The Pre-Summer Mod Report - Pioneers Day Edition
On this day in history….
Citizens of Leeuwarden, Netherlands strike against ban on foreign beer in 1487.
Greetings fellow modders and playing public! It been a while since we got together here in a Mod Report but I have been working hard behind the scenes this week to get one out for you before I depart to Denmark, and here it is. Its been a fairly interesting period in the community, more projects have been born and others have continued to pump out the high quality material they always do, I am looking at Lands to Conquer here.
Once more, I will happily give projects a place in the reports if you want to contact me about it, please PM me, I would love to hear from you all!
So, here it is. The Pre-Summer Mod Report, aka, the Castellan Triumvirate Q&A session! That’s right, each of us have conducted interview about our upcoming projects, Warhammer, Two Crowns and Anno Domini. Also, please check out the recruitment thread in the Mods In Development if you are interested in becoming part of the Org team here.
What got you into Total War?
Originally, I was a tabletop wargamer. A combination of Napoleonic ( 5mm miniatures ) and had the old, old, old original Warhammer rules. I had lots of models for D&D role-playing, and starting fighting battles with them. When I got into PC gaming, I saw what CA were doing with Shogun TW, and immediately recognised the fact that this was the first wargame to hit the PC that actually looked and felt like the tabletops....without the need for a huge table! Then…I bought Medieval, because it interested me more than the Japanese, and so on until now. RTW was the big breakthrough for me, when the series finally went 3D.
When did you know that you wanted to produce modifications for the Total War series?
The instant I saw the game playing, I wanted to mod it. Until RTW, though, it was all sprites, and my 2D skills are less strong than the 3D ones, but I knew I wanted to make new things for this game form day 1.
When did you decide that fantastical projects were what you wanted to produce for the series? Such as your Metal Mayhem for RTW?
Right from the outset, I knew I wanted to make things that no-one else was making. I wanted the challenge of making really outlandish stuff, and the only barriers to this were the tools and the limitations of the game. Nothing galls me more than the detail nit-pickers telling you that your warrior has the wrong shaped helmet for the period, and that they only issued that one to troops from a certain barracks in downtown Athens. When it comes to fantasy work, you can go a lot further, and push the barriers.
What made you decide on Warhammer as a setting? Aside from its popularity amongst role-players?
It had never been done to the satisfaction of the fans as far as official games went. There was a mod started for RTW, but it was never able to get around the limitations of the game engine. M2TW has a lot more possibilities, and it was able to do the things RTW couldn’t. It HAD to have a mod done, and I wanted to be the man to do it.
I personally know why you decided against giving magic a large role in the project, but for those who don’t, why has magic been dropped?
It’s a question of practicality and the game engine. The M2TW engine works on units of men, and on missile or melee combat. To do magic would involve so many compromises it would not work well, and if it won’t work well, I would rather we didn’t have it at all. The simplest way was to assign spellcasters to the generals as traits etc. since this way there is an influence… but not a physical character on the battlemap. It will work, and it will be a tactical element in the game. Otherwise, we would have squads of 40 mages firing volleys of fireballs across the field. Not realistic…not right. Not happening!
What races and factions from the world of Warhammer have made it into the project? I personally wouldn’t mind been able to punt Squigs about, are me beloved toothed footballs involved ?
Definites are Chaos ( 4 factions), Dwarves, Lizardmen, Skaven, Tomb Kings, Vampire Counts, Empire, Bretonnia, Orcs & Goblins ( maybe with Squigs ), High Elves and Dark Elves. There may be some additional factions released later, such as wood elves and Kislev, but that remains for later. The map will determine which are feasible.
So, taking this into consideration, which is your favourite faction and why?
Tricky. I like the Tomb Kings, but I also have a soft-spot for Chaos. I love the thought of vast armies of undead streaming from the pyramid, with massed archers and charging chariots!
Any favourite units?
Bone Giants :D
Have you ever played Warhammer? If so, what was your character?
Yes, and I had an undead army too.
Any special features you want to include to help convey the world of Warhammer in more depth?
We plan on trying to bring the general feel and atmosphere in as much as possible. This will come from details like the UI, map and details like buildings etc. Aside from that, the game was about battles, and the battles are our main focus!
Which has been the best aspect of modelling so far? Of course you are given some artistic license, is there anything else that make this particularly enjoyable?
so far, the Dwarves have been the most enjoyable to make. Working with KnightErrant and GrumpyOldMan to develop tools that would make new skeletons possible was really fun. We were at the forefront of what was possible, and going further! We also were, as a result, the first mod to bring a completely new shaped unit to the battlefield.
What is the most rewarding aspect, in your opinion, of modding?
Moddings greatest reward has always been seeing the things you have made yourself running around on screen like the professional ones. It’s knowing that there are a limited number of people out there who can do what you have just done, and that is a good feeling!
What is the most challenging aspect of modding MTWII?
It’s more fiddly than RTW, and a lot less tolerant of tiny mistakes. Seeing the words ‘unspecified error’ in the logs after the game crashes is so frustrating! The RTW show_err function told you a lot more about what was wrong, and made error trapping a lot easier.
Do you think that the engine fits well to the projects that you wish to produce?
It fits as well as could be expected. Sure, there are things I would like to see in there that are missing, but if it was all easy, where’s the challenge! I plan to build chariots, make outlandish units, and generally shake up the way the stock game does things, and this is the fun for me. I can’t find any enthusiasm for mods that just involve churning out accurate historic units… I prefer the weird! I would love to do a Metal Mayhem for M2TW…. But first I must finish the Warhammer mod!
What brought you to the Org?
It was really the first TW site I found that had interest in modding, and was more than just a forum for patch-whining. There are other sites…but this was the first one I came across. I liked the atmosphere… so I stayed!
Are you enjoying being a Mod Castellan along with myself and alpaca?
It brings responsibility, but it’s not a problem. I have moderated forums before, so it’s not a big deal. It is a chance to give something back to a forum, rather than just posting.
Any plans for the future? Aside from more squigs of course. ?
Once I have finished making the Squigs ( and yes…. I do want to make them ), I also want things like tomb swarms, tomb scorpions, chariots, and chaos demons. There are many things I want to make, and the big and flashy ones are the ones I want to make the most! The Lizardmen are really going to have some good stuff !
When I have done all of that… I want to make a Dwarven steamtank. And a Metal Mayhem mod for M2TW. Just think how THAT could look!
Thank you very much for you time Bwain, good luck!
Check out the latest goings on in Bwain’s Warhammer world here.
Why Two Crowns?
Personally, I feel that the Wars of the Roses are completely overlooked as far as games are concerned, I have yet to discover any sort of semi-major game depicting the period and it is something I feel needs addressing. I have a great love for the history of England, I have sat down since MTW I trying to decide on a period which I wish to depict from Britain’s vast history, from the Wars of Scottish Independence to the Roman Conquest, I was unable to either find one that I deemed suitable, the Norman Invasion for example in my opinion is not vibrant enough to depict a total conversion on, or that was already a project or had gotten plenty of time in the spotlight, as was the case for the Wars of Scottish Independence. The two most interesting choices were the English Civil War and the Wars of the Roses, both provided a good platform to craft a campaign around. I decide upon the Wars of the Roses for a few reasons, the biggest one, however, was that I love the wars themselves, others were that it provided a great variety of factions, it provides me the opportunity to explore innovative features and it allows me to explore the many characters of the period.
In essence, the Wars of the Roses sets a perfect scene to play a total war campaign in with all the side-swapping, the slaughter of the nobility, the great battles, the system of livery and maintenance and the fight for the crown, placing you in a position where you are not yet King, and if you are your certainly not secure.
Why did you decide to include the Scottish?
It wasn’t just in England where all the action was occurring, the events in Scotland were also pretty fiery. The Douglases and the Stuarts were engaged in a bitter feud, and the Kings were far from all powerful. I felt that if all I did was include the English factions it would deny me the opportunity to delve into a varied unit roster, including just England would create a Shogun scenario where all factions were the same and there would be little variety. I love Shogun, don’t get me wrong, but I feel a little variety is even better so I decided to include the Scottish to not only investigate the disorder above the border, but to provide a bit of variety in the units available whilst not going overboard with the variety, something the vanilla MTWII suffers from I feel, RTW too.
How will religion be represented? All the factions are Catholic aren‘t they?
Pretty simple answer, it won’t. Every nation involved was indeed a Catholic nation, to include religion would simply have a huge bunch of Catholics fighting each other with little to no penalties for failing to maintain your religion as well as the rather non-sensical prospect of having a Scottish highland settlement with a Muslim population. Religion has, in the case of Two Crowns, been replaced with a system representing nationality. The five nationalities are English, Scottish, Welsh, Irish and Continental. Your faction will ideally populate its settlements with its own populace, having a hugely Scottish settlement when your English is far from ideal and dangerous as it could provide an uprising against your rule. The system will look to give the player the task to colonise newly conquered lands with their own people to bring down the risk of nationalist revolt in the region, after all, when your fighting for the crown you don’t really want a Welsh uprising on your hands.
Primarily I had looked to include the factions, but decided that as that could lead to Yorkists declaring war on one another with no change in allegiance which would not work very well. With the nationality system I am able to represent the issue of nationalism which I feel will provide an interesting alternative to the religious system. Instead of churches, there will be systems in place to support your countries people in your settlements and to lower the foreign influence, this is a system I will detail in much more detail in a future preview.
What is going to happen to the building tech tree?
It will be revamped to fit the scenario. Nobles and clansmen, for example, would not be able to construct many buildings, whilst Kings would be able to construct a few more upgrades in their settlements. A system that I call the Retainers and Labourers system will be introduced to replace the building tech tree as a whole, though some buildings will be constructible. The system will give the player the ability to hire workers rather than construct buildings, for example instead of building a swordsmiths the system will work on the premise that you already have a facility in the city that can provide the tools but requires a swordsmith to produce the weapon, so you hire a swordsmith rather then build the building. That is a very simple example and the system is a bit more complex than this, but again this is something that is best explained in a later preview.
What sort of units can we expect?
Realistic units. Seriously though, the units present will be realistic, no cannon sheep or incendiary chickens will be making an appearance. The system of units will be closely tied to the RLS detailed above and the armies you can muster will be far more customisable than those in any project to date. My main aim is to provide the player the opportunity to tailor construct their forces to their own tastes and I have worked out a system to achieve this. For example, I want a men-at-arms, but not just any men-at-arms, I want one clad in Gothic armour with a war hammer. To accomplish this I will hire a German armour merchant say and a metal smith, along with a man-at-arms. This will then allow me to hire men-at-arms with gothic armour an a war hammer. But now I want them to have swords too, to help hack down those pesky Billmen, simple, I just hire a swordsmith and voila I can now hire a gothic armour clad men-at-arms with a sword. This is the sort of customisable I hope to include to provide the player an unrivalled experience at really tailor crafting their forces to their own tastes. Choosing certain set-ups will allow you to counteract particular armies, for example, war hammers are effective against armour, giving your men-at-arms war hammers will allow them to go toe-to-toe with men-at-arms with swords and come out on top, but they will be less effective against Billmen and lesser troops, here you may have a small band of men-at-arms with swords. This system will hopefully thrive online as well as in the single player campaigns. The main aim historically is to represent that no every men-at-arms for example wielded the same weapon or wore the same armour.
So you do plan to make it online compatible?
Yes, I do, I think the customisable armies will work well online, especially if the AI fails to grasp it fully, a human player will do.
Will mercenaries play a role?
Yes they will, but they will be expensive to maintain dependant on their origin. British mercenaries will be fairly cheap and accessible via a Mercenary Captain style retainer (building technically), whilst foreign mercenaries will be a lot more expensive to use. They will be hired like a normal unit, however, not through the usual mercenary system. If this proves ineffective in play testing it may well return to the vanilla system, but prices will reflect the units locality still, its all to be worked out via testing still.
What about the Pope?
The Pope will of course play no role in the campaign what-so-ever due to the removal of religion. I am sure he will still be busy off the map killing Templars and brooding about infidels. This also brings up the issue of Inquisitors, witches and the like and their fate. They too will be gone, no longer will they plague your lands, instead, other people will instead, these are called nationalists.
So agents are reorganised too?
You bet they are. As I said previously, witches and heretics will be replaced by what I like to call nationalists. These nationalists will look to rouse the populaces of Ireland and Wales, the two nationalities that replace paganism and heresy, which could of course lead to nationalist revolt in your settlements. I am not entirely sure which agent will replace religious ones for the Scottish and English just yet but they will of course be able to counter act rebellious nationalists by trying them for treason as well as promoting their own nationals to settle in your settlements. Other agents will change too, though their functions will be similar naturally, for example the Diplomat will be replaced by somebody who is more appropriate for the time such as a herald say, though that’s not entirely important. Simply put, as religion is removed some units will be changed to accommodate this.
What other factors will hinder you?
The weather will hinder you on occasion. Currently you can see how much flooding has effected England, flooding will be a factor to settlements around rivers in Two Crowns. Floods will not kill your retainers, in fact when you “de-construct” a worker you will be firing them, not killing them, so workers that are “damaged” in floods, fighting and so on are merely losing their means to produce their trade and are out of work, you will then need to re-hire them on the premise that doing this also means you have fixed the damage by nature and man, this will be represented in text and just using your own imagination. Plagues will of course still make an appearance as it was nowhere near dead in England, as will the other factors in settlements, all of which will be counter-actable with certain retainers and labourers, aside from plague when it hits, you will just need to wait it out and prepare to hire workers who relate to health and housing. There will be a few more features that will cause you headaches, but you’ll discover them as you play.
What about claims and marriage?
Having a strong claim is of course fairly useful when trying to claim a crown, but so is the point of a sword. Sadly it will be impossible to represent a system where you can only claim the crown if you marry wisely, sometimes you will claim the crown whilst married with a person of royal descent and have a claim, weak or strong, but sometimes you will just take it by force, neither is that inaccurate really for the time, Henry Tudor after all had a very weak claim which only strengthened once he had killed Richard at Bosworth and married into the royal line. You will of course be able to marry your daughters off, just as the families would do, it will be a good way to stake claims for role-playing purposes and producing links with families.
What role will the crowns play in Two Crowns?
The “Two Crowns” will be a resource that are present in Edinburgh and London and will provide benefits to those who hold the settlement. To declare yourself King you will need the capitals, holding them will give you what I can only describe as Kingly benefits, benefits that will be previewed later on but ones that will be worth the bother. You can of course take both crowns, so its entirely possible to be King of England and Scotland, much like James Stuart in 1603.
Is everyone’s aim to be King then?
No, it isn’t. Victory conditions will be appropriate to the family in question is both a historical option and a two crowns option. The historical option will require the faction to focus on more historical goals, the Percies for example will be looking to outlive the Nevilles as well as maintaining their estates in Northumberland and elsewhere, whilst the Yorkists will have grander goals as will the Lancastrians, it really will depend on who you pick as far as the historical goals go, so no, not everyone will want London. A two crowns option will provide a different goal for the factions, but I want to shy away from the flaw I see in vanilla MTWII where all factions seem to want Jerusalem and give them varying goals to achieve.
Is there only one campaign planned?
No, there will be a few campaigns so I do intend to make use of the custom campaigns option to provide different scenarios. Thus far I am toying with the idea of having a House of Lancaster v House of Stuart campaign, so a good old traditional England v Scotland campaign will the possibilities of Wales and Ireland appearing to give people something unhistorical to play around with, I can’t confirm what form it will appear in yet but I do plan to include it in some form. Confirmed custom campaigns will be ones starting in different years of the wars, these will of course be historical, they will hopefully provide different games as different families are prominent and some are no longer around.
Will there be anything like historical battles included?
Possibly, I am not entirely sure yet, they’d certainly be extras rather than definite inclusions, I can’t say for sure really, if they did appear it would depend on what I have time to do at the time really.
What is your favourite faction then, you must have one?
Why yes I do have one, the House of York. I am from Yorkshire, my favourite city is York and I support York City, whilst admiring Edward IV and living about three miles from Towton, so the option wasn’t a difficult one to choose. A notable shout out should also go to the House of Neville too, I must say I look forward to being the Kingmaker, if only for the pretty cool title in role-playing!
So you’re a Yorkist then? Traitor.
Yes, you Lancastrian dog, I am. I am loyal to the true claimants, thank you very much.
Well, you should have known this was coming, when can we expect a release?
I’ve waited for this, now I get to practice for when I am making games professionally. It will be ready when its ready, no sooner, no later. You will be told when to expect a release by myself, so until I say anything, don’t expect anything. Hopefully it will be out this year, that’s the goal, certainly a beta release at any rate!
What about Kingdoms?
Ah yes, that little nugget. Kingdoms will be undoubtedly used for the production of Two Crowns, so expect it to be for Kingdoms thanks to its larger modding options if the expansion is out relatively soon, otherwise it may well see a release on the original MTWII game. I will see how I am progressing at the time.
Any final words?
Well, if your taking that tone do I get a last meal too?
Maybe
Your so considerate. All I can really think of is that if there are any further questions that the community may have, please feel free to ask them, I will try my best to answer them, although I will be in Denmark negotiating a Viking Invasion until Sunday, sorry about that.
Thank you for the information, and good luck!
Its been a pleasure, thank you!
For more information on Two Crowns, please check out the official thread here.
Greetings alpaca! Let’s start from the beginning, why the merger and the name change?
Well the reason for merging two mods will pretty much always be additional manpower. In our case, we felt that both mods could profit from a closer cooperation and therefore decided to work together. Another reason for us was that we gained a good base for a mod with all the work already done on AD.
The name change had two reasons: Firstly, Anno Domini has already seen a few releases and the name is probably more well-known, and secondly we repeatedly received complaints about Mediaeval Auctoriso sounding but not being Latin. Such complaints are a bit pedantic, but they had a point (after all we're trying to maintain a certain measure of realism) and the merger was obviously a good opportunity to get rid of this problem.
The slight change to Anno Domini MXVI was introduced because for me, the term had to come with a date and we chose to use our starting date.
So does this mean there is both an Anno Domini and an Italia Invicta on the cards? Is the intent to still test the features in II for a full scale version in AD?
Yes, the plan still stands. II is a much smaller playground to test our stuff before putting it on the large map.
What is your favourite scripted feature thus far? There has certainly been a few in the works.
Well the feature you could really say I'm a fan of is Influence. I'm currently writing a preview about it which should be released within a few days, and we talked about it in the Eagle Standard the week before the last.
With that in mind, what is the most ambitious feature of AD in your opinion?
I'd say our alternate history system which will try to capture the possibility of an evolution in a faction's development.
As you revealed in the last preview, a skinner has finally joined the team, how does it feel now that the units can be brought to life?
Well we're still looking for a modeller, and you probably know I'm not that much of a visuals kind of person, but it feels damn awesome ;-)
What is your favourite faction in II and AD?
In II, that'd be the Normans. They start out as a horde and will have a hard time to establish a new homeland in Italy. Since our faction list for AD is not yet finalised, I can't really say.
Which unit are you looking forward to the most?
I'm not much of a unit guy, I usually like to play with Horse Archers and foot archers with a long range though.
What is the relationship like between yourself and Re? After all you are both joint leaders.
It's a kind of hate-hate relationship... No, seriously: We interestingly have a lot in common in the ways we think about the game (despite our differences in choice of profession), and we get on well. We can both fight for our opinion, but at the same time we're always ready to make compromises and therefore deciding on stuff is probably even easier with two people than doing so alone.
What is the current plan as regards the production schedule for II? Is it true that you are still looking for help in certain areas and strengthening other positions?
I've modded for too long to make schedules. Yes, we're still looking for help in almost all areas, especially modelling.
On that note, can we expect anymore previews for new features?
Yup, I'm a bit busy with exams which is why it's a bit quiet at the moment, but as I mentioned earlier, I'm currently writing one up.
Thank you for your time alpaca, and good luck!
It's been a pleasure.
Elsewhere in the modding scene…
https://img223.imageshack.us/img223/8247/ltcjj9.jpg
Quote:
Lands to Conquer is a mod aimed at improving the gameplay and balance of Medieval II Total War. It does this through extensively rebalanced unit stats; changed unit costs; longer, slower paced campaign; more difficult to maintain larger empires; and various other things.
3.0's big feature are 3 new custom campaign maps, each using enlarged sections of the Grand Campaign and they all have different gameplay and add to the overall gaming experience. The Grand Campaign is still playable. The new campaigns are available from a new menu option.
A large part of the mod is it's extensive rebalancing, for which i've had the unofficial help of Jason Turnbull aka Palamedes, a Creative Assembly Australia developer.
It also set's up a hosteat version of the mod for those who want to play one of the new campaigns against a friend on the same pc.
- Lusted
That’s right, Lands to Conquer 3.0 is here! As you may have noticed earlier in the week, Lusted has released his multi-campaign project to the public and it has already found widespread praise not only amongst us but Creative Assembly. Having played it myself, I can recommend it to everybody for its unique flavour of numerous campaigns which is very similar to the Custom Campaign Mod.
Check out LTC 3.0 here.
In other news…
Kings Banner 2.0 is out now! It aims to replace the games banners with more historically accurate ones and it certainly worth a look. Check it out here.
DG’s One At A Time has released it Byzantine skin pack, it is definitely worth a download and works well with Kings Banner too! Currently in production now is Russia, check out the progress and get your copy here.
Re: The Pre-Summer Mod Report - Pioneers Day Edition
Please dicuss the thread in the new topic.
