Anyone interested in Crusader States mod?

In response to the Assassins (or Ismaeli or Hashishin.. whatever you wanna call 'em), that's what I thought... them being the only faction to create hashishin plus those expert assassins don't sound too bad either. I'd say they should also be given crossbowmen and trebuchets, but only buildable in the Caspian Hills where their headquarters were and where they defended using crossbows and traction trebuchets against the Mongols. Overall I'd say they should be given only hashishin, crossbows, and trebuchets because I don't think the Assassins were organized to the point of having battlefield armies... they wielded power with their expert assassins instead, which has been mentioned to be incorporated.

I am no expert on this time period, but I know that at least a little bit earlier (definately before Manzikert) the Byzantine army was almost entirely mounted. I have this idea for primarily mounted factions (like the Mongols) so that nearly all the troops you recruit in Campaign would be mounted. If you want infantry you can just dismount before battle. So you can have, let's say, Trapezitoi and dismount them as some kind of light infantry in a defensive position, or in a siege. Thus you have the choice always between mounted units and infantry, giving the impression of an almost entirely mounted army able to ride to the battle field. There is only one drawback I can think of- the amount of men you can fit in a castle. Instead the only infantry that should be immediately available should be some kind of garrison or border guards, leaving the main army mounted. In custom battle since you generally can't dismount you can then choose between infantry and cavalry.
Sorry this was kind of long, I don't know how the Eastern Roman army worked during the crusades, but if it was primarily still cavalry this is just an idea!
Thanks!
Justin
P.S. I know it is early, but I'm getting the music pack perfected, so by the time this mod is nearly done the music should be ready for whoever wants it.

I've found a map which could fit in most things, including the Eastern Roman Empire.
http://www.emta.org.au/img/Eastern_Med_Map.jpg it also fits in Italy and there's the possibility for Mongol territory in the eastern Black sea. Perhaps the English, the French and the HRE could be external forces like the Golden Horde. They appear if you can manage to convince the Pope that a crusade is needed, which could be an interesting aspect (say if Jerusalem or another importan place is lost). Just a suggestion.

Update on progress.

I've been working on which cities/provinces to include in the northern half of the map. At this point I have around 40, but we may want to think about cutting that down a bit. I think it would be better to have *more* provinces in the south of the map than in the north, so the Crusader states wouldn't need to conquer huge tracts of Asia Minor in order to get their 2/3 victory. To me, it would be nice if a Crusader kingdom could conquer from Egypt through the Holy land eastward and call it good; but that may be just me. Anyway, I think the number of provinces I have right now will give the opportunity for plenty of action; the Sicilians/Italians would be able to invade several parts of Greece and the Balkans, and Asia Minor is split up into about a dozen provinces. East of that I'm just making cautious guesses, but hopefully it'll work.

Just saw Kingdom of Heaven again in theaters today with my wife to keep up inspiration for the mod ~:cheers: . I can't wait for this thing to be playable!

I don't know if I'm violating any protocol here, but just to keep everyone informed about what's up: Fader_It, who has recently posted his great-looking Italy mod on this same page, has kindly volunteered to help us with making the campaign map for this mod. At this point we're working out cities and provinces, and then we'll ship the whole thing over to him to get started. Big thanks to Fader for this support!!!

I wanted to respond to a bunch of suggestions that have come up recently, at least from my own perspective. Of course I can't speak for everyone else involved:

@KingHenry: we've already got a basic map to work from, but thanks for the offer! If you look back I think on page 2 you can see it. Basically it doesn't have as much to the West but has more to the East.

@Iustinus: it's great that you're working on the music. Keep it up and let us know when you get close to finishing it. For the Byzantine units, I honestly hadn't given it a lot of thought, but I think there should be *some* mix of cav and infantry. Anyone who's more of an expert on that aspect of military history? All input appreciated.

@newagebassist: For the Assassins, again this is an area that I'm not 100% sure of. Sheerly for gameplay smoothness, I'd think we should give them the opportunity to train *some* kind of regular infantry other than just trebuchets, crossbows and hashishin. Maybe some fanatical axe unit or something. My history is lacking here as well, but in order to make them a viable faction I think we'd need to include some more stuff for them.

And here's a new idea I wanted to bring up for everyone: On the .com modding forums, there was some experimentation with increasing castle garrison limits, for the purpose of making longer sieges. This is something that apparently can be done through Gnome editor. Basically, by increasing the amount of soldiers that can fit in a castle, you increase the number of years the garrison will last, and therefore increase the probability of an AI assault. Also, when the AI assault comes, your garrison will not be scraps of beat-up forces that managed to run from the last battle, but they could be a full stack of hardened troops. So you'd get the chance to defend with a decent force, in other words. Some tests were done and it was found that only 1 stack could fit in the castle, no matter how big the limit was, but that still that 1 stack could be made to last for a very long time.

My question to everyone is, Is this a feature you'd like to see implemented in this mod? It would obviously work both ways: not only would the AI be more obliged to assault your citadel, but you'd likewise be obliged to assault an AI castle -- but to me this seems like an advantage in a game that is sadly usually lacking in fun siege battles. As long as it's tweaked so that the castle would fall SOMEtime, like in 10 years, so you wouldn't always be required to assault, this is something I'd be interested in. Anyone else?

OK I think that's it for now. I'm getting really excited about this -- hopefully the map will get done within a couple weeks and we can get started on the factions and everything else. Keep the suggestions coming,

CountMRVHS

Great work, Count. I've roughly divided the Levant into about 46 provinces, either housing a major city, or a strategic centre, i.e. Kerak Castle. Depending on how your going with Asia minor, etc. we could then do a little give/take, taking into account game balance, etc.

@Iustinus:
keep it up, the idea of having a sound track to go along with the mod is great;

@newagebassist: as a faction, the strength of the Assassins will be in manipulating other factions through targeted assassinations. They will I think have a limited unit list, will be the only faction that fields the Hashishin, and may also be the only faction to field the Nizari or Futuwwa. As always, I'm open to suggestion or flattery.

@CountMRVHS:
I like the idea you present re castle seiges. Lets at least give it ago during play-testing. Is there a way of selecting the units available in the stack that will garrison the castle?

Yes, lets please get the map done in the next few weeks. :charge:

I like the idea of longer sieges Count ~:cheers:

Good luck!

[QUOTE=Minister of Fear]
@newagebassist: as a faction, the strength of the Assassins will be in manipulating other factions through targeted assassinations. They will I think have a limited unit list, will be the only faction that fields the Hashishin, and may also be the only faction to field the Nizari or Futuwwa. As always, I'm open to suggestion or flattery.


That sounds like a great roster... they should have to focus primarily on assassinations... not battle.

The only problem with that is, I'm not sure how we can get the AI to handle it properly. I'm afraid that if the Assassins are being played by the computer, we'll soon encounter a huge invasion of whatever unit they can recruit rather than the subtler method of assassination. Setting their behavior might help in making them more/less aggressive, but I don't know if there's any way we can influence how often they use strategic agents.

That said, I don't want to see a buffed, rampaging Assassins faction myself. So if we limit their unit roster, we should probably set their behavior to something defensive and give them a very defensible position -- so that whoever invades them needs to fight on territory that is very good for the Assassins' archers. Maybe some rivers, some mountains... not sure about the geography of that area.

Anyway, just something to think about.

Well for the Assassins, you could try and give them a really high preference for building their assassin units. This should make them focus a lot on building those assassins and putting them to use rather than acting like any other old faction.

I like the idea of longer seiges.

As it stands in-game right now, it is far too easy to wait and/or auto resolve sieges.

This would definitely add more strategy and force the player into researching and buying seige equipment.

Best of luck on the mod. :charge:

sounds good

Hi boys, how's going?
I'm waiting for news about the strategic map.. did you decide anything about the map to use, the regions, etc.?
Send me all i need as soon as you can, so i can start working on the strat map for this mod!

F.
:book:

Hi Fader!

I think a couple weeks ago I sent a list of regions and cities to Minister of Fear. We'd split up the map so I was responsible for the northern half and he was working on the southern half. Haven't heard back from him yet on that, but perhaps he has been waiting for me to send him a map all along?

I'll try to get in touch with him and figure out where we need to go from here. What I may need to do is find a suitable map somewhere, then mark off the region borders and city locations with some sort of paint program...

I'm glad you're still interested in working on our mod! I'll be away this weekend but my summer vacation just began, so I'll have much free time.

I'm going to set an arbitrary deadline for next Friday. If I can't get hold of Minister of Fear before then, I'll go ahead and work out the map as well as I can myself and get it to you. If anyone else wants to get going on this, by all means, let me know. But probably Minister is just waiting for me to send him a map of my work so far. I'll get going on it by Monday.

CountMRVHS

Sorry guys. Just been a little busy then a little slack. I'll respond in kind this week to the Counts suggestions re map and then we'll be able to see where this is at.

I've been playing R:TW, having a break from M:TW, and I'm starting to see the attractions of the R:TW for this mod. I know; this sounds almost blasphamous, I feel like I need to take a cold shower and come to my senses but the diplomatic nuances available in R:TW are much better than in M:TW, we have a ready-made map that only needs the provinces to be tweaked, we can have more units than in M:TW, I prefer the manner in which armies can move around in the field, etc, etc. The only thing I much prefer in M:TW is the battlemap and that is mostly to do with familiarity.

I write this only as something to think about at this early stage.

Will update soon.

Woh, that's an interesting suggestion....

What do you mean when you say "we have a ready-made map"? I agree that the diplomatic options are greater, and do like the possibilities for army movement on the strategic map. However, it seems like an awful lot more work would be needed to turn it into a medieval game. And I have to say I'm generally not too impressed with the battles in RTW: the AI simply doesn't maneuvre, and the battles are over very quickly compared to MTW.

Maybe that's something to look at once BI comes out. I think, though, for now, if we could get a working campmap, then we can look at getting the rest of this mod completed for an MTW standpoint. Just selfishly, I'd like to get my own hands on a working campmap so I could start playing around with the factions, units, etc.

Anyway, do you want me to send you some sort of map, or is the list I sent you enough to go on? At some point there will need to be a map sent to Fader_It so he can commence getting everything put together.

No need to apologize about anything!

CountMRVHS

Helo! this looks like a good mod. and its still in progress. ~:cheers: i cant wait to see it. forgive me for interrupting in the discussion of the campaign map. :embarassed: i've read the posts on the first page, and it was suggested that the start date was around 1248. it would be cool if we get to see the start of the kingdom and build it up. maybe starting around 1100 with Godfrey's brother as the first king. ~D here's a site for info on the Outremer.
good luck on the map! :bow:

Hi, King Baldwin IV; thanks for the interest!

Somewhere in this thread, probably page 2 or 3, we decided the starting date would be around 1130, to give the Crusader states an interesting position. Once the map gets off the ground of course we'll be able to firm up all of that, including factions, end date, etc etc.

Welcome to the forums!

CountMRVHS

Sounds good! ~;) thank you.

Hi there.. the ideas of Minister of Fear are nice, but i have to say that the modding of R:TW to a medieval mod requires a really huge work. You need to create units model, reskin them, change about every graphic element of the game and this task would take months and months even for a group of many talented people. I don't really know if (and how much) the strat map in R:TW is moddable.. just drawing it would be quite more difficult than doing it for the M:TW one. So, i suggest to stick on working on the VI version, before moving to a large and more complex project. :)

I looked to the web site proposed by King Baldwin and i found it really interesting, with maps and many, many specific infos about Outremer and the holy land area in general.. what do you think, CountMRVHS?

I would also suggest sticking with MTW:VI for this mod.

Get this mod done first.

Then after the BI expansion pack for RTW comes out, then you can see what fixes and new features have gone into RTW. Then do a mod for that game.

Cheers!

Yes; I agree.

I checked out the website King Baldwin linked and the maps do look good. My biggest question with the map right now is this: can we balance the kind of area we're talking about with the need to have many provinces in the Levant? In other words, our current scope for the map includes all of Turkey, Greece, and parts of Italy. All of that is great - but I'm interested to see how many provinces we can therefore fit into the middle east. Because obviously, I don't think we just want "Antioch, Tripoli, palestine, etc" like MTW has already -- we want to split up those provinces so the crusader states have some more room and more lands, and also to reflect the important cities at the time. That's why I'm looking forward to see what Minister of Fear has come up with for the southern half of the map, as that will address these issues.

IMO I don't think it will be necessary to put in every historical province.

We may need to have some abstracton here for gameplay purposes: to place in enough provinces for all sides to balance things out...

"When history and gameplay clash, always opt for gameplay".

Cheers!

The mod sounds good...

Ask the mods if they can give you a subforum.....

P.S.: Need any help?!

Thanks for the offer, edyzmedieval. What sorts of things could you help with? At this stage I'm waiting to hear back from Minister Of Fear to see what he's come up with in terms of southern provinces. I've taken care of the north, pretty much.

Since you've seen the scope of the mod, what areas do you know the most about? I'm fairly confident in my knowledge of the north/western areas of this map, but once you get east and south my knowledge fades out. I don't know much about factions, units, provinces, or important towns in the eastern part of Turkey or the middle east. With the Byzantine areas I'm ok.

Let me know what sorts of things you can offer!

@Pericles: my primary concern in that area is exactly gameplay: what I'm worried about is that there will only be room in our map for a single province of Jerusalem, and a single province for Edessa, and a single province for Antioch -- exactly like it is in the MTW map. If the map looked like that, each crusader faction would only have 1 province, which wouldn't be much fun and would probably tend to cripple them unduly from the start.

It will depend on what Minister of Fear has done, but one way I can think of fixing that potential problem is by limiting the size of our mod further. Instead of including all the areas of Byzantium, we could limit it to the middle east, more in the manner of metatron's suggested maps from the first page of this thread. That would give more room and focus to the crusader factions and their immediate neighbors. I don't know though. That's just kind of a back-up suggestion.

Anything yet, Minister Of Fear??

I'm very good at the historical part... I can give you info( I have many books about Medieval history, also because it's my hobby) about the Balkans especially because I live there.

I am now learning to make unit graphics and unit animations, based on the topics in the Repository. So, on the graphics part I am learning. I also know the basic stuff with MTW modding(modding the text files). But on the graphics part I have to learn much to complete my MTW modding skills.

Cheers! ~:cheers:

The part of the map I'm dealing with is a little harder to develop then I thought since I have to use a variety of maps to develop the campaign map just for the cities/provinces south and east of Antioch.

There will definitely not be a singe province for the County of Tripoli or Edessa, etc. They will be made up of several provinces/cities/regions that are integral to the game. At the moment, I have roughly 60 of these. The next step is to make out a rough map with these in place that can help me in deciding which of the to cull so I end up with about 50. Then I'll send them to the Count and we will, i think with Fader's council, finalise the list.

Give me until the end of week, Count. You should have a list in your hands by then.

Sounds good. ~:cheers:

Good.. i'll tell you then if the provinces shape, size, border fits well to the limits of the game. For example, the name "Constantinople" could be too long to be included in the province of the same name on the map, so this should be worked out in some manner; don't worry, this is just work of mine. Only a question: anyone decided what image to use as a background for the campmap? Did you imagined it as a modern satellite map, a paint, a monochromatic parchment-like, or something similar?

I always liked the parchment-type look of the MTW map. I think something simple would be best; probably monochromatic so it's easy to see province names, pieces, etc. when you're playing. Anyone else have any suggestions for this?

I also like the parchment-type look of the MTW map.

:bow:

I als like it... Gives it an intellectual game feeling :book:
:bow:

i like the parchment type too, though anything clean and simple will do. Cheers.

Is there anything I can do to help?
I'm not an expert modder though...

Thanks for the offer Tutankamon!

As you can see right now we're getting the campaign map in order. This mod will use a totally different map and we're in the process of deciding what the provinces should look like. That will probably be finished by the end of the week, and then we'll send our results off to Fader_It, who has so kindly agreed to help us put it all together.

Once we have a working campaign map, things will really start to happen. We'll be doing research on unit types, deciding the unit types for different factions, seeing who has what province, how much each province should be built up; oh yeah, and designing the factions and all of that.

I don't know exactly how the mod is going to progress once the map is finished -- I mean what order we'll be doing things -- so I'm not sure exactly in what areas we'll need help. Do you have any particular areas of interest, or any specific skills you'd like to contribute? Let us know,

CountMRVHS

Good :).
So, the parchment-like type is the winner. Eheh, it's also the most easy to create from a pre-existing map, just some sepia and texture effects and the work is done. However, i didn't understand from the previous posts if you aim to create also new unit models or if you will use new combinations of the existing ones.. this could be a quite difficult part to complete.

Regards, F. :book:

Ok. I've just completed the map list for area south and east of Antioch. It has been sent to CountMRVHS, and hopeful to Fader_it as well. So let the challenge of creating the campaign map can begin... :charge:

Good luck!

~:cheers: :charge:

Great work Minister of Fear!!!

Hopefully Count will be kind enough to give me the map so I can examine it for the Byzantium Total War mod..... It's a lot of work to be done at both mods..... So I think a join of forces would be in the interest of both modding teams.... ~D

BTW, Count, if you need any more historical help, feel free to contact me....

Strangely I suggested a mod similar to this a while a go and got no response ~:confused:

Very glad to see that one is in the works though, I have been wanting this for some time. I havent checked this site in a while and was surprised to say the least. ~:cheers:

I see a lot of people worrying about the muslim nations having to much land, don't forget that the muslims were fighting themselves just as much as the crusaders, it was one big mess, especially in the 11th and 12th centuries. I have been reading alot on the crusades lately and have thousands of pages worth of reference material if you need it.

Will the Armenians be a seperate playable nation in the mod or will they be considered part of the Byzantine Empire? Though superficially part of the Empire the Armenians did not often think of themselves in that way as they had different customs and religious practices.

BTW the Middle Earth Total war team had a foot soldier Unit for the Haradrim(Think he was Numenorian guard) that looks very much like a crusader with a conical helm and chain maille(in the style of VI without any clothes over top of the armour so it is very visible). Change the shield and it would be perfect, maybe you should check it out and see if you can use it?

I like the longer sieges idea, also siege weapons are far too strong, I say halve the damage they cause and increase ammo by 25-50% therefore creating longer sieges on the playing field as well where you actually have time to try things such as sallying forth during the assualt and attacking the Trebuchets and at least have a chance at stopping them from destroying the walls.

I like the second map option, but the first is fine too, as I would be playing as Christians or Byzantines most of the time it doesn't matter a whole lot to me.

If you need information on weapons and armour used in different period I would be more then happy to help. Im kind of a "Gear-Geek" so to speak.

Anyways take care all and I hope this goes as planned, I am looking forwards to this ~D

Alright, I've got the list of the cities and provinces and am looking for a good map that I can use to draw in the borders with my paint program so I can send the whole thing to Fader_It. Can anyone recommend a good place to look for maps?

This part will take some work and I'll be somewhat busy over the next week, so I don't imagine I'll have anything ready to ship to Fader for about a week. If anyone can help with links to map sites that would help speed things up a little.

AFAIK the Armenians will be at least one separate faction, maybe two. In regards to units and unit graphics... I haven't even thought that far ahead yet! But I suppose this might be a good time for people to make suggestions for units and factions, so once the campaign map gets finished we can get right into that process. :charge:

CountMRVHS

Some sites with lots of Crusade maps:

http://www.newadvent.org/images/04543cbx.jpg

http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/maps/2ndcde.jpg

http://www.newadvent.org/images/04543ccx.jpg

http://www.newadvent.org/images/04543cdx.jpg

http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/sbookmap.html

http://www.medievalsources.co.uk/portal_crusades.htm

http://www.umich.edu/~iinet/worldrea...ades/Maps.html

http://www.culturalresources.com/MP_Muir22.html

http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/First-Crusade

CountMRVHS: I've looked through those maps and they're pretty much one's we've seens already, or links to the same maps. My principal sources for cities i listed are found Steven Runciman's three vol: A History of the Crusades, and there I used Vols II and III. For the cities in Persia I used an old map of Ottoman Empire in the 16 & 17th centuries.

When you have a mock up of map done let us have a look before you send it to Fader_it. I hope you noticed that I had slightly more than 50 cities as you had listed some of these in your list. Otherwise, as I think most of the action will be in the Levant I think the greater proportion of the cities should be there.

I currently am reading Runciman's series, great set of books I must say ~:cheers:

Hey friends, are you still there? Are you away from home, on vacation?
It's really passed a while from you last postings.. obviously, i'm still waiting for my map to work on. ~:)
Say something!!
F.
:book:

I'm waiting to here back from CountMRVHS re the maps also. I'm not sure whats happened. Lets give him another week.

I sincerely hope there is a way to resurrect the idea behind this mod.

A "Crusades only" mod would be great to play.

I noticed in the past few months there has been a resurgence in interest in the history of the Crusades, especially after Scott's Kingdom of Heaven movie.

Just recently, on a trip to my local library, I found most of the books on the Crusades are out on loan.

In addition, more documentaries about the Crusades are about to be released on dvd.

Is there still interest in a mod of this type?

Perhaps it could be a bit less ambitious in terms of map detail, etc, and presented a bit more abstractly (ie land divided into provinces that aren't necessarily historical in area size).

What do you think?

Hi there!
I'm not interested to work on this mod anymore, as i have moved on toward other projects. MTW modding isn't taking my time much as it did in the past.
Good luck for the work on this mod!

F.
:hide:

It's dead anyways.....

Maybe I need a life or whatever for bumping this old thread, but what have you all done so far? Has anyone got the LUKUPMAP.LBM done? Do you mind sharing what you got so far here? I don't know, maybe some charismatic guy might be able to make something out of it or even considering to pick up. Well, that guy ain't me. I'm just a poor peasant who only knows about having fun with cows and pigs in the pasture.

This project reminds me of Barbarossa's army during the Third Crusade. They had potential to take Jerusalem back but then the Emperor died and the army shrunk. :shame:

Also, MII:TW is 11 months away.

Hello,

Am interestered if any of the previous participants in this old thread would still have any of the old materials for this mod. Am interested primarily in the maps and supporting info, i.e. faction lists, mapping details, etc.

Thanks,
Aspiring Cartographer

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Fenixx

Hello,

Am interestered if any of the previous participants in this old thread would still have any of the old materials for this mod. Am interested primarily in the maps and supporting info, i.e. faction lists, mapping details, etc.

Thanks,
Aspiring Cartographer

---

You revived an old thread that I had no idea existed... and I love you for it! :laugh4:
Backdrop (skip if you have no interest in this): I have always been interested in this time period and always wondered if it could be turned into a mod. I've worked on some of the basic stuff for a mod like this for a little while now (about 6-8 months, on & off) and have created a monster unit list (hitting the max. unit limit of 256) and building tree. I'd even came up with some cool features that is possible to add to the game (although a bit of a work out, sure). Like blank provinces that have no income and you can't build anything on them to represent deserts (so you can't cross the Sahara in a single turn). I had worked out a way to represent Kerak and Krak des Chevaliers so you could produce Templar knights and Hospitallers. I had even developed heroes represented in game as full units not just a character with a portrait (This was done to represent how Richard the I would've been a better fighter than the Leper King of Jerusalem).

Ok.. anyway: I still have pretty much all of this and more but I don't have a camp-map worked out (terrible at map-making). I've found some great maps at Hip-Kiss (bookmark it if you have to) and around the web but they didn't show the area that I wanted. After endless hours of googling the words "Holy Land" I'd found a map that showed the places that I wanted it to show. Thing is that it was a touch small and you know how big the maptex is on MTW. Anyway long story short, I found a little gem that resized the map perfectly and with minimal loss to the detail. It's called ReShade and is a little beauty.

Ok, suppose you want the maps now? I've been talking gibberish for the last two paragraphs. In this package (you'll need winRAR to uncompress it) I've put together four different maps that I've taken off the web, one has been cropped and resized using ReShade to a much higher resolution though I'd suggest that you resize one of your own (yes this whole post was just to tell you about reshade... <_<). Linkage:
http://rapidshare.com/files/10579538...tures.rar.html

Wait, that is what you wanted, right? ~:joker:

Raz,

Good to hear from you, I owe you AT LEAST 22 mins. :)

Am d/Ling as I post. Have read this thread, as well as RTW The Crusades mod threads and some of M2TW Broken Crusades. I like your ideas for the finer details for a MTW version. So is this why you've been spending so much time in the Alchemist Lab??? :)
Where to begin?! I needed a project topic for my first start to finish map. The sample in LMM4 was Holyland, so guess what? Anyway, I am only interested in the map for now, due to my inexperience (though I'm learning fast). But who knows.
Some of the former posters are still around. CountMRVHS is doing The Dark Age Mod (The Britannia one). Pericles - last MTW post I saw was in Fall of Rome (although he's active in other TW product forums). Edyz doing a mini-mod. Don't know where Fader It and Minister of Fear are.
Don't want to step on any toes here, but would love to do the map!
What do you think?
Will post more after I D/L the maps. Thanks again.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Fenixx

...So is this why you've been spending so much time in the Alchemist Lab??? :)

---

Heh, no. I don't think I'm ready to announce a mod as big as that. I thought I was ready to take on a mod about the Three Kingdoms period in China. The original thread is on the second page of this forum... but I think I just put up too many features and I didn't think that the mod would come out the way the public wanted it and the way I wanted it to be released as. I didn't want people saying "You promised this and that but you failed to deliver..." :shame:
It's where I got this badge from *points underneath his avatar* but I don't think I really deserve it. I mean sure I want to keep it and all..... :grin2:

I've been thinking of doing a small mod for another mod (if that makes sense). Like a revival of a larger mod made by somebody else, but that's about all. Enough about me though... I think it'd be a great idea if you did this map and who knows, you might end up reviving this old dusty thread and releasing this long forgotten mod. :2thumbsup:

Raz,
Thanx for the D/L. I found the French maps most interesting. Different sounding names for familiar places...
Glad to hear you're doing a mod on a mod. Best Wishes to you in your endeavor. Many successful mods have been done based on other mods and each brings a new prespective and scope. Just proves that the ole MTW engine still has room to grow (or SHRINK :) ), even if most of the timeline is gone. I hope... Would be interested in your mod, when you're ready to announce. I won't pry, though.
If and when you have time (i.e. please focus on your current project), would like to hear about your ideas about scope and factions re: Crusades era, as you have obviously spent some time on this...
Pending reply from others, I'll commit to work with what I've got. Have got three different periods and three different scopes in mind, but thats just the maps...

I always hoped someone would do a crusader mod. Maybe hope is not dead:beam: I played the crusader mod on Rome a few times - even modded it further so more factions were in - but there is nothing quite like MTW1 for playability and period atmosphere.

Problem with factions was always that you don't want the crusader states fighting each other. Having them as one faction is kind of realistic - Jerusalem sent contingents to Tripoli and Antioch when they needed, and vice versa (at least up to Hattin). Lesser Armenia is another faction throughout; also Byzantium; then Damascus, Aleppo, Seljuks and Egypt. Then you have crusaders, who might just be labelled as such - so if they manage to become established in the Holy Land they are then the equivalent of the religious orders (so perhaps Templars et al should only be available to them, so you never get Templers fighting Templars, unless someone manages to seduce them away (Baphomet?). Assassins might be a tiny faction - with an obvious bonus available.

Problem I never overcame with the Rome Mod was that it was too easy for the crusader states to grow. They certainly tried in reality - projects to conquer Damascus and Egypt were serious - but it needs to be really hard, and a fight for survival most of the time, with occasional windows of opportunity when crusades arrive.

Those are my thoughts - really just to show there is wider interest in this, and a hope that we might still get some new Mods up and running, as Macsen is proving on ATW:2thumbsup:

Western,
Thanks for chiming in! Appreciate your comments! I don't know if I'm the man for the job (in deference to those who've already tread this path), but I'm certainly continuing work on the maps.
My first obstacle is in deciding upon scope, and then factions, which in turn decides scope. Here are my thoughts:
1) Large map - Upper right corner would be about Paris, France. Lower right, as in default map. Except for English, which would be inset or abstracted, all 8classic historical crusades represented.
2) Medium map - URC would be Geneva/Milan/Genoa, with corresponding abstractrations/insets.
3) Small map...etc...
4) Mixed map - 1) Above with Crusader States inset map.
Whaddya think?