want the Mongol capmaigns as well :-)

that is the plan

[Yoshitsune]

I've got a pretty large amount of data on all aspects of the early samurai period if you ever need it (11th-14th Centuries - 'Way of Horse and Bow' era). To be honest I think this period might make an interesting (to me anyway ;) ) sub-mod with a different set of clans, starting territories etc. Good luck!

[barocca]

I've got a pretty large amount of data on all aspects of the early samurai period if you ever need it (11th-14th Centuries - 'Way of Horse and Bow' era). To be honest I think this period might make an interesting (to me anyway ;) ) sub-mod with a different set of clans, starting territories etc. Good luck!

IF you wish to
1. determine your list of clans,
2. which shogun province/provinces the clan should have at campaign start,
2a - what date is campaign start!!
3. provide me with an image displaying their mon/symbol and perhaps what colours should be associated with them,
4. what is special about the clan? (unit specialty) (or nothing special at all is ok too)
5. what unit mix is available for the time period (any restrictions on clans)
6. are there any "missing" unit types as far as you are concerned
(cannot promise, but can have a look-see what can be done)
7. determine if my list of titles for provinces and buidlings is ok.
8. a tech tree please (we can make the prod files, then again you can make prod files if you so desire)

8. Names.
preferably a clan should have 30 to 40 leaders, 60 to 80 generals and 5 to 10 heroes/villians

list needs to include minimal data
name
date of birth (approx)
special attribute for Famous leaders (min 2 leaders - max 5) and the Heroes (min 0 heroes - max 10)
(go easy on the stats - too big makes game less fun)

now 95 to 130 names IS a big ask,

Leaders IS the important one,

Look for leaders "known as x when child", "also known as", "changed name to" , titles held, nicknames, etc etc

still not enough?
look for "patterns" in their names, you can then generate fictional heirs based on what you think they may have called them,
as long as the bulk are (or were) real people a few extra heirs wont matter that much to me at all.

WHAT CLANS were Retainers of your chosen clans?
from them we can draw ronin to flesh out the generals and heroes


once you have all that we have the guts of your chosen period mod

the game IS hardcoded to 32 clans,
but it has never been made clear if that is "at one time" or "covering all expansions"
EITHER WAY we can easily make another mod especially for that period

So you have 31 clans you can add - one spot must be for rebels, TOTAL 32.


PS - if you see (in my list) any clans you want to include contact me and I can send you MY list for that clan, my lists are still under construction, but i can send you what i have so far and updates if you wish.

cheers,
B.

PPS - we can do this for as many different era's as you wish to research!!
other ideas include using the starting positions of a small war from history as the start of a full campaign,

"what if" scenarios and so on
B.

[Yoshitsune]

Thanks for your guidance. I can provide many of the things you mention but there are some difficulties with this period depending on the amount of abstraction/accuracy accepted.

There's certainly less information available for this era than the Sengoku-jidai and the unit mix is more restricted (can you say 'horse-archers rule ok?' ) so it might not appeal to many except those interested in the period.

1. I can come up with a list of 31 clans

2. Provinces; this is a difficulty of the period. Taking, say, 1000 as a start date, The provinces of Japan only had a nominal administrative role for most of the era in question. Clans didn't 'rule' whole provinces like mini-principalities like the Sengoku Daimyo. Provinces had a nominal governor appointed by the court who was generally an absentee noble (pre Yoritomo) with a deputy-governor who was usually the chieftain of the most powerful clan in the province. Even the DG with his military backing was a nomimal provincial ruler because provinces (especially in the Kantō) often contained several prominent clans. After Yoritomo took power these became the 'shugo'.

The real basis of power were increasingly the semi-private shōen estates that the samurai clans and militant temples established through a complex process. Theoretically all other land belonged to the state under the control of the imperial court or the shogun/bafuku post Yoritomo (think Senate in RTW terms). Before Yoritomo took power the struggle for Japan can be seen as firstly a struggle for the rich land of the Kantō - provinces such as Musashi, Sagami, Kazusa, Izu and Kai each had several prominent clans.

3. I've managed to find the emblems of many early clans. Use of 'mon' was in its infancy in this period was usually just a 'favourite emblem' until Yoritomo began granting the use of certain designs to those who supported him. Only colours associated with the period are the white of the Minamoto supporters and the red of the Taira (note: several offshoot Minamoto families initially supported the Taira and later vice versa)

4. Have examples of clan specialities and attitude (eg the defensive/neutral northern Fujiwara of Mutsu and Dewa)

5. It's mainly heavy cavalry horse archers supported by light, medium and heavy foot retainers armed 2/3 with naginata and 1/3 bow. Eastern clans were rated as having better foot warriors and better hand-to-hand. The armed temples would be predominantly medium foot naginata monks supported by 'early-ashigaru' naginata and archers. They'd also have a few ex-samurai horse archers (can't find any evidence in the early war chronicles of naginata cavalry except for one or two figures in picture scrolls - mainly 14th century).

In the very early period (935-1100) there is mention of the ōyumi crossbow artillery in the chronicles which was a relic of the Chinese conscript system Japan used pre-Heian era. They fell out of use with the growth of private samurai power based on alliances of small clans which meant centrally-trained specialists became scarce.

6. It would be nice to have the warrior monk o-mikoshi portable shrines

7. Covered in 2 (will look at buildings)

8. Will attempt a tech tree. Looking at the MTW one it seems much would be restricted to Level 1/2 - another reason why this era might have limited appeal.

Names

Won't find that many for each clan, I'm afraid - apart from the Taira, Fujiwara and Minamoto perhaps. Certainly clan chieftains and 'heroes' mentioned in the chronicles (Heike Monogatari, Taiheiki etc). Given names usually followed a pattern as you say so can be 'created'...

I have a book called the 'Historical and Geographical Dictionary of Japan' by E. Papinot which has some good geneologies.

I'm conscious of the task becoming more difficult as I think about all the aspects but I'll certainly look for some solutions. The Mongol invasions is another story; I have the clans, names and mon of the Japanese tasked with initially repelling the onslaught (Kyushu and western-tip of Honshu clans) but if the Mongols had successfully progressed in-land more information would be necessary..

Cheers,
Mike

[barocca]

(being fastidiously historically accurate is not a neccessity for me)

with names as long as we have half a dozen or so genuine leaders that we can make historical famous kings, maybe a retainer or two to make a hero and we can extrapolate the rest of the clans "roster"

provinces, near enough is good enough,
if two clans should be in the same province move one of them to a neighbouring province.


extrapolations can be expanded if we happen to know one or two leaders childhood names, if they changed their name at any point
if they fought in a spectaular battle or in a spectacular fashion,

one sengoku samurai's nickname was a province on a map he was displaying in front of a group of generals allied to his "master" that had never met him before
several samurai were called "Devil" or "yari"
often were also called after the province they were from
or the province they conquered
or a battle they were heroic in
or titles they held in province/government/court
etc
etc

then we go to patterns,


as for retainers if you can find ANY memebrs of clans that were retainers, we can then "draft" other known later era memebers of that clan for them

like many peoples japanese are proud of ancestors and named children after parents, grandparents, great grandparents etc

(this is something that i am finding an awful lot of
xxx hideharu fought in battle xy in 1480,
xxx hideharu fought in battle xz in 1580 ???
conclusion - Two individuals named xxx hideharu!!)

actually a couple of clans have three individuals with the same name, and in a couple of instances two of them were alive at the same time (one was an old man, one was a baby)

which means we can use sengoku era real names for earlier era campaigns and make the reasonable assumption that xxx born in 1505 is named after our ??fictional?? xxx


Like i said, we dont need to be totally historically accurate
as long as YOU are happy knowing you have done the best research you can with the resources you had access to, well, thats good enough for me
:-)
B.