America:Total war

This is my idea for a mod for MTW2. It would be a realism mod depicting the Ancient Americas. I am not yet sure of a time period, but it would be some time before the europeans arrived. The map would include Alaska all the way down to the end of South America, and the Carribean. I also am not sure which factions the mod would have, but the Aztecs, Mayans, or Incas would probably be in it. Obviously this is going to be a huge undertaking, so there is going to have to be a large, dedicated team for this to work. If you are interested in helping in this mod post a reply here. Once we get some sort of team going we can start doing research, then choosing the time period, factions, name, etc.

Hey, im interested in this one. Im Argentinean and i have information about the situation here, and i always interested in do something like this. Sorry for my english =P. Good luck

Very Good!!
:thrasher:
im mexican, im plenty of info about the theme, I confess that also been looking forward for something like this, in fact i been wrote somthing thinking in the -now- old RTW... ill be in spanish and english attending to the to major languages in the american continent, also to our agentinian friend...

First, Factions
Primero, facciones

Mexica
Acolhua
Tlaxcallan
Cuexteca
Otomitl
Matlatzinca
Purhe
Mayas Yucatán
Mayas del Sur
Mixteca
Totonacapan
Olmeca-Xicalanca
Chichimeca

those are only mesoamerican civs, intending mesoamerica as the territoria from the center of Mexico to Nicaragua opnly in the incaic zone so developed civs were found... of course we should discard many of them, in order to illustrate the northern and southernamerican civs too... so i put on the table these as the initial list of big 12:

estas son solo civs mesoamericanas, entendiendo Mesoamerica como el teritorio que iba desde el centro de lo que hoy es Mexico hasta la actual Nicaragua su cultura solo se compara a la que se fundo enla zona incaica... por supuesto deberiamos quitar algunas para poder ilustrar el resto de las civs centro y norteamericanas tambien... asi que pongo sobre la mesa esta como la lista inicial de las grandes 12 -de norte a sur-:

:stupido:
Inuit/ Eskimal
Iroquois
Navajo
Totonacapan
Purhe
Mexica
Mixteca
Mayas Yucatán
Muiska (Colombia)
Inca-Quechua
Araucana

I can forward some of the military attributions o f the mesoamerican peoples, but will need help with the rest of the continent... I got illustrations of the armies, both historical and recreations, and know good historical sources, by now, lets see what you think, brothers
:book:
Puedo adelantar algunas de las caracteristicas socilaes y militares de las culturas mesoamericanas, pero necesitaria ayuda con el resto del continente... tengo ilustraciones de los ejercitos, tanto historicas como recreaciones y conozco buenas fuentes historicas, por ahora veamos que piensan ustedes de todo esto, hermanos :2thumbsup:

Thanks for showing interest in this. I've been doing research in this myself and have been thinking about focusing on the mayan period, since they were the most advanced civilization. once we choose a time period, whether it be the one I suggested or another one, we need to find out which civs existed at that time and which ones didn't. Also here are some other possible factions:

Anazasi
Paiute
Goshute
Cherokee
Ute
Cahokia
Pueblo

Anyway tell me what you guys think.

I'm not too knowledgeable about the Native American groups, but I will HIGHLY recommend you get a copy of A History of Warfare by John Keegan. He has an entire section dedicated to the warfare of the Aztecs - pretty useful stuff.

Recalling that, however, I'm a bit skeptical on how you could really do this mod. "Total war" and Native Americans is not exactly compatible. While true warfare in the sense that we know it likely existed when, say, the Aztecs were coming to power, once that power was established battle became far more ritualized and was more about individual duels and getting prisoners than about slaughtering your enemy. And of course in what is now the United States organized warfare on any level was nonexistent between tribes, with "counting coup" (touching an opponent) and stealing his teepee poles (cause wood is scarce on the plains) being vastly more important than actually killing anyone, which was generally so rare that for it to happen was a really big deal. Realistically, you'd need to have units that had lots of defence, very low attack, and low morale, so that battles become more of trying to get the other guy to rout before you do instead of blunt all-out assaults like warfare in Europe and to a lesser extent in the Middle East. I imagine it would be nifty at first, because it can require more thought, or at least a different kind of thought, but after a while it would get old...

I'm not trying to be a buzzkill, mind. I'm just curious as to your mod's angle.

Thanks for the suggestion. I'll get that book as soon as I can get to the library:book: . I have always wanted a RTS game that portrayed the Ancient Americas. I realize what you're saying about there not being much advanced warfare. I guess for some tribes this is true, but some other tribes were very warlike. Eastern woodland tribes lived in permanent walled towns and were constantly defending against and conducting raids, kinda like the barbarians of roman times. I have put a lot of thought into this mod and have realized what you said about it losing it's edge. My plan to fix that is this: At the start of the game, all the factions are as historically accurate as we can possibly manage. However as the game progresses the player has the option to advance to levels that historically the person's faction didn't achieve; either through dynamic reforms or by making more advanced buildings more expensive than normal.

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Originally Posted by Comrade Alexeo

While true warfare in the sense that we know it likely existed when, say, the Aztecs were coming to power, once that power was established battle became far more ritualized and was more about individual duels and getting prisoners than about slaughtering your enemy

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In the aztec culture or more exactly: in the MEXICA culture there was two types of wars: the ritual and the conquest ones; there was a calendaric season for a special kind of ritual war called flowery wars, and there was another, the classic bloody warfare which sustained the expansionistic policy of the mexica-aztecs.

:book: Ancient indian historians relates that the flowery wars were sustained with cities both tributaries or enemies of Tenochtitlan -the mexica capital- although these wars were real "trainnin scenarios" from the militar view, those not were followed by invasion/conquest because were only a sacrificial-victim provider system

But in the other hand, the classic war had the common use that in the rest of the world: since their arrive to Mexico's BAsin (circa 1300AD), they were well knowed as terryfing warriors dedicated religiously to warfare. Temporaly dominated and reduced into slavery by the tecpanecas and their allies, they served like very effective mercenaries for the tecpaneca rule. After their independence, they didnt stopped conquering by fire and blood until the arrive of the spaniards: the last emperor, Moctezuma II was planning a campaing to invade and finally conquer the mixteca state little befor the arrival of cortez.:charge:

I guess that, alike the former MTW I, the second medieval will perform the prisioner system that was "the civilizated" side of the war that the middleage military presumed, that system can be used somehow to represent the prisioner system that flourished in the flowery wars. Beside, many warriors prefered to figth to die before been caugth for sacrifice, so get a prisioner was not so easy.

Anyway you're not buzkilling no one, so keep questioning, dude:2thumbsup:

I think that the inuit/esquimal is a must, so the iroquois, to represent the northern lands... I would set the nomadic Cherokee and the sedentary Pueblo, and the so mayan-related Cahokia... I think that the rest is ok, the migthy Mexicas, the Tlaxcaltecas -to represent the other forces oppositing the Mexicas at the center of Mexico, the Phure Kingdom, the only civilzation in the Americas that used copper massively -never conquered by the mexicas, and defeater of the empire several times- the Mixteca-Zapoteca civilization, so alike as the mexicas as the finnish are alike the spaniards... good with the Mayas, the Muiskas representing the northern southamerica, but of course the Incaic empire, an to the south, the roaming Araucanians

so this could be the list:

Inuit/Eskimal
Iroquois
Cherokee
Pueblo
Cahokia
Phure
Mexica
Tlaxcalteca
Mixteca
Mayas
Muiskas
Incas
Araucanians

And, Lignator, the list above is about the year 1300 AD, its cool to do theclassical period of the mayas you say, but that one is circa 100Bc to 800 AD, so in that case we shoul recheck all the civs; the mayas appeared in the actual Honduras and were migrating to the north, until reach Yucatan, at that place, a nahuatl group conquered -nahuatl is the biggest indian languaje in Mexico, spoked from the ancient Teotihuacan to the late Tenochtitlan- from the collision of this to big cultures born the late period of the mayas, when cities like Chichen Itza and Tulum were build, this last

Let me know what do you think


PD: Another in

Know what would be fun.Setting this game at the time Eric the Red came to the Americas.Vikings vs Indians would be fun.You could have a viking fleet and armies at the coast,and you can choose were to land.Vikings vs Aztecs (or Mayans,whoever was more powerful).

I wanted to do the mayan classical era for the time period, But I think we should go ahead with 1300 AD, because it will be easier to research. The factions you listed are good, but there will be 21 factions in MTW2(i think) so there is room for more. I think we should group the factions into regions, and have two factions per region, that way each faction has a counter-faction, and all the areas are represented equally. Here is a possible list of regions:

Eastern Woodlands
Great Plains
Carribean
Southwestern
Northwestern
Arctic
Mesoamerica
South America

There are 8 regions in that list, 8x2=16, So we could probably include more than two factions in the mesoamerica and other regions, or split South America into more regions.:juggle2: We could also include a viking or spanish invasion like scourgeofrome said.I also think we should come up with a better name, something in nahuatl or Mayan.:idea2:

nice idea, but it would be very hard to do this, it would be almost like creating another total war game except with 13 factions. htink of the unit cards and graphics. and are you gonna make a campaign and if so will there be religion? and how will it work? all these htings to think about, and i think this will be a long term project if such an idea goes forward.

nevertheless, after all this effort, it could be a great game.

Sun

I found a glossary of Nahuatl words, now we need to come up with a good name.

http://www.mrs.umn.edu/academic/hist...l/engl-nah.txt

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Originally Posted by Sun of Chersonesos

nice idea, but it would be very hard to do this, it would be almost like creating another total war game except with 13 factions. htink of the unit cards and graphics. and are you gonna make a campaign and if so will there be religion? and how will it work? all these htings to think about, and i think this will be a long term project if such an idea goes forward.

nevertheless, after all this effort, it could be a great game.

Sun

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Yes, I realized from the start this was gonna be a huge project, but I think the end result will be worth it. I am not yet sure how it will work etc., I have ideas, but so far we only have about 2 members, so it hasn't really been worked out yet.

Im not going to quote any of the questioning threads we got, they're true, this gonna be a fkn mess: we're trying to show a lot of lost civilizations, from many of the amerindian peoples we dont have a clue about their civs, beside, we're got to make a total new map! :inquisitive: But of course I'm questioning myself if Im expending wisely my time right now...!

Here comes the "BUT":idea2:

There has been sucefull atempts to rebuild the TW games practically back-from-the-bottom: There's the BIG map adittions that Europa Barbarorum or RTR did to the original RTW, and I remember seeing screenshots of a mod wich stratmap was only china, and theres also one of China, too!:2thumbsup:

Therefore, althought hard, its not impossible to imagine that americas' strat map that you'll scroll more from up-to-down than the common side-scrolling of the good old world...

Surelly will be necessary to check again an again the biggerness of the map according to our effective reaches. Only the proper orographical-climatological-biospheric expression of the continent represents a titanic quest, but i think that the vanilla TW game will represent the most of them: both desert, cold woodland, plains etc are present in the original games, so it would not be so hard to translate to america, my only doubt in this issue is if it can be possible to make something alike the jungles :wall:

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Originally Posted by Sun of Chersonesos

it would be almost like creating another total war game except with 13 factions. htink of the unit cards and graphics. and are you gonna make a campaign and if so will there be religion? and how will it work? all these htings to think about, and i think this will be a long term project

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Not so...

The most of the classes of warriors that existed in th americas will be present in MTW2: archers -incluiding log range ones- foot soldiers wit maces, axes, spears, javelins and swords, the 3d mod change will make the iron weapons wooden or stone weapons, in fact, im only concerned about the making of slingers and some specials like blowpipers. And the card thing is also not impossible, theres a lot of guys that did tis before that we can reach to talk ~:thumb:

The religion theme in amerindian cultures were of many kinds, about the ones i knw more, the mesoamerican ones, there was common to impose a new religion to the conquered ones, specially if they belong to another ethnicity: circa 900AD the nahuatl conquerers going to the Yucatan Peninsula intoduced Quetzalcoatl (feathered snake in nahuatl) as the today knowed mayan god Kukulkan (also meaning feathered snake in mayan) Even sometimes, the mexicas performed a "triumph" after the conquering of some hard-to-defeat city, consisting in the postration of a representation of the main god of the conquered city in front of the pyramid of Huitzilopochtli, the main mexica god.

So I think that when you conquer a group of a different culture type eg. the mexicas conquering mixtecas, or incas conquering muiskas youll have to change the religion and contain the public unrest thru troops or buildings, as usual in the old MTW, I think this wont be very different in the new one, we know aceptabily good the religion of the most of the civs that lived in the 14th century to believe that we can represent'em (while we dont know almost anything about more ancient cultures like Nazca, or the mound-builders).

With the basis of done works like Europa Barbarorum and RTR its possible to imagine to represent both nomadic and sedentary societies as well.

Its a chinese-wall work:sweatdrop: !! but possible, we must not forget that there will be a base to land-off: MTW2 brings an amerindian culture, the aztecs, so theres not so from the bottom!!:trytofly:

Again, thanks for questions

Lignator: direct contact is a must, im sending a priv mess 2u, with my msn, skype and stuff

true...

now i would help in any way i can however im not good with modding or graphics or anything like that but if theres anything i can do? well i can do 2d graphics..

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Originally Posted by Sun of Chersonesos

true...

now i would help in any way i can however im not good with modding or graphics or anything like that but if theres anything i can do? well i can do 2d graphics..

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Thats great... so we can say we have someone to do the char cards stuff...:2thumbsup: we also can think in the banner building, UI, etc

Maybe this is a good chance to begin with the door opennig: anyone gifted or not, anyone with the will to get involve, start posting, a little talk about your abilities would be good: we need designers, modelers, producers, researchers and everybody with dancing fingers ready to help.

thx, soon we´ll talk about more specific things and proposals

I understand some people are skeptical about how the smaller tribes are going to be portrayed, and here are my ideas. First off, some factions will represent major cultures instead of a single tribe. Also rebel provinces/settlements can represent tribes instead of actual cities, so the settlement would be the tribe, and the province would be that tribe's historical boundaries. Also walls wouldn't be able to be constructed, which would eliminate siege battles. This would also create the ability of raiding enemy tribes, by assaulting the town, destroying the buildings, and then abandoning the town to let it revolt back to rebels.

Now heres my second idea: society levels
To unlock certain structures and troop types, the player must first build the level of society required, which would be represented by a building. Here is a rough tech tree to explain how this works:

Level 1: Hunter/gatherer society
buildings available: none
troop types: warrior band type units

Level 2: Sedentary society
buildings available: simple religion,farming,and trading structures; simple wooden walls (for cultures that had them historically)
troop types: wider variety of more powerful warrior band units

Level 3: Organized society
buildings available: more advanced religion,farming, and trading structures; civic and entertainment buildings, government buildings; simple barracks and weapons upgrades; simple schools, walls, roads
troop types: wide variety of good quality troops

Level 4: Industrial Society
buildings available: advanced religion, farming, and trading; large entertainment and government buildings, industrialized recruitment and weaponry, defense systems, advanced schooling, paved roads
troop types:high quality Professional troops

All factions will start with the society level that they had historically, once the player has constructed the required buildings the next society level will become available. Some of you may be worried that this will be unrealistic or ahistorical, research will be done to find out what made civilizations advance historically in the real world and this will guide our decisions on what buildings will unlock society levels in the game.

Tzinican: Now that we have each others msn if you want we could set a time every week to discuss the mod and what we need to work on, etc.

Sun Of Chersonesos: If you are still interested in helping us out there are some indian petroglyphs near my house that I could take pictures of and post here that you could use to make symbols for the southwestern factions.

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Originally Posted by Lignator

I wanted to do the mayan classical era for the time period, But I think we should go ahead with 1300 AD, because it will be easier to research. The factions you listed are good, but there will be 21 factions in MTW2(i think) so there is room for more. I think we should group the factions into regions, and have two factions per region, that way each faction has a counter-faction, and all the areas are represented equally. Here is a possible list of regions:

Eastern Woodlands
Great Plains
Carribean
Southwestern
Northwestern
Arctic
Mesoamerica
South America

There are 8 regions in that list, 8x2=16, So we could probably include more than two factions in the mesoamerica and other regions, or split South America into more regions.:juggle2: We could also include a viking or spanish invasion like scourgeofrome said.I also think we should come up with a better name, something in nahuatl or Mayan.:idea2:

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Someone listened to my suggestions for once? Yay. But sadly your time spans keeps out the Vikings (Eric came sometime during the 1100's,right?).Other than that, good work.It will be a tough choice between this or the "People of God" mod.If only the vikings were in this one. ~:mecry:

Edit:Upon a little bit more looking into the subject, I found two things.One, I messed up with the viking explorer (Leif Erickson,not Eric the Red):oops: .And two, Leif came in the early 1000's, two hundred years or so before your planned time span.So no Viking vs.Mayans.~:(

Quote:

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Originally Posted by scourgeofrome

Someone listened to my suggestions for once? Yay. But sadly your time spans keeps out the Vikings (Eric came sometime during the 1100's,right?).Other than that, good work.It will be a tough choice between this or the "People of God" mod.If only the vikings were in this one. ~:mecry:

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Get both:2thumbsup:

This looks to be great!

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Originally Posted by Orb

Get both:2thumbsup:

This looks to be great!

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I would, but I am incompetent on all matters dealing with,well, just about everything involving computer data (outside basics like saving,loading,click here to download,etc.). I did try to copy and paste to make several copies of RTW vanilla so I could have mods and BI and Alexander, but it didn't work. Had copies that worked, but the mod didn't download correctly.Oh well.But if I ever do gain some grasp of the computer, I'll try to get both mods.

I noticed a few comments on native American warfare, and I would like to point out something:

The Inca were a very warlike people(s, really), and had no issues with killing people to get what they wanted, as their religion had less focus on sacrifice (they still did it of course, but it was most often one or two people and only on certain special days of the year). They would wield wooden, stone and occasionally bronze spears or maces, and, when the Spaniards came to town, they developed a sort of hardwood sword designed to break horses legs.
Their nobles even occasionally had bronze halberd-like weapons!

If you want to model the Inca on anybody, they were the Rome of America, they were required by their religion to constantly expand and, no doubt, would have eventually collpased, but by the time the Spaniards arrived they still had most of the contineint to take over and could have lasted well into the 19th century at least.

IMO, if you do this mod as suggested, the Inca would have (on some units) a very high offence, since theyre actually concerned with killing their opponent. From what Ive read, most of their military was, similar to the Roman one, made up of 'auxilaries', since the actual "Inca" population of the Inca Empire was about 10,000 at its height, when its population was about 11,000,000!

Also, although I know much less about them, you should include the Patagonians, and (depending on the start date) one or two organized tribes north/south of the Inca.

I would not eliminate walls for cities! Most peoples did in fact build walled towns. Don't think everyone was a nomad. Before the horse even the plains tribes built towns, with stockades. They just didn't live in them year round. The English referred to Iroquoian towns as castles because of the extensive works. The early explorers remarked on things like this a great deal. The diseases devastated the populations, people fled and when people came 100 years later they found a different culture all together. What we think of as Indian culture in the 1700-1800 were basically reinvented cultures of a devastated population. Some estimates say that they lost population in the upper 90% range. That is why importation of slaves began in the first place.

The technologies would also be much different. The Spanish abandoned their metal armor and began using Inca armor in Peru. Their metal technologies were for different purposes than our, it is not that they didn't have it or wouldn't have adapted if they hadn't been wiped out by disease. That is how they were so easily conquered. Not by arms.

That should make it very tough...

Sadly I am giving up on this mod because the scope is just too big.Because of the big map all of the provinces would have to be huge, and that would kill gameplay. Also I don't know if there are enough culture slots available to portray the diverse native american cultures properly. But for those of you who were interested in this, take a look at this mod .

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Originally Posted by scourgeofrome

Someone listened to my suggestions for once? Yay. But sadly your time spans keeps out the Vikings (Eric came sometime during the 1100's,right?).Other than that, good work.It will be a tough choice between this or the "People of God" mod.If only the vikings were in this one. ~:mecry:

Edit:Upon a little bit more looking into the subject, I found two things.One, I messed up with the viking explorer (Leif Erickson,not Eric the Red):oops: .And two, Leif came in the early 1000's, two hundred years or so before your planned time span.So no Viking vs.Mayans.~:(

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Viking artifacts were found as dar as Oklahoma and had Christian explorers judging bu the "Amen Virgin Mary" mentioned on the runestone. It is possible that vikings continued to explore the Americas after Lief Eriksson. There was a Native American tribe discovered, don't know when, around Michigan or somewhere than had a populace that was partly blonde and some had blue eyes and had even heard of Christ. I don't remember where I heard this from, it could be false infermation for all I know, but it is still possible to have Vikings in this mod. The only thing is that there vikings were in no way conquerors, only merchants and explorers, and would not represent a war-like faction.

As much as i dont really like american history after it was colonised. Before it was colonised sounds like an interesting thing to do. My only concern is lack of historical records. I hope this mod gets off the ground though.

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Originally Posted by tzinacan

Very Good!!
:thrasher:
im mexican, im plenty of info about the theme, I confess that also been looking forward for something like this, in fact i been wrote somthing thinking in the -now- old RTW... ill be in spanish and english attending to the to major languages in the american continent, also to our agentinian friend...

First, Factions
Primero, facciones

Mexica
Acolhua
Tlaxcallan
Cuexteca
Otomitl
Matlatzinca
Purhe
Mayas Yucatán
Mayas del Sur
Mixteca
Totonacapan
Olmeca-Xicalanca
Chichimeca

those are only mesoamerican civs, intending mesoamerica as the territoria from the center of Mexico to Nicaragua opnly in the incaic zone so developed civs were found... of course we should discard many of them, in order to illustrate the northern and southernamerican civs too... so i put on the table these as the initial list of big 12:

estas son solo civs mesoamericanas, entendiendo Mesoamerica como el teritorio que iba desde el centro de lo que hoy es Mexico hasta la actual Nicaragua su cultura solo se compara a la que se fundo enla zona incaica... por supuesto deberiamos quitar algunas para poder ilustrar el resto de las civs centro y norteamericanas tambien... asi que pongo sobre la mesa esta como la lista inicial de las grandes 12 -de norte a sur-:

:stupido:
Inuit/ Eskimal
Iroquois
Navajo
Totonacapan
Purhe
Mexica
Mixteca
Mayas Yucatán
Muiska (Colombia)
Inca-Quechua
Araucana

I can forward some of the military attributions o f the mesoamerican peoples, but will need help with the rest of the continent... I got illustrations of the armies, both historical and recreations, and know good historical sources, by now, lets see what you think, brothers
:book:
Puedo adelantar algunas de las caracteristicas socilaes y militares de las culturas mesoamericanas, pero necesitaria ayuda con el resto del continente... tengo ilustraciones de los ejercitos, tanto historicas como recreaciones y conozco buenas fuentes historicas, por ahora veamos que piensan ustedes de todo esto, hermanos :2thumbsup:

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clearly your not good freinds strike for the south (just kidding were all freinds here!:laugh4: ...or are we? the answer is :yes: )... while other here in england we just hate everybody foerign when the fact is...(drumroll) WERE ALL BUNCH OF BLOODY FOERIGNS which under mines all the racist groups in england and USA infact the most of the US population is foerign (the only people who arnt are the native armeican who live citys and even then there not natives any more)

PS I'am not racist, and some nice mexican writing their

Back on subject, Yep this looks like a good mod good luck with and is just cover central and southern armeica and will cover the civil as well (image inaccuratecy of the grey soldeirs... sorry strike for the south

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Originally Posted by Abokasee

in england and USA infact the most of the US population is foerign (the only people who arnt are the native armeican who live citys and even then there not natives any more

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There are a ton of native americans that live on reservations in the middle of nowhere...