gollum
02-16-2010, 18:04
Seeing the Main Hall quiet is sad, and so i think i am left with no choice other than... starting a new thread :)
So we have discussed and discussed for factions and units and starting positions to no end; what about our favorite landscapes?
As you all know (or should know) there are five distinct landscape types in MTW:
rocky desert, sand desert, arid, lush and temperate.
Every landscape comes with its own vegetation, but it can be combined with any architecture type (that is determined by the declaration of the default province culture for those who mod).
These were meant originally to be tied to the map - for example for those who wonder why some southern/eastern regions are dark, it is to denounce that they are rock desert provinces. Sand desert provinces are usually despicted... sand deserty in the strategy map, like say Syria or Arabia complete with sand hills. Arid maps contain small hills and coconut trees (with all the MontyPythonesque correlations). Lush maps are denoted by... lush green in the strategy map and conventional forestland, like say most of westen europe, and finally temperate maps are denoted with a distinctively tundric whitewashing as the steppe provinces.
Now this convention is not strictly maintained in the vanilla game, although the strategy map depiction is quite accurate. For example Venice and Milan are depicted as lush and actually should have been lush as they are in fact lush in reality, and yet in the vanilla game the maps are arid. Some home modding can change these inconsistencies, my home mods always do and Cavarel's pocket mod also did.
So, in what order you prefer playing battles in these landscape types? and a few words why please.
To start with:
1. My most favorite landscapes are probably the desert ones. The bareness of the landscape in and around the Holy Land has something of the vastness and silence of the Divine that attracted Christian ascetics and hermits from the earliest centuries of Christianity, and it is quite a setting for decisive encouters that echo the horns of Hattin, Yarmuck and other such famous battles. Sand storms make the encounters particularly dramatic. And after the fight, one senses how the dead must suffer the vultures that were eagerly awating the end of the battle to take their own trophies...
2. Arid. Friendly and majestic at the same time, arid with its nice plummy groves and brown prosperus fields transports one well into the Southern Italian climate as a Norman Sicilian King or in Byzantine Greece/Anatolia as a Roman Prince, or as an Almohad or Christian Spanish Iberian Lord or as a Turkish Sultan, wise and cruel. It echoes the richness of nature in pine and olive tree groves, with the endless summer song of the cicadas, that slightly covers the sound of the waves from the coast, above the drywalls that divide the fields.
However the arid landscape is also very imposing when applied to the flat vastness of the land in Khazar, beautifully introducing the Asiatic steppe: flat, vast and dusty worn out by the hoofs of impious and ruthless horsemen from the wilderness...
3. Lush. Especially inviting when coupled with the rolling hills as in northern france/germany. Also very well represented when combined with the white rocks of Dover or Cornwall as one lands his forces to take over the British Isles in a new Hastings. The soft fields divided by hedges are occasionally interrupted by a small village that will eventually due to the proximity to the battlesite (or due to the cunning of its inhabitans) give its name to the battle that is about to happen...
4. Temperate. Particularly brooding and moody, the temperate landscape of MTW gives chills when i enter, under a grey and ominous sky, that is ready to be torn apart and drown all in a cataclysmic rain, in battle with some Teutonic Knights to fight the Russians or the Mongols or as the Russians to fight some Crusaders (or the Mongols). Especially when the map is large the vastness combined with moodiness is particularly haunting and awakens dark instincts in one. If only the enemy knew what awaits them in that tall and quiet Fir forest...
What about you guys? :)
So we have discussed and discussed for factions and units and starting positions to no end; what about our favorite landscapes?
As you all know (or should know) there are five distinct landscape types in MTW:
rocky desert, sand desert, arid, lush and temperate.
Every landscape comes with its own vegetation, but it can be combined with any architecture type (that is determined by the declaration of the default province culture for those who mod).
These were meant originally to be tied to the map - for example for those who wonder why some southern/eastern regions are dark, it is to denounce that they are rock desert provinces. Sand desert provinces are usually despicted... sand deserty in the strategy map, like say Syria or Arabia complete with sand hills. Arid maps contain small hills and coconut trees (with all the MontyPythonesque correlations). Lush maps are denoted by... lush green in the strategy map and conventional forestland, like say most of westen europe, and finally temperate maps are denoted with a distinctively tundric whitewashing as the steppe provinces.
Now this convention is not strictly maintained in the vanilla game, although the strategy map depiction is quite accurate. For example Venice and Milan are depicted as lush and actually should have been lush as they are in fact lush in reality, and yet in the vanilla game the maps are arid. Some home modding can change these inconsistencies, my home mods always do and Cavarel's pocket mod also did.
So, in what order you prefer playing battles in these landscape types? and a few words why please.
To start with:
1. My most favorite landscapes are probably the desert ones. The bareness of the landscape in and around the Holy Land has something of the vastness and silence of the Divine that attracted Christian ascetics and hermits from the earliest centuries of Christianity, and it is quite a setting for decisive encouters that echo the horns of Hattin, Yarmuck and other such famous battles. Sand storms make the encounters particularly dramatic. And after the fight, one senses how the dead must suffer the vultures that were eagerly awating the end of the battle to take their own trophies...
2. Arid. Friendly and majestic at the same time, arid with its nice plummy groves and brown prosperus fields transports one well into the Southern Italian climate as a Norman Sicilian King or in Byzantine Greece/Anatolia as a Roman Prince, or as an Almohad or Christian Spanish Iberian Lord or as a Turkish Sultan, wise and cruel. It echoes the richness of nature in pine and olive tree groves, with the endless summer song of the cicadas, that slightly covers the sound of the waves from the coast, above the drywalls that divide the fields.
However the arid landscape is also very imposing when applied to the flat vastness of the land in Khazar, beautifully introducing the Asiatic steppe: flat, vast and dusty worn out by the hoofs of impious and ruthless horsemen from the wilderness...
3. Lush. Especially inviting when coupled with the rolling hills as in northern france/germany. Also very well represented when combined with the white rocks of Dover or Cornwall as one lands his forces to take over the British Isles in a new Hastings. The soft fields divided by hedges are occasionally interrupted by a small village that will eventually due to the proximity to the battlesite (or due to the cunning of its inhabitans) give its name to the battle that is about to happen...
4. Temperate. Particularly brooding and moody, the temperate landscape of MTW gives chills when i enter, under a grey and ominous sky, that is ready to be torn apart and drown all in a cataclysmic rain, in battle with some Teutonic Knights to fight the Russians or the Mongols or as the Russians to fight some Crusaders (or the Mongols). Especially when the map is large the vastness combined with moodiness is particularly haunting and awakens dark instincts in one. If only the enemy knew what awaits them in that tall and quiet Fir forest...
What about you guys? :)