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Thanks, it's fun to hear that the work is being appreciated!
@NeonGod: I believe the saxon force at Hastings was mostly infantry (huscarles with axes and large round shields and fyrdmen with spears) but it's possible they had a few slingers too. What's your source, I can't find anything special about saxon slingers.
The thing with Saxon Slingers is that they were just a regional unit of no particular importance. Harold had to find some form of missile defence at Hastings as he had left his archers at Stamford Bridge(Noob) and as a result all he could muster were a few slingers. I suppose it could be worth including them as a basic missile unit for the Saxons with archers being a level 2 upgrade?!?!?! Although small amounts were present at such an important battle they weren't regarded as anything other than emergency troops, but to be fair id prefer slingers rather than nothing!
Dont get me as ungreatfull for doing this but you forghot the slovanic ppl that were near the medditaranion sea and had a state named Karantania just after the total collapse of the roman empireQuote:
Factions:
=======
REAL FACTIONS
- Norway - pagan
- Sweden - pagan
- Denmark - pagan
- Rus - orthodox
- Normandy - catholic
- Saxons - catholic
- Scots - catholic
- Irish - catholic
- Welsh - catholic
- France - catholic
- Holy roman empire - catholic
- Kingdom of Lotharingia - catholic
- Kingdom of Asturia - catholic
- Papal state - catholic
- Magyars - pagan
- Bulgars - orthodox
- Khazars - jewish
- Byzantine empire - orthodox
- Abbassids - muslim
- Al Andalus - muslim
- (and of course the Rebels)
@Kamahl: There is a faction limit hardcoded in R:TW and that limit has already been reached, so no more factions can be added. If it had been possible we would have included several factions that aren't included now.
@oj121: You can get the first, simplest type of bow-armed troops in a level 1 building, I don't know what you mean with level 2 upgrade?!?!
After some consideration I've decided to include slingers in the saxon unit rooster too.
On the slinger theory they weren't really slingers, they just had men behind the shield wall throwing big rocks/stones and javelins as the Normans advanced up the hill.
They can be loosely regarded as slingers as they used whatever they could to hurl rocks and slings would have been readily available.
What i meant by level 1 and 2 is maybe with the saxons, when you build a building on the archery route, maybe the first type of building can only produce slingers, then maybe as the settlement expands and you can improve the building, then archers become available.
Ok. All factions, saxons included, already have javelinmen so that solves the javelin problem. Adding a stone thrower unit isn't a good idea though, neither is it good to give many troops an ability to throw stones. Perhaps slingers is the best way to represent them after all? I'm not sure... Right now they have slingers but I don't believe we'll create more than one, generic slinger unit, so it's easy to decide about whether saxons will have slingers or not later. My opinion right now is that I actually think they shouldn't have any...Quote:
Originally Posted by King Ragnar
Were javelins really the catch-all basic missile unit used by all of those cultures? I've never heard anything about Germanic javelins.Quote:
Originally Posted by LegioXXXUlpiaVictrix
Javelins are such simple weapons that everyone can get hold of one if they want it. It's probably older or as old as the hand-held spear and all you need to do is really cut down a branch or a small tree and sharpen one edge of it. However, only a few factions had javelinmen of greater importance and therefore only a few have javelinmen of higher quality available in their tech trees. As you see the javelins are in the militia complex building system whereas the archers, who are the more standardized missile troops at the time, are in a specific complex building system and are much superior to the javelins in most cases.Quote:
Originally Posted by NeonGod
It sounds a little exotic. I i've also reard about the slingers used at Hastings, and i also belive that people throwing rocks in battle was rather common. I think i read some were about scots using them regularly . They could have short range, and otherwise be pretty crappy (maybe mercs). The headhurlers have a good model/animation for them.
- I'll look if i can find some sources of how mutch they were deployed.
-Skel-
Looks like the MOD will be very interesting. ~:) I can't wait to give it a try! Great work gentlemen. ~:cheers:
Some new test skins:
http://img166.echo.cx/img166/6375/sw...ershird5oo.png
Swedish Landowner sword hirdman.
http://img166.echo.cx/img166/3364/no...ershird3jo.png
Norwegian Landowner sword hirdman.
The shields are improvised, and will be changed to more accurate once.
-Skel-
I think there are real slingers on the Bayeux Tapestry.
Sweet! ~:cheers:Quote:
Originally Posted by skeletor
Regarding stone throwers I agree that using the head hurler animation could actually turn out to be quite interesting. I suggest we give them a range around the same as for javelins, or maybe slightly greater, but damage lower than for javelins. But I'm not sure how far you can throw a stone by hand compared to how far you can throw a javelin...
Hi guys!
I havent been around much so I haven't had a chance to look through everything.
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I do not agree on the stone-throwing idea, stone-throwing is for slingers. Any way, they would of been used to distract the opposistion in combat whilst the other units, such as archers or javelin-throwers could pick them off....
Great skins there, nice to see things moving along.
Rest assured, there is great anticipation of this mod. :bow:
Very very nice ~D ~D ~DQuote:
Originally Posted by skeletor
damn it i so hoped to play with my ppl.and woop those romans :duel: :charge:Quote:
Originally Posted by LegioXXXUlpiaVictrix
There was no Carantania in the Roman times anyway. :book:Quote:
Originally Posted by Kamahl
Ok, I'm not entirely sure either about stone throwers but it sounds cool. I had in mind a unit which gave lower missile damage than slingers and javelins and with short range, who will inflict almost no casualties at all but have a distracting effect and also slightly demoralize militia opponents somewhat. I think we'll have to discuss that more...Quote:
Originally Posted by Captain-Tiguris
@ALL: I have two questions I'd like to discuss:
1. Should we use the warcry ability for any troops? I'm against it because I don't think it makes sense that units fight better just because they screamed a little before rushing into battle and fight less good if they didn't scream. Instead, in order to get the epic effect a warcry gives, I'd recommend changing the sound of the units when they charge so they scream louder. I'd like to hear your opinions on that.
2. I've run some tests with vanilla R:TW units and here are my suggestions for stats:
* Professional swordsmen should have stats somewhere between praetorian and urban cohorts
* Militia to medium quality swordsmen have stats somewhere between principes and praetorians
* Elite swordsmen have stats like urban cohorts or better but with small unit
* Militia spearmen could be like german spear warband
* Professional/armored spearmen could have stats slightly better than german spear warband
* Feudal foot sergeants and other speararmed semi-elite have stats between armenian armored spearmen and greek hoplites but with quite good morale
* Crossbows: range as chosen archer warband, same attack, very slow firing speed
* Genoese crossbows: range as cretan archers, slightly higher attack, higher movement speed, very slow firing speed
* Longbowmen: range as cretan archers, slightly lower attack, fast firing speed
* Normal archers: range as barbarian archer warband, same attack
* Militia archers: range lower than barbarian archer warband, lower attack
* Javelinmen: same or higher attack than R:TW skirmishers, samt speed
* Slingers: same stats as R:TW slingers
I also suggest better charge for all light and missile troops, but very low attack and still almost as low defense as the R:TW missile units have. Perhaps slightly better morale for the most professional missile troops.
* Militia cavalry: stats in same class as equites and greek cavalry
* Unprofessional light cavalry: stats like greek cavalry to barbarian cavalry
* Professional light cavalry: stats like desert cavalry but not with the extra large unit size desert cav has in vanilla R:TW, perhaps slightly lowered speed
* Camels: stats like bedouin camels in R:TW but with slightly better morale, attack and defense, as well as better anti-morale bonus against enemy cavalry, but stats should still be lower than the cataphract camels parthia has in vanilla R:TW
* Medium to heavy cavalry: stats like barbarian noble cavalry to legionary cavalry
* Super heavy cavalry: stats around same as cataphracts, companions and praetorians (but some of those super heavy units will have small unit size)
What do you think of these stats suggestions?
Im not sure about the warcry there isn't really any troops that spring to mind who could use it. I think the longbowmen should have the same attack or even higher than than cretan archers, the rest seem fine.
1.I think this is a good idea, i also think the warcry part is kind of stupid. I wold rather have the wedgeformation for infantry of unit's. The wedge were commonly used by viking army's in Scandinavia, and probably in viking influenced parts of Britain too. It was called "svinfylking" or swinearay, were you placed the bravest man in the front, and 2 less breve behind him, and so on. (Offcourse they had to abandon this tactic later when facing medieval armys from central Europe.)Quote:
1. Should we use the warcry ability for any troops? I'm against it because I don't think it makes sense that units fight better just because they screamed a little before rushing into battle and fight less good if they didn't scream. Instead, in order to get the epic effect a warcry gives, I'd recommend changing the sound of the units when they charge so they scream louder. I'd like to hear your opinions on that.
2. I have looked very little at stats, so i can't really say what seems good or bad. For my part, i intend to skin the units so that the player easily can see how good the armour is.
(Dame, my gallery at imageshack is down :furious3: if the pic's doesn't come back, i'll make a new gallery, sorry.)
-Skel-
[removed]
Wow great thnx. [added to my folder]
Any other conseptart is very welcome..
-Skel-
Hi - apologies I've not posted for a couple of weeks but had some serious job searching to do - but see there's been a lot of progress while I've been away.
Today produced a long post on provinces and cities but managed to lose it by using the back and forward buttons during composition so will have to start again...
In brief had some minor corrections/suggestions on Northern Europe and rather more on Southern and Central.
General principle is that provinces should be as close as possible to Frankish duchies, Byzantine themata etc.
Also suggested that we need more provinces in the Middle East and North Africa.
In principle other than in the Sahara and Arabia Deserta there should be cities roughly as close together as in Vanilla RTW Italy (i.e. a couple of more in Persia and Iraq, plus a few more dotted along the North African coast).
However more on these tomorrow.
Did we agree a start date? I still hold with 911 for various reasons I've explained before (Normans, Lotharingia/Italy, Abassids, Rus etc).
Finally can we set up some sub-threads for units, provinces, factions, buildings etc as this one is getting a bit labyrinthine.
I think the stats for the units should be based more on each unit's historical ability to fight instead of general ideas on how well they'd fight comparatively. That being said, don't Chosen Warbands have a better range than normal archers? Crossbows are effective at a shorter range than normal bows.
On the warcry: I think certain units should have them - this is the Age of Fanatics, after all, and the Scots, Irish and Vikings have fanaticism in plenty. It shouldn't provide an attack bonus as much as a morale bonus, though.
Agree warcry is kind of dumb - never used it in RTW.
Infantry wedges or some kind of phalanx equivalent for a shieldwall would be better.
On unit stats would generally prefer to have a lot fewer uber-units equivalent to Urban Cohorts and Praetorian cavalry as it makes the end game really boring - you build a full stack army of elite units and can steamroller over everything.
Historically there were also very few real professional soldiers - even the bulk of the Byzantine army was made up of thematic militia.
Such elite units that are allowed should also be significantly smaller (i.e no 240-strong uber infantry units like Royal Pikemen or Argyraspides).
e.g Fyrd should be 240 and Huscarls 64.
In addition all units should be way harder to kill and to rout than in RTW - however that is achieved.
Also believe that cavalry should be weaker than in RTW - few battles were won by cavalry charges in this era (if they were the Vikings would have been much less of a threat to the Franks) and even the Muslims and Byzantines tended to rely more on missile than shock cavalry.
There should also be a major difference between late (11th century) knights using a couched lance and their predessors who appear to have mainly used their lances thrusting overarm (the Bayeux Tapestry shows both as well as spears being thrown by the Norman cavalry).
This could be handled by giving all except the top level Frankish and Byzantine units much lower charge bonuses.
Also would prefer to not see many Swordsmen units as historically the spear and axe were far more common and true swords (as opposed to seaxes etc) were restricted to the upper class elites who could afford them - however even they seem to have preferred to have slugged it out with spears, axes and lances in battle and kept their swords in reserve as a sidearm.
Been reading a lot of Norse Sagas recently and while heroes might compose poems about their swords, these feature far more commonly in formal duels than in battle accounts.
The only people who employed swords as a primary weapon on foot appear to have been the Swabians from Germany.
Also believe that archers should be generally few and far between - like Gallic forester warbands in RTW only recruitable at level 3 and taking 2 turns -it took a lot more training to produce a competent archer than a spearman.
This was even more true of horse archers who should not be mass produced by the Khazars and Magyars at the rate they are by the Scythians and Parthians in RTW.
In fact there's a case for making them a hidden resource units like Spartans - historically only the Russian Steppes and the Hungarian plain were suitable for the large scale pastoralism that produced effective horse archers in large numbers.
You must mean a "sax"; "seaxe" was the name of a region in England.Quote:
Originally Posted by The Apostate
I agree with most of what you say other than the bit about the Swabians. The Claymore, while hollywood-ized almost enough to be a fantasy weapon, was in use at this point, and should be used by Gaelic troops in this mod.
I agree the warcry should be used. As it was probably used to unnerve the opposistion. And based on a few things, I believe some Norse battle cry when charging into combat.
As for the second I agree.
But the camels should be re-made, as the dont look great on the vanilla one.
Ok. I think it's a bonus though when the density of cities is more varied - i.e. in some places two cities almost right next to each other and in other places further apart. Also my principles were these:Quote:
Originally Posted by The Apostate
1. extra density in British isles because of mod focus.
2. importance of cities should matter.
3. lower density in north africa, steppes and middle east area, no matter how it was historically, in order to prevent the abbassids from being overpowered.
4. I didn't care about province names and border drawings because the provinces aren't the main element of R:TW warfare - the city locations are. So I'm partly against being too restricted to french duchies, Byzantine themata etc. I suggest focusing on cities and cities importance. Only in cases where the are NO important cities at all in an area that was distinctly different than the rest and was for example for a long time independent from the country holding the nearby provinces (for example Britanny, Samland etc.)
5. I've already changed the province list a lot when working on the campaign map so the one posted above isn't the one I'm using right now. I've reached so far with the campaign map that I'll wait with editing things until I'm ready as feedback rather than starting point.
It's 843 now. Sorry, but you were gone so long so most things have already been planned around it now.Quote:
Originally Posted by The Apostate
Actually we're both wrong: it's spelled seax (no e on end).
I know of no evidence whatsoever for claymores in the viking era.
Everything I've read suggests that two-handed swords were introduced to Ireland and Scotland by the gallowglass no earlier than the 13th century (and probably considerably later than that).
Certainly Giraldus Cambrensis - who is almost unique amongst monkish chroniclers in describing arms and armour in some detail - does not mention them in his account of the Norman conquest of Ireland.
And even amongst the later gallowglass the claymore was always much less common than the axe.
The earliest depictions of galloglaich are the 13th or 14th C Roscommon and Glinsk tomb effigies all of which carry long sparth-axes and swords which are short enough to be worn scabbarded ar the waist (and which are thus not true claidheamh-mor - which as the name suggests were great swords which had to be carried like a staff or slung over a shoulder).
Only amongst much later (15th - 16th C) highlanders was the claymore at all common - although it is highly doubtful that more than a minority of a clan levy could have afforded such an expensive item of equipment and in any case it was hardly the most suitable weapon for raiding parties who had to run lightly through the heather.
In contrast Irish and Scots of the viking era appear to have been iron-poor and to have used short leaf-bladed thrusting swords like those depicted on the Aberlemno Cross (and even these were a prestige weapon).
Under viking influence the Irish adopted the axe to the degree that by Goraldus Cambrensis (12th C) an Irishman and his axe were considered inseparable - however they never took to swords to the same degree.
Even the swords used by tbe Swabians at Civitate were not true two-handed swords like the later claymore or zweihander - they actually seem to have been clsoer to what were called in the Renaissance hand-and-a-half or bastard swords (i.e. nearer to 4 than 6 foot long and balanced to be used either one- or two-handed).
Wedge is svinefylking/swinefylking/svinfylking, and by not using the "untrained" attribute for the infantry they form a straight, good shield wall by default when not moving too fast and when not using wedge formation. The phalanx formation will be saved for the spear units to reflect how a spear unit must slow down if they want to hold their formation in combat whereas the normal spear units can rush into battle at full speed which is unrealistic IMO. Militia and untrained troops get the "untrained" attribute and thus won't create an as impregnable shield wall and stand in a slight disarray although still in pretty neat lines. The horde formation will not be used other than, perhaps, for some specialist units like berserkers.Quote:
Originally Posted by The Apostate
In fact the R:TW morale is too low and battle speed is too high and that's the reason for this. If the professionals are only slightly below urban cohorts in stats then they aren't über-professionals compared to the other troops. The militia will for example have stats like principes to praetorians. Game engine-wise it's the relative stats that matter and if we use these stats we'll never get the feeling that the elite is as superior as you think. In fact, the elite will be less superior to the levies in this mod than in vanilla R:TW. There will be no steamrolling, on the contrary it'll make things more even. Also, the true elite will be remarkably more expensive and require more training turns than the levies, which means militia will play a major role. Finally, much of the elite units will have smaller unit size. So the historical correctness will be achieved - militia will be the bulk of most armies. That'll be further reinforced by the fact that most militia have 0 turns training time and can be recruited in large numbers quickly when needed whereas the elite will require long training so you'll hardly be able to field an army of more than 25% elite units even in the later parts of the game.Quote:
Originally Posted by The Apostate
The urban cohorts and other vanilla R:TW troops are able to withstand most cavalry charges from the best R:TW cavalry unless you expose their flank to them and they outnumber you badly. Also, same thing here: the elite cavalry will have smaller unit sizes. I'm also considering to lower the defense stats for most of them, as well as lowering attack and charge for the cataphract equivalents. Kataphraktoi and klibanophoroi will not move much faster than infantry...Quote:
Originally Posted by The Apostate
Ok, please come with suggestions for how the tech trees should be changed accordingly. Perhaps axe and sword units should just change places with each other in the tech trees and the problem is solved. Either way there need to be at least 4 levels of infantry buildings for most factions with most factions having new troop recruiting abilities in each building level for it to be balanced and fun. That's why I've for example made an archer unit called bowman and another called archer who only differ in stats.Quote:
Originally Posted by The Apostate
Militia archers will be very weak and therefore by choice not recruited much - a spearman would be preferable. Better archers will also be quite weak in comparison to other units. I've chosen stats for infantry around urban cohort level and so on, which means the archer don't achieve much. Of course, all my balancing was made with large unit size so it might be different with other unit sizes, but large or huge units is how the mod is intended to be played. If you run some tests you'll see that the archers will have little effect on such troops. However I'm considering to perhaps lower their attack stats even more, however keep the other stats the same. The battle of Hastings was won, according to my view, thanks to the archers. It was them more than the fake charges and retreats from close combat troops that forced Harold to break ranks (which made him vulnerable to the norman cavalry) and by the end of the day had weakened his position so much that the normans were able to charge him and win. The archers will still have this effect of forcing someone without archers to attack or be weakened if he camps the same position too long and therefore remain an important tactical instrument - however they'll be too weak to do much damage in a short period of time.Quote:
Originally Posted by The Apostate
Already done. They will have long training time and high cost, and are so weak in meleé that noone would recruit them to see them die quickly in their first battle. Most of them, except the generic unit called "horse archer", have zone of recruit.Quote:
Originally Posted by The Apostate
I agreeQuote:
Originally Posted by Captain-Tiguris
What do you mean? I'm basing on historical evidence how well they fight compared to each other. Cavalry isn't more powerful because they weren't historically, and so on. For more detailed planning on the specific units we'll look at more historical data but it's really hard to only use historical data for giving units correct stats: in battle X unit Y might have charged unit Z from the flank rather than from the front and that's why they won and so on... Or unit X happened to be a veteran unit whereas unit Y was only semi-professional...Quote:
Originally Posted by NeonGod
So if it is to have maximum historical accuracy it must be based on some general data about how certain unit CLASSES (heavy swordsmen, light cavalry, crossbowmen etc. rather than specific units like huscarle, berserker, longbowmen etc.) fought compared to other because there there is enough data to have reliable statistics about the other alternative. Then, if there is evidence of one unit type in each class having outstanding abilities in one field or lack of abilities in one field etc. we can do adjustments accordingly, starting from basic unit CLASS stats that we decide first. Also, if a certain faction had a training system which gave veterans only of a certain unit type, we could make them always start with higher stats but with longer training time etc.
Quote:
Originally Posted by NeonGod
Yes, warcries were used but they didn't work the way they do in R:TW - that you stand and scream for 10 seconds, then charge and get an attack bonus for it. They work more like that the unit which charges screams loud and unnerving while rushing towards the enemy. The warcry ability in R:TW is IMO badly implemented and means you can't plan tactics much. If someone attacks your line and you have a flanking troop ready, but forgot to warcry with it before, you'll have to stand for a few seconds screaming before you can go around the flank and charge with a bonus. When the unit finally hits the flank, they get two boni - one for warcry and one for charge.Quote:
Originally Posted by Captain-Tiguris
As far as I know, the warcry was used when charging rather than before battle, and was ALWAYS used when charging. This 100% correlation means it's possible to achieve the same effect by giving a unit a higher charge bonus and a fierce warcry sound instead of the current charge sound. Regarding the idea of lowering attack stats for warcry - sorry but afaik it's hardcoded. Alternative would be to give the units the screeching women or druid taunt ability and change the sound if you want a taunt before battle that'll only affect morale. However, that blocks the usage of svinefylking/wedge for the units, as there's only room for one ability per unit, and I think svinefylking has higher priority as special ability because there is another way of simulating a warcry giving an attack bonus by adding it to the charge bonus. Stats of berserkers and other unnerving troops could also be affected by giving them a "frightens infantry" ability.
Ok for modding purposes we must decide which hardcoded faction will become which faction in the mod. Here's what I've been using so far:
romans_julii -> Holy roman empire
romans_brutii -> Lotharingia
romans_scipii -> France
romans_senate -> Papal states
egypt -> Abbassids
scythia -> Al Andalus
spain -> Asturia
dacia -> Bulgars
parthia -> Byzantine empire
carthage -> Danes
numidia -> Irish
armenia -> Khazars
germans -> Magyars
seleucid -> Normans
britons - Norway
thrace -> Rus
macedon -> Saxons
pontus -> Scots
greek_cities - Sweden
gauls -> Welsh
slave -> slave
And everyone had war cries - for that matter modern soldiers are still trained to scream loudly in bayonet charges although it is extremely unlikely they will ever have to use them.
I really don't think it should figure as a special ability.
On cavalry I obviously fought too many battles on VH setting where good cavalry can rout a phalanx or urban cohort head on.
Reducing speed for very heavy cavalry like Klibanophoroi is a good idea - although speed seems to have been restricted by formation rather than by the weight of armour.
There is also the issue that historically Byzantine cavalry did not perform well against western knights - even though the latter were often much less well armoured and had lighter shorter lances than the byzantine kontarion.
This was a tactical choice - according to the manual written by Nikephoros Phokas Byzantine cavalry were trained to attack at a trot in close order and appear to have relied as much on maces as on the lance - in fact Phokas specifies that the first four ranks of his klibanophoroi formation should be armed with maces with more lightly armoured lancers on the flanks and archers behind.
Indeed the way in which the Frankish charge is described by Anna Comnena seems to indicate that the couched lance was no longer used by the Byzantines by the 11th century (there was probably not that much point in couching a lance without the added momentum of a charge at the gallop) and had to be reintroduced by Manuel Comnenus in the 12th.
To model this one should probably reduce not only their speed but also their charge bonus.
On axe and swordsmen I really don't think anyone other than the Germans should use swords as a primary weapon.
This does make the troop rosters rather limited: Saxons for instance should strictly speaking just have spear units of different quality with some mediocre missile troops and no cavalry (the huscarls of Hastings were only introduced by the Danish kings and so should only be available at the very top of the tech tree).
To inject some variety you could have say fyrd spearmen at level 1, better select fyrd spearmen at level 2, thegns with sword and shield at level 3 equivalent to chosen swordsmen (actually these would have had spears as well but that would be boring) and axe-armed huscarls at level 4.
For viking armies the level 1 infantry would be spear armed bondi, level 2 might be one-handed axe and shield landsmen, level 3 two handed axe hirdsmen and level 4 royal huscarls - however this is very artificial.
High level Frankish units would have to be dismounted knights as there was no real elite infantry in this era (armoured footmen in Carolingian mss are probably dismounted cavalry).
However overall I think a three level barbarian tech tree would better reflect 9th-11th century reality outside of the Byzantine and Muslim worlds - if you want gothic cathedrals, stone castles etc you have to make it a more generic medieval mod (with all the problems that poses for conversion, crusades, etc - MTW did all that much better).
With four levels you will have to introduce a bunch of what are effectively fantasy units to fill the gaps in western rosters.
Faction list looks good.
Two suggestions:
I would prefer Italy as a faction rather than Lotharingia (which only really existed as a kingdom from 843 to 869) - again start date is crucial here.
Also don't think Asturias was important or distinctive enough to be a faction and would prefer a Muslim one based in North Africa to fill the gap between Abassids and Umayyads (which would be a better faction name than al-Andalus).
These either could be Fatimids who start off with Tunisia and Algeria or Tulunids with Egypt.
Without a North African faction you'll have to make the whole continent rebel territory (otherwise you'll have an unstoppable Abbassid Juggernaut on your hands).
Viking, and anglo saxon army's didn't have any strict organisation or many specialised units with their own names... So to fill these gap's, we can use the "heavy" description, to describe bether armour and weapons that were develuped in this timeframe.Quote:
With four levels you will have to introduce a bunch of what are effectively fantasy units to fill the gaps in western rosters.
I allso made an other system for the norse/vikings to become more accurate, without adding fantasy units in an earlyer post:
-Skel-Quote:
The norse army's were built up by the nobles hirds (bodyguards, or personal/local army). Poor and less important nobles had small, less trained, and bad equipped hirds. The Important nobles/jarls/kings on the other hand, had larger numbers of well trained, good armoured hirdmen. When a king or a jarl went to war, he had to relay on hes "ally nobles" to support hes army with men. The nobles gathered with their hird (10 - 100 men etch) along with the Jarls/kings hird. Together they formed the army.
So the regular sword/spear/archer/axe unit's could be called sword/spear/archer/axe hird. then you get Jarls hird, as better troops, and the finest units can be called kings hird.
By the time of Olaf II there were three levels of royal Hird: Gestr, Huscarls and Hirdmen (note that there were only 120 men in total for the entire hird!)
Earlier Harald Fairhair is meant to have instituted a system by which each jarl should maintain a hird of 60 men and have under him four or more local chieftains called hersir each of which would maintain 20 more hirdsmen.
However many of these would be better represented as general's bodyguards than seperate units.
On reflection I would only allow a three level tech tree for vikings and have undifferentiated Hirdmen as the level three units.
There was also an equivalent of the Saxon select fyrd called the leidang which would supply the level 2 unit which IMO would be not swordsmen but good quality spearmen (even if they had them swords were far too expensive and required too much space to be used in the shieldwall).
Level 1 would be bondi spearmen representing the levee en masse.
The only other Viking units would be archers and berserkers (barring a very late saga description of Stamford Bridge there is no evidence whatsoever for viking cavalry ever being used on a battlefield).
Given that some spears were thrown one could also have a javelin skirmisher unit.
Of course in reality all these troop types (except for the royal bodyguard) would be mixed together in local contingents rather than split up into units but this is a game....
I agree with skeletor that words like heavy, chosen and elite etc. can be used to create the different levels needed. In a few emergency cases the next building can give what last building gave but with +1 xp (like equites and triarii in pre-marius time in vanilla R:TW). No fantasy units are needed. Besides a certain troop type was not exactly the same that long, there were always small improvements in fighting and equipment even though there weren't any new names for the "units".
I'll have a look at the tech trees and try to make axes more easily available but swords harder to get. In general I want it this way: if there were ANY troops at all using sword in the period, swordsmen should be possible to recruit. If they were uncommon due to costs, they should still be in the mod, but cost more. That'll be the case for dismounted frankish knights for example.
Also notice that there are different building complexes for swordsmen and spearmen etc. Better sword buildings could be made more expensive and take longer than better spear buildings too for historical balancing.
So I'd like to know which factions of those listed above should be more focused around axes. So far I'm convinced danes, norwegians and saxons should have more focus on axes and have fewer swordsmen. Saxon axe huscarles are already as it is quite far up their tech tree because it'll take long before they reach the higher city levels unless they expand and capture Paris or something... Vikings get their huscarles slightly earlier in the tech tree.
Franks will have swords for their foot knights (=dismounted normal knights), were swords common among the semi-professional franks too? By germans, do you mean HRE or all germanic peoples?
Did muslims use a comination of sables and axes mostly for their infantry?
The byzantines as well as the rus have already got focus more around spears and axes than around swords in the current tech tree.
I'm not sure the celts relied that much on axes, everything I've heard suggests they used swords much... ~:confused: When did they switch their swords from the ancient period to axes, only to switch back to swords again in the later Medieval period?
No, that can easily become four levels:Quote:
Originally Posted by The Apostate
1. landsmenn (militia)
2. karls (better militia) AND gestr
3. karls (better militia) AND huscarles
4. karls (better militia) AND hirdmenn
or:
1. landsmenn (militia) AND gestr
2. karls (better militia) AND huscarles (with axe)
3. sword huscarles (much more expensive than with swords)
4. hirdmenn
or:
1. landsmenn (militia) AND gestr
2. karls (better militia) AND huscarles (with axe) AND sword huscarles (much more expensive than with swords)
3. jarls hird
4. joms vikings, birkebeiners (zone of recruit and small units for both), royal hird (expensive)
or something along those lines. Compare to the other tech trees to see how strong troops each level should approximately give. I've put some kind of levy unit in level one for most factions. That way the player is forced to invest not just 1 turn and a handful of florins to recruit good troops of a certain type in a settlement, but instead have to plan recruiting more carefully.
EDIT: I forgot to mention this first but my intention with the 4 level tree was that many provinces would already have level 1 available from start of campaign while level 2 would be available in one or two provinces per faction from start, or available to just start building. It would take time before level 2 would be possible to have in many of your provinces, and it'd take time before you could start producing your first level 3 troops. Also, level 2 troops should be so expensive that you might not be able to train them at start even if they are available. With that said, perhaps it's more clear what I meant.
There are already javelineers for all factions in the tech trees.Quote:
Originally Posted by The Apostate
Some loading screens, tell me if you like them. I specifically thought the loading screens should be free of soldiers fighting, showing just a calm natural view before battle like the marching soldiers saw on their way to battle before the manouvering and fighting begun. But if you prefer it we could use loading screens with fighting scenes created from ingame screenshots of the mod's units in action instead:
https://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y1...g_screen_4.jpg
This picture is from close to the site where Battle of Hastings was fought
https://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y1...g_screen_3.jpg
Village behind a snowy field...
https://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y1...g_screen_1.jpg
A tree without leaves with a bird in it. Perhaps I should edit the bird to a crow or raven?
I also have a picture from Haithabu and one from Birka that I could use, what do you think?
It seems like there are problems with modding the quotes and logo too soon, but I'll try to make it work (it still hasn't after around 20 CTD that also forced me to restart the computer). Anyway, I found some good quotes from viking sagas and other viking-related writings and I think they'd look really good for the mod.
We also need a logo to put instead of the Rome:Total War logo on all the loading screens. The avatar is a cool logo but unfortunately won't work with transparency stuff. What I mean as a logo in this case is something square or circular shaped but adapted to having a sharp end, maybe a frame, and be used with transparency with an arbitrary picture behind it. Can you make one, skeletor? Maybe something with runes?
I also wonder if anyone could take the responsibility of making the faction icons. I'm not sure about any of them really. We got a nice khazar flag posted above, but apart from that I don't know which flags/icons the factions should have. The Danish white cross on red wasn't until the late crusading period, and did the Swedish really have their 3 crowns during the viking age or was it not until around 1100-1200 they got that symbol? Etc.
~:cheers: Cool screens. Gives that calm look before battle. I think you should keep the bird as it is.
If you haven't read it already, this is a great description of the Anglo-saxon fyrd army's, and their reform after Alfred.. LINK
Good reading :book:
-Skel-
Thanks, I'll read that tomorrow. I've worked too much on the modding for today... Too many CTD:s for my taste, I don't know if I sounded angry in any post above that I posted today but if so I'm sorry - it was because I was so tired...
Anyway I'd like you, The Apostate, to look at the Byzantine, Rus, French, Khazar and Bulgar tech trees and say what you think of them. For several reasons, among others that they were among the first I planned the tech trees for in my first tech tree suggestions, it'd be easiest to fix all the tech trees to become more historically accurate if I got feedback on those particular tech trees first.
That is an excellent idea.Quote:
Originally Posted by LegioXXXUlpiaVictrix
I believe Brian Boru wielded a claymore, and William Wallace after him, although Wallace is without the timeframe.Quote:
Originally Posted by The Apostate
I agree, however, that they were uncommon. Perhaps they should be relegated to an elite unit, or family members only?
OK onto provinces/settlements:
IRELAND
Problem is that the nearest things to real towns in pre-Norman Ireland were the 5 viking foundations (Dublin, Limerick, Cork, Waterford and Wexford) none of which would be suitable for Irish faction provinces.
The island should probably be divided into 5 Irish (three of which might be rebels at the start) and one Norse province.
The five Irish provinces would be:
Meath/Tara - Irish Capital
Ulster/Armagh - Irish
Leinster/Ferns - Rebel
Munster/Cashel - Rebel
Connaught/Tuam - Rebel
Dublin/Dublin - Viking Rebel
The allocation of Meath and Ulster to the Irish reflects that these provinces were dominated by the Northern and Southern Branches of the O'Neills who held the high kingship until 1002 but that the O'Neill's always had difficulties exercising power over the other provinces.
RTW Tara is slightly too far south and I would move it northwards to make room for Dublin (which should have the smallest possible province).
On spellings I would stick to the Anglicised versions (which are at least pronounceable by non-Gaels) rather than the old Irish ones.
SCOTLAND
I would use the old kingdoms as provinces (there were 14 Pictish provinces but these are way too small)
Strathclyde/Dumbarton - Scottish or Welsh Rebel
Fortriu/Dunkeld - Scottish capital
Dalriada/Iona - Scottish
Orkney (includes Sutherland and Caithness)/Kirkwall - Norse Rebel or Norway
Lothian/Edinburgh - Saxon Rebel
WALES
Gywnedd/Bangor - Welsh capital
Deheubarth/Dinefwr (north of Swansea) - Welsh
Dyfed/St David's - Welsh
Can't see any room for Powys as there is a bloody great mountain on the RTW map where it should be and in any case it was absorbed by Gywnnedd in 855.
ENGLAND
Date is all important here as England (and for that matter Scotland as well) looked very different in 843 than in 871 or 911.
Using 911 as a baseline:
Wessex/Winchester - Saxon capital
Essex/London (move port east) - Saxon
Kent/Canterbury (if it will fit) - Saxon
Mercia/Chester - Saxon
East Anglia/Norwich - Viking Rebel
Northumbria/York - Viking Rebel
In 843 Mercia, East Anglia and Northumbria would all be Saxon Rebel
Haven't put in town sizes as these need a lot more thought
I am kind of divided myself on whether everywhere except Baghdad and Constantinople should start small - in which case you're stuck with crap units for decades - or whether there should be more large towns and minor cities at start but with much slower population growth than RTW - so you get reasonable level 2 and 3 units earlier but have to wait much longer for the level 4's.
In actuality there were virtually no towns of any size in Northern Europe anyway - but then settlement size in RTW is really just an indicator of province population.
Actual relative population sizes can be calculated fairly precisely thanks to the availability such documents as the Anglo-Saxon Burghal Hidage, the Norwegian Guthlalaw and various lists of Byzantine themata and their armies -the key is to establish a baseline.
Thoughts on Scandinavia to follow tomorrow.
Brian Boru and William Wallace wielding claymores - utter Hollywood (although with little Mel Gibson playing Wallace any sword would look like a Claymore).
Repeat - there is no evidence for anyone using two-handed swords in the British Isles before the 14th century.
Even the 1386 effigy of Ranald MacDonald at Iona which sometimes identifies him as having a claymore shows the sword belted at his waist - meaning that unless he was of Goliath-like proportions (in which case he would have like many other Gaelic chieftains had Mor added to his name) it cannot have been much more than 3'6" long.
Swords designed specifically to be used two-handed (rather than longswords with a grip that allowed it to be wielded with one or two hands like the Japanese katana) are a German invention that seems to have reached Ireland and Scotland via Scandinavia only in the late Middle Ages.
Whether they were ever very practical on the battlefield is highly questionable - such a long slashing weapon would not survive many encounters with armour or parrying weapons and needed much more room to wield effectively than a conventional sword and shield or a polearm.
In fact the reason they survived in Irish and Highland Scottish warfare long after they had been relegated to the use of executioners elsewhere in Europe was precisely because opponents were unlikely to be heavily armoured and battles were so small scale that heroes had room to use them.
In fact we know what Brian Boru (who was 73 years old) carried at Clontarf - a sword in one hand and a crucifix in the other - neither of which saved him from being ambushed and killed in the pursuit by a viking chieftain who had hidden in some trees and sprung out at him.
However more usually by this date he and other Irish chieftains would probably have been armed much like their viking allies and opponents with mailshirts and long axes.
Wallace may also have used an axe (Dence or Danish axes were still being used by Scots as late as 1544) but as a minor lowland laird was much more likely to have used one-handed sword, shield and spear.
From http://www.myarmoury.com/feature_euroedge.html (an excellent source on medieval weaponry):
Claymore
A term derived from the Gaelic claidheamohmor, meaning "great sword." It was first used to describe the large cross-hilted broadsword used in the Scottish Highlands and by Scottish mercenaries in Ireland from the late 15th to early 17 century. In its classic form, the claymore consisted of a straight, broad, double-edged blade, long, diamond-section quillions angling toward the blade and terminating in quatrefoils, a quillion block extending to form a long spur on each side, and a tubular section leather covered grip with wheel-shaped pommel. The blade was generally shorter than blades of Continental two-handed swords of the same period.
The claymore almost certainly developed from a late medieval cross-hilted sword that can be seen on some effigies and tomb slabs in the West Highlands and the Isles. The sword exhibited two of the characteristics found on the claymore, namely, the long, downward-angled quillions and the central part of the quillion block extending in a long spur. The dating of claymores is complex and imprecise, although there is a claymore of classic form depicted on a grave slab from Oronsay dated 1539. In the latter part of the 16th century, although retaining the characteristic form of quillion and blade, claymores sometimes had large spherical pommels.
A sword related to the claymore is known as the "lowland" form because of the fact that several examples came from southern Scotland. Lowland swords had angular, round-section qillions, the terminals arranged as turned knobs set at right angles; some have open rings affixed to the center of the quillions on each side. They retrained the feature of the quillion block extending to a spur on each side but unlike the claymore's, the spur was small and pointed. The pommels of these swords were large and spherical, the long tubular-section grips being of wood covered with leather. One form of the Lowland sword had quillions in the form of an arched cross, and in the center a solid oval plate bent down as an extra guard for the hands. Although Lowland swords have been dated to the second half of the 16th century and those with arched quillions and plates have been dated to the early 17th, little evidence is at present available that would lead to more precise dating.
Most of the blades of both the Highland and the Lowland claymores appear to be of German origin, whereas Scottish craftsmen made the hilts.
Several Scottish literary references indicate that the term "claymore" was applied by Gaelic speakers in the Highlands to both the old-fashioned, two-handed sword and the characteristic Scottish basket-hilted sword of the early 18th century.
[End Quote]
To which I would add that the first documentary evidence I can find for the claymore is in reference to the battle of Loch Lochy in 1544.
So however cool they are we can't have them.
Nuff said?
A quick thought on special standards or morale enhancing units that might be worth considering to add fanatical colour.
Chanting Celtic monks - these would appear in battles in Wales and Ireland to support their side just as their Druidic predecessors are supposed to have done - obviously should have no combat value whatsoever (at least one contingent of Welsh monks was slaughtered in battle by the English who obviously objected to their singing).
Odinic Raven Banners - several of these appear in Norse sagas where they were supposed to guarantee victory for the army but death for the standard-bearer - I visualise this as a very small but semi-indestructible unit of Berserkers whose presence can terrify the enemy.
The Labarum - a sacred Christian Banner allegedly first borne by Constantine the Great and which accompanied the emperor on major expeditions up to its loss at Manzikert - I visualise this with a small escort of super-elite tagmatic cataphracts.
(the True Cross was kept in Jerusalem and only recovered by the Crusaders in 1099 after which it served as a battle banner until its loss at Hattin but shouldn't really be available).
The Caroccio - big battle wagons containing a portable altar, relics and priests celebrating mass that were taken into battle by Italian citizen militias.
The Pope obviously should rate as a Caroccio all by himself if he goes into battle (which he does at least once at Civitate) - while on the subject I rather think the head of the Papal Roman faction should not in fact be the Pope but the Senator who up until the Cluniac Reforms actually ran the Papal State via puppet pontiffs - in which case the Pope is a special unit and not a general.
Recruiting these should be difficult or impossible - making them available only as irreplaceable starting units (possibly regenerating likle wardogs and generals if that is do-able) would give a boost in the early game when it's most needed and stop the AI from churning out dozens of them later on.
Well, I've read many a source not from Hollywood that say otherwise...Quote:
Originally Posted by The Apostate
They weren't. They often broke and the ends were usually taken to make one's doch.Quote:
Originally Posted by The Apostate
88, and he did carry the cross, yes, but when attacked by the viking party, he slew three of them with his great, honking, two-handed claymore.Quote:
Originally Posted by The Apostate
Granted, it would have made more sense, but, apparently, he didn't. His was a claymore, albeit a smaller one than usual, if memory serves.Quote:
Originally Posted by The Apostate
I have looked in to this before, so after more research is done, i'll look into this.Quote:
I also wonder if anyone could take the responsibility of making the faction icons. I'm not sure about any of them really. We got a nice khazar flag posted above, but apart from that I don't know which flags/icons the factions should have. The Danish white cross on red wasn't until the late crusading period, and did the Swedish really have their 3 crowns during the viking age or was it not until around 1100-1200 they got that symbol? Etc.
Danish Cross: Acording to the legend, this flag fell from the sky in the Volmerbattle in 1219 ad.
Danmark allso have a weaponshield with 3 blue lions on gold background. I do't know how old it is, but i'll find out.....
Norwegian flag is inspierd by the Danish, and probably came mutch later.
Norwegian Lion with axe: This symbol is described as early as the 1200's, but it's probably older, i'll find out....
The Swedish 3 crowns is from 1343ad (Magnus Eriksons, rouled Norway, Sweden, and parts of Danmark (Skaane) for a short period of time.
My uncle is a historian, and heraldic, so i wil give him a call, and ask for hes opinion on the that mather. He probably allso know alot about most northeuropean weaponshields.
Most of this looks doable, i haven't tried yet, but as soon as i fiw my 3dsmax (trail period over :embarassed: ) i'll look into it. Does anyone know if siege engins can be used as standards :goofy:Quote:
A quick thought on special standards or morale enhancing units that might be worth considering to add fanatical colour ect...
-Skel-
Nice!Quote:
Originally Posted by skeletor
I think you can have the officer in a unit carry a cross or something other big. Apart from that there are special textures for the standards carried by someone in the middle of the unit.Quote:
Originally Posted by skeletor
BTW I object to singing units, they're a bit too exotic for my taste. Afaik singing troops weren't common to bring with viking raids and probably not very common in normal battles either?
@The Apostate: I wasn't talking about the Claymore, I was talking about swords in general when I said I was suprised when you said they were so unimportant at the time. Your posts above only answered the issue about Claymore but you never answered my questions if other swords were uncommon too.
Anyway, I'd still like it if you, The Apostate, put higher priority on checking the tech trees for Byzantines, Rus, French, Khazars and Bulgars than other researching for this mod right now, and come with comments for improvements for them. They were some of the first I planned last time so if I am to change the tech trees accordingly to research it would be easiest to start with them. Then we can proceed with viking and British tech trees and finally fix the remaning ones.
Ok, sounds doable, except I don't know how the borders between Meath, Ulster and Dublin will be. Also I don't know where Ferns, Cashel and Tuam are located.Quote:
Originally Posted by The Apostate
I personally prefer if the to use the local spellings of all provinces and cities when possible, it adds to the atmosphere. But I think all the other team members should come with their opinions on that first.
Sounds doable, but Iona will have to be put on the mainland instead of the island due to technical issues. Also I don't know where Kirkwall and Dunkeld are located, and I lost the map where I saw where Dumbarton was located.Quote:
Originally Posted by The Apostate
Sounds very good and doable. Re the mountain that's no problem, as the entire campaign map is being remade with more realistic terrain for the time and so on. The R:TW map contains way too much impregnable forest and also too much normal forest, and too many mountains are impassable. Those things are subject to changes, and cities will be decided first and terrain afterwards so that no illegal positioning of impassable terrain is made where a city is supposed to be.Quote:
Originally Posted by The Apostate
Sounds doable and good from the gameplay issue too. However at least one province on the English east coast must be Danish rather than rebel-owned. I think the one I had in mind was York, any comments on that?Quote:
Originally Posted by The Apostate
Yes, it's supposed to reflect province population more than city population, but also be weighed somewhat with city population too because of the squalor code. As I see it, some compromise with using the real city population but have it affected by the situation in the surrounding province is the best implementation.Quote:
Originally Posted by The Apostate
Nice.Quote:
Originally Posted by The Apostate
If the populations for reaching certain city levels is hardcoded we might have to multiply all city populations with either a certain factor or if necessary with an exponential or logarithmic function. I.e. - if it's too low in all cases we multiply all by the same number but if it's too low for small settlements and too high for larger we multiply the lower values with a greater number than we multiply the higher values with and so on...
You can have 3 "men" following your unit, an officer, standard, and musician. I could replace the musician with a ram model/texture if possible, and remoddeled it to become a wagon with a relic, or true cross, and have them added to a unique Papal unit.Quote:
I think you can have the officer in a unit carry a cross or something other big. Apart from that there are special textures for the standards carried by someone in the middle of the unit.
I could allso try remoddeling the scorpion in to wagon with a relic/cross, with a crew draging it around.
Local spelling sounds good ~:cheers:Quote:
I personally prefer if the to use the local spellings of all provinces and cities when possible, it adds to the atmosphere. But I think all the other team members should come with their opinions on that first.
-Skel-
Hi there
I have been thinking about creating a similar mod myself called "Battles in the North", but hell your concept and research is far beyond what I could have done alone. I would really like to join your team as a skinner, making faction icons and other graphics. Of course only if you don't have people to do this already.
If you could give me an assignment (skin a model from a picture or something) I could post my work and you could decide wether I'm good enough or not.
Hey ScionTheWorm.
This is not up to me, but i guess skinners/modellers are allways welcome.
I'll pm you.
-Skel-
I heard some other mod tried that but it didn't work... If one man in the unit has a cart then the entire unit must have it, or something like that. I'd say we could skip the true cross and the other singing units. True cross also wasn't recovered until around 1100 AD.Quote:
Originally Posted by skeletor
If you know how to skin and do good realistic-looking skins then you're welcome to join. We're also working on the faction symbols at the moment so if you could help with them that'd be great.Quote:
Originally Posted by ScionTheWorm
Some news on faction symbols: those in menus and buttons etc. have to be circular, the game automatically cuts away other parts of them. Banners for battles can however have non-circular shapes on the actual faction symbol on it.
Jörkvik would be cool, I think, but I don't know anything about its timeline, so I don't know if it's entirely appropriate or not. It has my support, though.Quote:
Originally Posted by LegioXXXUlpiaVictrix
Local spellings are also a good idea.
Swords were less common than axes or spears. I only brought up the Claymore to not leave exclusive sword use to Swabians.
Immortal much? ~DQuote:
Originally Posted by ScionTheWorm
Having done some quick research I think I understand the sources of your misapprehension.
The myth of Wallace as a giant of a man wielding a huge claymore actually comes from one of the earliest examples of Scottish mania for inventing traditions (for which generally see the famous article by Hugh Trevor-Roper in the Invention of Tradition ed. Eric Hobsbawm - I did see this in full on the web a while ago so you can probably find it with google).
'The Sword of William Wallace' which is in Stirling's Wallace Monument (and apparently visiting New York at the moment) cannot be the great man's sword as it is clearly a claymore or two-handed greatsword of a sort that did not enter Scotland until around 1500.
In fact it's existence is only attested from 1505 when James IV paid to have it given a hilt and it is obviously a bogus relic created by James or his advisers as part of his programme of fostering anti-English sentiment.
At the same time princes all over Europe were engaged in similarly bogus projects (another is the 'Arthur's Round Table' commissioned by Henry VIII and hung in Winchester).
As for Brian Boru I have checked the contemporary accounts of Clontarf in the Annals of Innisfallen, the Annals of Ulster, the Annals of Loch Ce, MacCarthaigh's Book and the Chronicon Scotorum and not one has the details about Brian's death in the tent where he manages to take down three Danes first (an improbable feat for a man variously described as 72, 73 and 88 years old - particularly if he was using a 6' long sword to do it).
As Njals' Saga also doesn't have it, I presume this story actually comes from the later Cogadh Gaedhel re Gallaibh (the one source which I don't have access to) and which is universally regarded by modern Irish historians as 'largely fictional' (e.g. Roger Collins Early Medieval Europe 300-1000)
If the Cogadh contains a reference to Brian wielding a claidheamh mor (and I will check it next time I'm in the library) then this would simply be a poetic expression for a long viking-style one handed sword (as opposed to the short leaf-bladed swords used by pre-viking Irishmen) and not a reference to a weapon that did not feature in Irish warfare for another 500 years.
Anyway I should have been using this time to look at provinces and settlements so can we close this argument down?
If you genuinely want more details PM me.
Back to provs/setts
Ireland:
Check any modern map of Ireland for Ferns, Cashel and Tuam (Tuam is inland on the west north of Galway, Ferns is inland south of Dublin and north of Wexford, Cashel is inland to the west of Ferns and north of Waterford.
Their ports should probably all be aligned south while Dublin, Armagh and Tara's are east-ward aligned
There is a sketchmap showing povince boundaries at http://www.ibiblio.org/gaelic/fifths.gif
Dublin should just have the smallest province around the city the map will allow you taken out of Leinster and Meath.
Scotland
I actually chose Iona in preference to Dunadd which is the older centre of the kingdom of Dalriada and is on the mainland - either will do:
see http://www.travels-in-time.net/e/scotland15arteng.htm for location
Dumbarton is just north of Glasgow.
http://www.scottishmaritimemuseum.or...s/scotland.gif
Unfortunately at RTW scale it's rather close to Dunadd, Edinburgh and Dunkeld so you may have to fudge them a bit.
Wales
The mountain is Snowdon and should really be rather further west than in RTW - although that would then impinge on Bangor on the coast - personally would drop Powys as three provinces seem more than enough for Wales and it ceased to an independent kingdom at the start of our period.
England
Both East Anglia and Northumbria fell to the Danish Great Army in the 860's so either or both could be Danish (although they were certainly not ruled from Denmark which was itself disunited until Harald Bluetooth's reign in the mid-900's).
As Dublin and York were ruled by independant kings - some of whom were actually Norwegians like Erik Bloodaxe - East Anglia (which was together with the 5 boroughs of the east Midlands knowns as the Danelaw due to the high level of Danish settlement) is probably a better bet for a Danish province.
However I rather feel that this will make the Danes a too powerful faction - although OTOH it might be difficult to get the AI to send armies overseas without an English province (for the same reason York or Dublin might have to be given to the Norwegians).
On population sizes although we don't have any censuses giving actual numbers we do know how many ships, fyrdmen or thematic soldiers some faction's provinces supplied - so a relative scale could be built using historical data.
The baseline is really a decision on how big the biggest starting towns for each faction should be.
e.g. if Constantinople and Baghdad start as large cities, then the next level down would be represented as minor cities like Cordoba, Rome, Cairo, Tunis etc
This would make the biggest Frankish, Viking, Celtic etc settlements no larger than large towns and most would be towns or villages.
However this is bound up with the tech trees - my own preference would be for larger starting settlements so factions can have armies that are more representative of reality and to tackle the over-production of elite units by ZOR limitations and making them expensive and slow to train.
However if the population increase rates are hard-coded this will be problematic - although we can presumably get rid of all the population increasing buildings like fertility temples and farms.
Ok nice I think East Anglia is good for a Danish province.
@ALL: I've been forced to change the factions conversion list to this due to crappy hardcoded limits. Apparently culture penalty culture is hardcoded so this is how we'll need to do it instead:
CATHOLIC1
romans_julii -> Holy roman empire
romans_brutii -> Lotharingia
romans_scipii -> France
romans_senate -> Papal states
CATHOLIC2
gauls -> Asturia
germans -> Normans
britons -> Saxons
dacia -> Welsh
scythia -> Scots
spain -> Irish
ORTHODOX
parthia -> Byzantines
pontus -> Bulgars
armenia -> Rus
MUSLIM
carthage -> Al Andalus
numidia -> Abbassids
JEWISH
egypt -> Khazars
PAGAN
seleucid -> Norway
greek_cities -> Sweden
macedon -> Denmark
thrace -> Magyars
slave
Note that faciton colors are moddable so don't adapt skins to the colors these factions have in vanilla R:TW now! We can decide RGB values for each faction as soon as we've designed the faction symbols.
Ach. I was about to ask about whether or not a culture's religion could be controlled, similar to the arrival of the Portuguese in Shogun. If the religions are being used to organize Culture and its penalties, then I guess this is out of the question.
Languages:
Do we go down the Europa Barbarorum route of trying to call everything by whatever names the natives used at the time, do we use standard modern Anglicisations - or do we attempt some messy compromise.
At least for version 1.0 I am for modern standard Anglicisations throughout (i.e. the Byzantines, Constantinople, Germans, London and not Rhomaios, Konstantinopolis, Deutsch and Lunden).
In justification I would plead time constraints - I do not have the resources or linguistic skills to look up Old French etc lexicons and the fact is that a lot of provinces changed hands in the era.
e.g. York was only Jorvik for less than a century before reverting to Eoforwic and many of the Med provinces changed hands from Byzantine to Arab and back again (and do I want to look up the 9th century Arabic and 10th century Greek for Crete? - no I don't).
If we were a big multilingual team it might be feasible but we're not.
Ireland is maybe a special case - as a non-Gaelic speaker I am happier with Munster, Connaught, Meath, Leinster and Ulster as at least I can pronounce them - however the standard names used by Irish historians for pre-Norman provinces are now usually Mumu, Connacht, Mide, Laigin and Ulaid.
However even they tend to use modern Anglicised spellings for towns - so in fact it is more consistent to use Anglicisations throughout.
Irish (and for that matter French, German and Byzantine) personal names are another can of worms we'll have to open at some point.
Rus are pagan until 988.
They were also far more culturally aligned to Scandinavia than to the Byzantines before the conversion
How about swapping Byzantium with the Khazars to be the standalone Egyptian faction?
Despite religious differences Khazars, Magyars and Bulgars had far more in common as steppe nomads with each other than they had with the other factions you group them with - and so should be the three eastern factions (which I'd rename Steppe Peoples or something along those lines).
Come to think of it another negative effect of making the Bulgars Orthodox is that the Byzantines will be able to assimilate them more quickly whereas in fact they revolted frequently after the conquest.
Rus, Denmark, Norway and Sweden should then have the four Greek slots (Viking or Norse might be a reasonable culture name).
Will this work with the religious building tech tree? - if RTW eastern factions all worship completely different deities I can't see why the Bulgars can't have churches, the Khazars synagogues and the Magyars shamanic circles or whatever they had.
Also it's not really valid to distinguish Catholic from Orthodox til the great Schism of 1053.
Sure the western church used Latin and the eastern Greek, but the real doctrinal and organisational differences only solidified after the Hildebrandine Reforms of the 11th century
By asserting that the Pope's primacy was more than just nominal and that he had rights to dictate dogma and appoint bishops even in the other patriarchates of the Church, the reforms made it inevitable that that the eastern churches would reject his authority.
'Greek' and 'Latin' would probably be better cultural descriptions (in fact Latin was the generic Byzantine term for westerners irrespective of whether they spoke a latin-derived language or not).
Of course in game terms it will make no difference whatsoever....
Given that the XP will at the very least offer different faction slots (although from what I've seen so far there may be even less than RTW) should we even be making the slot allocation decisions now?
In any case we are hardly going to get a version out before the XP so should we be focusing on things like units, skins and the map that are unlikely to be changed by the XP?
I wonder how other mods are dealing with this issue?
Some unit's:
http://img166.echo.cx/img166/3695/da...ershird4dt.png
Dane sword hird
http://img166.echo.cx/img166/683/axe15mc.png
Swordman with axe
These are wip's
-Skel-
@The Apostate: We must make the allocations now because it's used in most campaign map related coding etc. and also for units. I'm not sure it'll take longer than the xp for us to finish this mod either, we're doing good progress and we've now got plenty of skinners. I'll get the campaign map quite fast once I've recieved all the research.
If you think local spelling is too hard to find, then we could stick to English spelling for province and settlement names. However I think all units should have local names, i.e. kataphraktoi instead of cataphracts. That also makes sense - the settlements changed hands and therefore name/spelling to that of another culture, whereas the units recruitable by only a certain faction would keep a name of the same culture.
Re the faction conversion list I'll have a look at it again. You're right that the new system doesn't make sense, I tried to convert the old plan into a new one with the restrictions included, but it turned out to end up quite strange. Now I've tried to make a new one. Since we're abandoning religion-related names for most of them I'd like to abandon religion-related names for the rest of them too in order to not get a strange mix. A new suggestion could be:
FRANKISH
romans_julii -> Holy roman empire
romans_brutii -> Lotharingia
romans_scipii -> France
romans_senate -> Papal states
NORTHERN (better name needed...)
gauls -> Asturia
germans -> Normans
britons -> Saxons
dacia -> Welsh
scythia -> Scots
spain -> Irish
STEPPE PEOPLE (the name shouldn't be a noun so "Steppe people" can't really be used - feel free to come up with better suggestions, perhaps "eastern" although I don't like that name for it, it doesn't show it's steppe related peoples. How about "turkish"? Didn't they all originate from turkish tribes?)
parthia -> Khazars
pontus -> Bulgars
armenia -> Magyars
ARABIC (changed to arabic because I didn't want to use religious-related culture names)
carthage -> Al Andalus
numidia -> Abbassids
GREEK
egypt -> Byzantines
NORSE
seleucid -> Norway
greek_cities -> Sweden
macedon -> Denmark
thrace -> Rus
slave
@skeletor: Nice! I love seeing those vikings kicking the asses of carthaginians ~D
BTW have we agreed on a final unit list for any faction at all? Just worried so that noone does any work that won't be used in the release version of the mod...
@The Apostate: Like I said before I think it would be good if you had a look at the tech trees for Byzantines, French, Bulgars and Khazars as soon as possible, so that I can get a good starting point for fixing all the tech trees afterwards. I think you should put higher priority on that than over the province list because if we don't get a few unit roosters for some of the factions ready a lot of unit skinning might be thrown away if we change the lists so those units aren't included.
Any progress on the faction symbols? I've searched a lot but haven't found anything. So if it seems impossible to find anything I suggest we use the same symbols as in M:TW for the factions that are included in both M:TW and this mod, or use nearby M:TW factions (for example Italians -> Lotharingia, Spain -> Asturia).
Remaining factions are: Normans, Bulgars, Al Andalus, Abbassids, Khazars (we did however here recieve a concept flag), Norway, Sweden. I reckon we should put high priority on finding faction symbols because they'll determine faction colors, and faction colors will determine how skins will look.
I have made 2 finished models of swordmen and axemen (those in the pic's) and i have a spearman underway. With altering the alpha on these, they can be used for all Norse factions (both the big noseguards for the Northern, and maybe some Frankish, and the googled helmet for the Norse, and some Northern. Allso alter the Shape of the shield from round, to the Frankish drop shape.)Quote:
BTW have we agreed on a final unit list for any faction at all? Just worried so that noone does any work that won't be used in the release version of the mod...
The spearman have all of hes face covered, and can therefor be used as everything from basic spearunit, to mounted Frankish knight.
(this needs some testing.)
Changing the shape of axes (the shaft of the viking's axe is a bit bent), lenth of spears/swords, and size of shield only takes a cuple of minutes. So that can easly be done upon request.
All clouth, shield marks, faces, and type of arnmour is done by skinning, so that can be changed rather fast.
Example: If i make a heavy axeman for Sweden, it only needs some colorchange here and there, and a new shieldtexture, and you have one for the Danes too. If you allso change the alpha for the shield and noseguard, the Normands get one. So now i'm making standard skins, that can be alterd to fit the various factions when the finished list comes out.
Conclution:
- We now have models for singlehand axemen and swordmen for Norse/Northern/Frankish unit's.
- We have skins for light singlehand axemen and swordmen for the Norse factions.
- Basic skins for light singlehand axemen and swordmen for Northern factions will be finished this weekend
- basic skins for Heavy singlehand axemen and swordmen for Northern/Norse will allso be finished this weekend.
- I have a spearman allmost ready, but it might be scrapet due to some problems. If not, we have the model for a spearman that can be used for all factions, both of foot and mounted.
We allso need to dicuss the faction colors. Due to the fact that usually all armys during this time were gatherd from various family's(ætt's) or counts, and therefor the armys wold look very colorfull, with all kinds of shieldmarks.
We should ofcourse give them some standard color in the clothing for the player to se the diffrence.
-Skel-
I think we could use this old Norwegian lion with an axe for norwayQuote:
Originally Posted by LegioXXXUlpiaVictrix
http://www.forskning.no/Bilder/10213...96_content.JPG
Norway: faction colors: dark red/yellow
For the Swedes, i have seen some old heraldics with a black deerhead on yellow background. But the color of the leading ætt later on were a gold lion on blue background. So i wold sugest:
Sweden: Yellow/blue/black. (some black/yellow, and some yellow/blue shields ect.)
Bulgar: I think we could use their lion:
http://tangra.bitex.com/images/flags/gerb.jpg
http://www.flags.net/images/largeflags/BULG0007.GIF
Or the twoheaded eagle like the albanian
http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/.../al-lgflag.gif
With color: silver/purple (silver on purple background)
SAXONS:
Some ideas of saxon factionmarks
http://www.london.org.uk/ad32.gif
http://www.trin.cam.ac.uk/sdk13/helmetsmall.JPG
SCOTS:
http://vandyck.anu.edu.au/introducti...ne/L32-14b.jpg
http://www.kiltsandbagpipes.co.uk/ar...s/no2%20br.jpg
http://celticcrosses.net/club_images...ortak_P170.jpg
http://celticcrosses.net/club_images...ortak_B121.jpg
Will be edited....
I think we should use same color for practical reasons so they are distinguishable. However I think R:TW has too sharp coloring of the units - I'd like just a small trace of the faction color in the skins unless in the cases where the units were really colorful in reality, which was probably true for the richer knights and so on while the poorer probably had more grey, off-white and brown I can imagine... But The Apostate probably knows more about that than I do.Quote:
Originally Posted by skeletor
Nice that you've made so much progress. I've had plenty of errors with my modding so I don't know when I'll have the map ready. At least I've gotten quite far with the image files needed for the campaign map and that's the majority of the work. The errors are, as I've understood it, probably something specific for my computer.
Those faction symbols look great btw! Re faction colors there needs to be one primary and one secondary, where the primary will be the most important and the one that will be associated with the faction. A third color is not necessary but if needed can be used for skins. However I suggest skins are made to look realistical first, then a small hint of the primary faction color is added. What do you think of that idea?
Damn I realized it'll be hard to use English names for all provinces. After all, are there really any English names for provinces like Hologaland, Hordaland, Waestrogothia, Hafrsfjord etc. etc.? Perhaps we'll need a mix of old local spelling and English after all? Then we might as well choose to use local spelling for as much as possible, and use English spelling for those that there aren't anyone willing to put time into finding local names for.
Translate them from their original meanings, maybe?Quote:
Originally Posted by LegioXXXUlpiaVictrix
The spearman worked, so here is a early saxon spearman of the fyrd.
See, read beads :kiss2:
http://img166.echo.cx/img166/4750/saxon26dr.png
One of the endless clashes between the Saxon Fyrd, and Danes raidingroups. :charge:
http://img166.echo.cx/img166/3016/saxondane2id.png
Btw, Could we get a private forum to get some control? This topic is kind of messy, and it's hard to see what's being done... please
-Skel-
Wow units again! I really like the fyrdmen, pretty much exactly what I wanted.
Re private forum I'll pm the people I think control those things and ask them if we can get a board here. Otherwise I'll look for free boards elsewhere.
Thnx, more will come after the weekend, if i'm not to happy ~:cheers:Quote:
Originally Posted by LegioXXXUlpiaVictrix
If you have any requests, or sugestions to changes on the skins, feel free to post them. Its hard comming up with all the patterns and stuff all by myself.
NB - new sugestions to Saxon and Scot factionsymbols posted over.
-Skel-
Ok, one question actually. I believe you have used the "untrained" attribute for most units so far, right? Well, I think we should used the "trained" attribute for the better units such as the huskarles and perhaps also the hird, because I believe that's necessary in order to make the unit for a tight-looking shield wall. Perhaps those units should also have a slightly larger shield? For the fyrd and lighter axe and sword infantry I think you should keep things as they are.Quote:
Originally Posted by skeletor