MTW Pocket Mod: General

(from the other thread)

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The fort I would have as a simple garrison building, costing 100 and taking 1 year to build, as a temporary outpost to hold down a province - not a town/settlement. The only buildings that could be constructed at fort level would be the farmland, port and mines. The horse breeders I would change to depend on the later castle levels instead of being fully upgradeable,

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Sounds well, and if the AI can handle it properly, it might make the campaign more dynamic. Also, it would make the "surrounded factions" (like Poland, or the HRE) more playable, by keeping smaller garrisons on the borders, backed by neighbouring armies able to retake the province if attacked. In fact, some game files suggest that it was in the original plans to make "Border forts" garrisonable
In fact, it sounds like it would make the game more realistic. After all, one of the first things a conçuering army would do would be establishing a fort, even if it was just a temporary one (suggestion: could it be made so that assaults and sieges invariably destroyed the defender´s fort, so that the would-be conçueror had to rebuild it?), lacking fortified cities to camp. Romans certainly did it, but I´m not certain about the middle ages, as mainly cavalry armies would reçuire larger forts, perhaps larger than it was practical. , althrough some browsing I just did of the Alexiad (which, for the record, is a free pdf download from some site, but I can´t remember the address. If someone is curious -as I was- I suggest googling it. It was on the fifth page of the search, or so) seems to point out they did

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after attacking several places repeatedly without success, he reached Moglena via Bodina and there rebuilt a small fort which had long lain in ruins. There he left a Count, nicknamed the Saracen, with an ample garrison and betook himself to a spot on the river Bardares called the Asprae Ecclesiae.

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It would also be more realistic on the "homeland" frame. It just doesn´t sound right that someone is the overlord of a province and doesn´t keep even a token fort as protection. Borders would be more stable, too, as long as the opposing army had enough troops nearby, for a retreat could be followed by a counterattack the following year. Whereas abandoning besieged forts for a time would be suicidal, as they can be torn down by any kind of troops, and would be unable to hold large garrisons (which would fall çuickly anyway).




One concern: as I mentioned, during my messing up with the spanish jinetes reçuirements, I failed to achieve a balance whereby they weren´t either churned out in dozens, or too scarce to hold back the almohads (I left it at horse breeder 3, and almost invariably Castile gets crushed. However, Aragon seems to hold, maybe because Castile gets crushed), so it seems it needs a deeper tweak than my attempt.

Also: shouldn´t the sicilians get some personal unit? (Or gothic knights and sergeants, at least?)

Also: my old suggestion concerning certain borders:
-Making the Spain-Morocco landbridge a coast battle
-Making the Constantinople-Asia Minor border a coast battle (after all, Constantinople is in Europe)
-Making the Egyptian-East of Egypt border a bridge battle (Somewhat flimsy, I know, but I was thinking that the Nyle should be a natural defense)

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Originally Posted by The Unknown Guy

(from the other thread)


Sounds well, and if the AI can handle it properly, it might make the campaign more dynamic. Also, it would make the "surrounded factions" (like Poland, or the HRE) more playable, by keeping smaller garrisons on the borders, backed by neighbouring armies able to retake the province if attacked. In fact, some game files suggest that it was in the original plans to make "Border forts" garrisonable
In fact, it sounds like it would make the game more realistic. After all, one of the first things a conçuering army would do would be establishing a fort, even if it was just a temporary one

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I am speaking of the existing fort, not an extra fort or forts. When it upgraded to a keep it would still disappear and be replaced by that structure as ever. The fort would function the same way, but would be cheaper, faster to build but support few units. The rest of the tech tree would then be realigned with cheaper and faster castle upgrades, as follows e.g. (draft) :

Fort - Improved Farmland+, Mines, Port, Shipwright (?), Watch Towers/Border Forts.

Keep - Spearmaker, Swordsmith, Bowyer, Armourer, Horse Farmer, Siege Engineer, Town watch, Trading Post, etc, etc ,etc

Castle - Spearmakers' Workshop, Bowyers' Workshop, Armourers' Workshop, Horse Breeder, Siege Engineers' Workshop, Town Guard, Merchant, etc, etc ,etc

Citadel - Spearmakers' Guild, Bowyers' Guild, Armourers' Guild, Horse Breeders' Guild, Siege Engineers' Guild, Town Militia, Merchants' Guild, etc, etc ,etc

Fortress - Master Spearmaker, Master Bowyer, Master Armourer, Master Horse Breeder, Master Siege Engineer, County Militia, Master Merchant, etc, etc ,etc

This gives 4 solid levels, not 5 overlapping and interdependent ones that cause a lot of unnecessary building. All costs and build times would need to be tweaked. Also many units that depend on, a for example, a swordsmith, would have to be changed to depend on a swordsmiths' workshop to prevent them being available too early. The lower level swordsmith could then be used as a dependency for other units (this is better than the current situation where you can build several upgrades and still be able to train nothing new).

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Originally Posted by The Unknown Guy

(suggestion: could it be made so that assaults and sieges invariably destroyed the defender´s fort, so that the would-be conçueror had to rebuild it?), lacking fortified cities to camp. Romans certainly did it, but I´m not certain about the middle ages, as mainly cavalry armies would reçuire larger forts, perhaps larger than it was practical. , althrough some browsing I just did of the Alexiad (which, for the record, is a free pdf download from some site, but I can´t remember the address. If someone is curious -as I was- I suggest googling it. It was on the fifth page of the search, or so) seems to point out they did

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Can't be done, the fort may be destroyed in an invasion as it is now, but this cannot be coded to occur always.

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Originally Posted by The Unknown Guy

One concern: as I mentioned, during my messing up with the spanish jinetes reçuirements, I failed to achieve a balance whereby they weren´t either churned out in dozens, or too scarce to hold back the almohads (I left it at horse breeder 3, and almost invariably Castile gets crushed. However, Aragon seems to hold, maybe because Castile gets crushed), so it seems it needs a deeper tweak than my attempt.

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jinetes are probably slightly overpowered in the melee department (currently 2) lowering this to about 0 should make them do less well once they get into a fight, forcing them to charge, throw and skirmish. This needs to be looked at in more detail though, as do the Andalusian Infantry (AUM) which are still a little too overpowered and ruin the flavour of the Moorish factions.

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Originally Posted by The Unknown Guy

Also: shouldn´t the sicilians get some personal unit? (Or gothic knights and sergeants, at least?)

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The Sicilians were Normans, Gothic armoured Knights are typically (very) late era and should be HRE only. The Italians need a variant - Milanese Knights perhaps. Both of these would need to be later era only, and have very steep dependencies.

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Originally Posted by The Unknown Guy

Also: my old suggestion concerning certain borders:
-Making the Spain-Morocco landbridge a coast battle
-Making the Constantinople-Asia Minor border a coast battle (after all, Constantinople is in Europe)
-Making the Egyptian-East of Egypt border a bridge battle (Somewhat flimsy, I know, but I was thinking that the Nyle should be a natural defense)

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-It is a coastal battle
-This cannot be coast battle due to the province layout. I have looked at editing the map to extend Nicaea right up to the west coast and placing the border of constantinople on the coast line of the bosphorous. Messing about with this time consuming however, and will probably result in a hugely increased download size, it is also not a priority at the moment.
-Armies crossing from the Sinai into Egypt should face a bridge battle perhaps? Though not in the other direction.

:bow:

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Originally Posted by Cambyses II

The Sicilians were Normans, Gothic armoured Knights are typically (very) late era and should be HRE only. The Italians need a variant - Milanese Knights perhaps. Both of these would need to be later era only, and have very steep dependencies.

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I think that Gothic Knights should be available to England, France, Spain, Aragon, Poland and Denmark (and Portugal in XL) as well, not just the HRE and the Italians. It wasn't like Gothic armour didn't reach outside Germany. Look at Graham Turner's pictures in the Osprey book about Towton (1461, slightly out of the MTW timeframe) and you see the better part of the Englishmen running around i full-plate Gothic armour.
Also, Gothic Sergeants I think should be re-designed to something better. They are nigh impossible to reach and once you get them they do about they perform just like Chivalric Sergeants since there are less men in a unit. Making them a better version of Chivalric Foot Knights (i.e. certain bonuses while attacking cavalry) and such would be good. Giving them the same stats as JHI just with more armour and a lot slower would be interesting.

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Originally Posted by The Unknown Guy

Why not increase their number from 60 to l00?

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Of course, that would be the obvious solution, but I'm not really a great fan of spears anyway so I'm thinking about re-modding them in my game as soon as I'm through with my Polish campaign.

These are some of my unit modifications (if it's of any interest...):

Gothic Knights dramatically improved (8, 6, 7, 9, 10) and are now worth the buck. I'll make them available to all catholics after my Polish campaign.

Gothic Sergeants, Latin Auxillaries and Janissary Heavy Infantry stats slightly improved. I'll change the Gothic Sergeants into a polearm unit later on (i.e. a unit with a bonus of 3 attacking cavalry and only 1 while defending against cavalry), changing their build requirements to something like; Military Academy, Master Armourer and Master Spearmaker while removing royal_court4 (don't remember its true name). The high requirements will be pretty necessary as they will be better than JHI!

Handgunners improved (3, 3, 4, 4, 4) but only available in Late and now require Gunsmith's Guild and Swordsmith's Workshop. I increased the recruiting cost as well. They now make CMAA superflous in Late as they can fulfill their role while at the same time act as missile troops with demoralising ammo!
They are still slightly worse in melee than CMAA though, and will only beat them roughly 1 of 10 times (Normal, both units charging head-on, handgunners don't fire), but if recruited with a single armour or morale upgrade they can beat them even in head on combat, without using their guns.

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Originally Posted by The Unknown Guy

An idea for Sicily: apparently Frederick II allowed muslims to settle there as his personal guard (mainly because he had good relations with muslim princes, and they didn´t mind when he got excommed, apparently).
So, maybe the King of Sicily could have access to some muslim units? Perhaps Faris, or maybe Desert Archers?

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Interesting idea, and one I'll be interested in implementing.

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Originally Posted by The Unknown Guy

Then again, this does not necessarily mean over-complication, as an already working muslim unit (maybe the Futuwwas, or Janissary bowmen?) could be copied, and used with a different description along the lines of "Territorial disputes with the Papacy have forced the Crown of Sicily resort to recruiting muslim settlers in their lands as soldiers. These men are both indifferent to excommunication threats and loyal to the King of Sicily beyond any kinship with fellow muslim rulers, making them a fierce fighting force in Sicilian armies - as long as they are paid"

They could be called... Mercenary Sarracen Militia, or something?

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I would avoid the word "Saracen" and also I think I would base the troops on Moorish units rather than Turkish ones. Also having specific units for such a role, when the Muslim factions themselves lack many specific units would be overdoing it a bit perhaps? Perhaps Al-Murabitun Infantry and desert archers available to the Sicilians in the Maghreb, Malta, Sicily and Naples?

On the Gothic Knights. That type of armour came about in the mid to late 1400's in Germany, adding Gothic Knights to all factions would be a bad idea, I have considered removing them altogether and am certainly considering removing them from the Italians. The Gothic Sergeants are another issue that I haven't looked into yet.

Another thing, which occured to me while putting down another rebellion of the infamous Siege Engineers Union: Ballistas are useless because of their short range, not-bouncingness, slowness to build, and horrible accuracy (related to them not bouncing)

So perhaps they could either be improved in accuracy (hence making them the very first antipersonnel arty you get), or reduce the building time to one turn, so that you can churn them çuickly when (if) you need to assault a castle, or would like some artillery firecover fast, even if it´s a bit piss-poor?

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Originally Posted by The Unknown Guy

Another thing, which occured to me while putting down another rebellion of the infamous Siege Engineers Union: Ballistas are useless because of their short range, not-bouncingness, slowness to build, and horrible accuracy (related to them not bouncing)

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Well, I have been negotiating with the SEU and we have reached an agreement to the effect that they will no longer be participating in strike action. :beam:

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Originally Posted by The Unknown Guy

So perhaps they could either be improved in accuracy (hence making them the very first antipersonnel arty you get), or reduce the building time to one turn, so that you can churn them çuickly when (if) you need to assault a castle, or would like some artillery firecover fast, even if it´s a bit piss-poor?

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I'm not sure about improving them, as that may turn them into anti-general sharp shooters. I have experimented with removing them in the past and that is possibly the best course of action, though I do think they could be retained as lower cost, quick to build siege equipment for breaking gates. Trying to find which stats to improve is the main issue. I like the idea of reducing the build time, and perhaps improving the projectile damage and range slightly.

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Originally Posted by Cambyses II

On the Gothic Knights. That type of armour came about in the mid to late 1400's in Germany, adding Gothic Knights to all factions would be a bad idea, I have considered removing them altogether and am certainly considering removing them from the Italians. The Gothic Sergeants are another issue that I haven't looked into yet.

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Gothic styled armour was rather popular already during the 1420-ies. Jeanne d'Arcs gothic armour is one of the more famous examples.
I don't see why adding Gothic knights to all catholics woul be such a bad idea? It's both historically accurate and hardly affects the game since I've actually never seen the AI field a Gothic unit (or Janissar Heavy Infantry for that part).

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Originally Posted by Innocentius

Gothic styled armour was rather popular already during the 1420-ies. Jeanne d'Arcs gothic armour is one of the more famous examples.
I don't see why adding Gothic knights to all catholics woul be such a bad idea? It's both historically accurate and hardly affects the game since I've actually never seen the AI field a Gothic unit (or Janissar Heavy Infantry for that part).

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Well because this type of armour wasn't as widespread at that time. To be honest I see your point in that it wouldn't be such a big deal to make Gothic Knights available to all factions as they take so much teching up you're unlikely to see many of them.

I've been working on the Rebel income Tavern/Brothel buildings. I have successfully implemented them but have hit a stumbling block. No matter how much income I assign to them the rebels still go negative. Is this hardcoded I wonder or am I missing something obvious. I had checked the income/expenses parchment and it shows that every province is making more than it expends. I then increased the incomes drastically and was getting around 73,000 florins per turn. Still the rebel economy went into the red. :shrug:

I've completed the simplification of the tech tree. I will still have to fine tune costs and build times of course. At present I'm going for the 2,4,6,8 build times for all weaponsmiths, horsebreeders, and town watches. I would like to hear arguments for the 4,6,8,10 build times. I'm also using the 200,400,600,800 costs any suggested adjustments to those would be welcome. All of the first level buildings depend on the Keep, not the Fort.

The Metalsmith is still available and so is the Armourer, though I have been considering Noir's advice on the removal of armour and weapons upgrades. The Armourer could instead be used as a regular dependency building and to give valour to some units that depend on it, at the master level only. The metalsmith would probably need to be removed altogether. I have Iron as a mining resource now anyway so Iron in the provinces would not be redundant. This is only something I'm considering.

The castle structure has been altered in that the Fort costs 100 and takes a year to build. It is not necessary to build the Fort or it's upgrades in order to build the Keep. So the Keep can be built from an empty province for 800 florins and takes 6 years. The hope here is that the AI will get going from the early period faster, and not hang about training Spearmen and UM from it's forts for the next few decades. The issue is how this will effect poorer factions, though this has pros and cons. It will force the AI up to the level of a Keep before it starts spamming hundreds of troops. Unless it upgrades to a keep it will only be able to build income generating buildings such as farmland, and foresters. This will need some testing to see how it functions.

@Martok: Is it possible we could have this thread merged to the original Pocket Mod thread?

:bow:

May i suggest that the Aragonese and the Sicilians could do with more starting provinces in the PM than they currently have. The Byzantines in any case did not held Apulia nor Naples at the time the game starts -1087 AD- (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:B...%2BAntioch.png) and the Castilians were in fact two kingdoms the Castilians - Leonese and thus unlikely to be yielding the territorial robustness that seem to be enjoying.

The Aragonese could start with Navarre or even Toulouse (as it is not much use to the French being isolated anyway), and the Sicilians with Naples.

If the Turks get wiped out they may be strengthened with Anatolia and perhaps even Nicaea as they were also holding them briefly after Mazinkert and in fact took the Byzantines to arrange for the Crusaders to get them back.

The Danes may enjoy a landbridge to Sweaden and so solve their chronic economic anemia and also perhaps expand towards Livonia, Lithuania, Prussia rather than going for Freisland or Saxony, as they usually do at least in vanilla.

Certain key historical provinces are located at crossroads and thus are vulnerable, however they were founded in those locations due to the natural protection the particular location would provide.

Such places include Venice and Constantinople that are both in crossroads and as such very susceptible in falling to one conqueror or the other way too easily. Venice was a remnant of the Roman empire and was officially reckognised as such by Byzantine Imperial documents; it developed into a community of "floating houses" as protection from the various barbarian hordes that were roaming the italian North in the period 400 to 600 AD.

Constantinople, is known to all a very secure place that was facing land only on one side and was protected there with the best walls of the whole medieval period.

I suggest that these places be less of a "passage" than they currently are.

Another idea for when the time comes to consider this, would be to differentiate the rosters by re-arranging units and essentially contstraining them to 1 missile/1 spear/1 light cavalry/1 heavy-medium cavalry/1 melee(sword)unit per faction/per era. These can be additive, that is the ones for a faction from the early era may complement the ones on the high.

The rosters as they stand give 2 spears, 2 missiles, 2 swords etc per faction per era. This is somehow problematic as they create a tactical abundace for the player with any faction that essentially helps him to get by with the situation he's facing on the battlefield.

It would be nice to play with rosters that make for particular advantages over certain factions and in certain terrains and also to simplify the things for the AI as he spams low tech units early in that he cannot get rid off if not attacked. On top of that he continues to prefer low tech units as they cost less for the factions with feeble income. The present units (as a number at least) are more than enough for doing this, they need only to be reaasigned to factions for that purpose i would have thought.

The overall level of warmaking is also low due to the small number of factions in the game and since the PM is not adding any this needs to be addressed in another way; in my opinion by sharing more evenly the large number of non-faction occupied provinces as stated in the above post in order to make up for more equal wars and thus a more healthy AI economy overall. In that respect the whole eastern steps being rebel is somewhat of a problem.

Noir

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May i suggest that the Aragonese and the Sicilians could do with more starting provinces in the PM than they currently have. The Byzantines in any case did not held Apulia nor Naples at the time the game starts -1087 AD- (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:B...%2BAntioch.png) and the Castilians were in fact two kingdoms the Castilians - Leonese and thus unlikely to be yielding the territorial robustness that seem to be enjoying.

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In fact, the problem with the northern Iberian kingdoms is the land sharing, and size of the provinces. Castile would not become that large until much later on. In fact, Navarre, which is not even an in-game faction, was the dominant Christian kingdom at the time. Serious rehasal of the Iberian çuestion would reçuire adding Aragon and Navarre as unplayable factions (not unfeasible, but hard. I downloaded the manual. Would reçuire a lot of coding. Shields are no problem as there are plenty of them freesource. Spanish Jurisprudence recognizes free lawful use of national symbols, I seem to recall,so getting the shield of Navarra is not a problem. I don´t know about Portugal, through), and add some more provinces in the north (VERY HARD)



Anyways, I´ve managed to increase the survival rate of Aragon (and the Almohads) by limiting the number of Jinetes avaiable at any given time, increasing the support cost to 90 per unit. It works... after a fashion. I cant really tell, as they managed to kick the almohads nonetheles (althrough around year ll20, later than usual), but they didn´t have that many Jinetes, and had several costly battles. I think it was mainly due to having many heirs.

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Such places include Venice and Constantinople that are both in crossroads and as such very susceptible in falling to one conqueror or the other way too easily. Venice was a remnant of the Roman empire and was officially reckognised as such by Byzantine Imperial documents; it developed into a community of "floating houses" as protection from the various barbarian hordes that were roaming the italian North in the period 400 to 600 AD

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Indeed, the first Italian Doge was appointed by the Byzantines. They were given autonomy for lack of ability to defend them at the time.

Concerning Constantinople: The thing is that I think that it should not be a normal map. Not even a coastal battle. Ancient maps of the city show it to be on the golden horn, surrounded by a huge wall on both land and sea, plus the Theodosian wall after it. What I would like is that the battle took place there, at the foot of the Theodosian walls, through I don´t know how. Would it be viable to add a map cut down by a wall? Furthermore:would the AI know how to deal with it, and bring either siege eçuipment or cheap infantry to storm the walls? And, third: would it make Byzantium too easy to play? Trebizond/Nicaea/Bulgaria/Greece are all at hand, and present a four-border, easy to defend yet wealthy core. That without adding the trade. Plus the pocket mod addresses many of the problems that the Byzantines have in game, such as the problems with Byz Cavalry, and the like

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If the Turks get wiped out they may be strengthened with Anatolia and perhaps even Nicaea as they were also holding them briefly after Mazinkert and in fact took the Byzantines to arrange for the Crusaders to get them back.

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True: and it might help to delay the Byzantine Juggernaut that happens countless of times in Early (along with the Spanish Juggernaut, and the Russian VP Juggernaut, it´s one of the three monsters in the game)

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Originally Posted by Cambyses II

I've completed the simplification of the tech tree. I will still have to fine tune costs and build times of course. At present I'm going for the 2,4,6,8 build times for all weaponsmiths, horsebreeders, and town watches. I would like to hear arguments for the 4,6,8,10 build times. I'm also using the 200,400,600,800 costs any suggested adjustments to those would be welcome. All of the first level buildings depend on the Keep, not the Fort.

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I have a possibly stupid question (I ask out of genuine curiosity, and not to be adversarial): Why the increase in build time & expense for every building level? Why not just make it an even 4 years & 400 florins for each one? Is there something inherently unbalanced about having equal costs and build times for each level?

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Originally Posted by Cambyses II

The Metalsmith is still available and so is the Armourer, though I have been considering Noir's advice on the removal of armour and weapons upgrades. The Armourer could instead be used as a regular dependency building and to give valour to some units that depend on it, at the master level only. The metalsmith would probably need to be removed altogether. I have Iron as a mining resource now anyway so Iron in the provinces would not be redundant. This is only something I'm considering.

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Given that the Spanish were reknowned for their steel weapons (their swords in particular), I don't know that removing the Metalsmiths is such a great idea. I can understand removing their dependence on the presence of iron, however. Would there be any way to make the Metalsmith dependent on specific provinces instead? That way, Castille and Syria (Damascus was famous for its steel weapons as well) could still produce troops with an attack bonus. I don't know if this is feasible, but it might be an alternative solution.

As for the Armourer(s), I think Noir may have a point. I'm not sure if they should be removed entirely, but it might not be a bad idea to at least dramatically raise their building requirements. Perhaps restrict them to Citadels and Fortresses only? That way one couldn't build more than an Armourers Workshop, and troops therefore couldn't be trained with more than 2 extra levels of armour. :book:

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Originally Posted by Cambyses II

The castle structure has been altered in that the Fort costs 100 and takes a year to build. It is not necessary to build the Fort or it's upgrades in order to build the Keep. So the Keep can be built from an empty province for 800 florins and takes 6 years. The hope here is that the AI will get going from the early period faster, and not hang about training Spearmen and UM from it's forts for the next few decades. The issue is how this will effect poorer factions, though this has pros and cons. It will force the AI up to the level of a Keep before it starts spamming hundreds of troops. Unless it upgrades to a keep it will only be able to build income generating buildings such as farmland, and foresters. This will need some testing to see how it functions.

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Sounds good, Cambyses. If you need someone to help test that out, I should have some free time this weekend.

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Originally Posted by Cambyses II

@Martok: Is it possible we could have this thread merged to the original Pocket Mod thread?

:bow:

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I was wondering about that. I'll do so once I'm done posting this. ~:)

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Originally Posted by Noir

If the Turks get wiped out they may be strengthened with Anatolia and perhaps even Nicaea as they were also holding them briefly after Mazinkert and in fact took the Byzantines to arrange for the Crusaders to get them back.

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I agree that giving Anatolia to the Turks would help. I disagree with giving them Nicaea as well, however -- while I believe you're right about the Byzantines not getting it back until the First Crusade, I think that would still unbalance things too far in the Turks' favor. I *do* propose making Lesser Armenia a rebel province, as it was (IIRC) a semi-autonomous principality largely independent of Constantinople's authority.

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Originally Posted by Noir

The Danes may enjoy a landbridge to Sweaden and so solve their chronic economic anemia and also perhaps expand towards Livonia, Lithuania, Prussia rather than going for Freisland or Saxony, as they usually do at least in vanilla.

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Unless I'm mistaken, I believe the Danes have a landbridge to Sweden already. (If not, however, then you're right that they should.)

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Originally Posted by Noir

Certain key historical provinces are located at crossroads and thus are vulnerable, however they were founded in those locations due to the natural protection the particular location would provide.

Such places include Venice and Constantinople that are both in crossroads and as such very susceptible in falling to one conqueror or the other way too easily. Venice was a remnant of the Roman empire and was officially reckognised as such by Byzantine Imperial documents; it developed into a community of "floating houses" as protection from the various barbarian hordes that were roaming the italian North in the period 400 to 600 AD.

Constantinople, is known to all a very secure place that was facing land only on one side and was protected there with the best walls of the whole medieval period.

I suggest that these places be less of a "passage" than they currently are.

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If you're saying that those provinces should have different battle maps that favor the defender more, then I think you might have a point. :yes:

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Originally Posted by Noir

The overall level of warmaking is also low due to the small number of factions in the game and since the PM is not adding any this needs to be addressed in another way; in my opinion by sharing more evenly the large number of non-faction occupied provinces as stated in the above post in order to make up for more equal wars and thus a more healthy AI economy overall. In that respect the whole eastern steps being rebel is somewhat of a problem.

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A couple of points here:

1.) Personally, I feel there's already enough war going on. While I realize the name of the game isn't Medieval: Total Peace, I don't think we need to try and force the factions into attacking each more often. ~;) I know that's only my own opinion, but I would wager a good number of florins that I'm not the only one who feels that way.

2.) While historical accuracy isn't always the most important aspect of this game, I do believe it's something that Cambyses (and for that matter, myself) wanted to try and improve with the Pocket Mod. With that in mind, arbitrarily adding a lot of the "rebel" provinces to the lands of existing factions just wouldn't be realistic at all.

Of course, it would be more realistic to make most rebel provinces their own playable faction, but that's obviously not a possibility with the hard-coded faction limit. (That, and I know Cambyses never intended to add more factions anyway -- doing so would be far beyond the scope envisioned for the Pocket Mod.)

(Threads merged.)

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I think that would still unbalance things too far in the Turks' favor.

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In High or Late I would agree, but in Early I witness the Byzantine Juggernaut rule from Lithuania to Syria. They should be a superpower on Early, allright, but they seem to eat EVERYTHING. In my current HRE game, I´m pondering abandoning my provinces and letting them loose at the French and Italians that have been pestering me, while I stay in the relative safety of Saxony and Scandinavia (Under Imperial control)

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Unless I'm mistaken, I believe the Danes have a landbridge to Sweden already. (If not, however, then you're right that they should.)

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They do, and there´s a landbridge from Sweden to Finland too, btw.

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Would there be any way to make the Metalsmith dependent on specific provinces instead? That way, Castille and Syria (Damascus was famous for its steel weapons as well) could still produce troops with an attack bonus. I don't know if this is feasible, but it might be an alternative solution.

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I think that the easy way to do this would be restricting Iron again to a few provinces.

This makes more sense than it might seem. While all nations found iron reserves, not all iron was of the same çuality. Spanish iron mineral, for instance, is of great purity. Hence smiths had an easier time putting together good steel weapons than smiths in places with poor iron mineral (such as England). (For the record, I read somewhere that in Japan they bypassed the problem of having horrid iron mineral by hammering it over and over until they drove out most of the impurities, hence Japanese swords being of high çuality too)

In fact, the high çuality of the steel later played a role in the Industrial Revolution both in England and in Spain (which, besides being wrecked by civil wars at the time, has sucky coal, and english mineral coal had to be imported, whereas the Bessemer Steel Convertor reçuired high ammounts of high çuality iron, which was not found in many places-but luckily for Bessemer, it was just across the sea)

Hi Martok,

i misread your post, apologies. My post now edited.

I think that the PM needs extra factions then - however i know that's out of the scope of the mod and i leave it at that.

Many Thanks

Noir

No apology necessary, mate. :bow:

For what it's worth, I actually agree that adding more factions would be grand, all other things being equal. Doing so would require a great deal of effort, however -- far more so that the considerable amount Cambyses has already expended. Would that I possessed modding skills myself, I might be able to help him out; but (unfortunately) I don't, so I can't. :shame: That guys like VikingHorde and BKB managed to find the time and energy to create a mod all by themselves continues to simultaneously stagger and impress me! :sweatdrop:

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Originally Posted by Noir

May i suggest that the Aragonese and the Sicilians could do with more starting provinces in the PM than they currently have. The Byzantines in any case did not held Apulia nor Naples at the time the game starts -1087 AD- (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:B...%2BAntioch.png)

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It is probably best to give the Sicilians Naples. I have done this in the past. The game seems to make efforts to represent the very short Byzantine reconquest of parts of Naples and Apulia. I can't remember the exact details of this but I don't believe it is worthwhile representing. This will be changed to a Sicilian province and the Sicilians renamed Siculo-Norman.

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Originally Posted by Noir

and the Castilians were in fact two kingdoms the Castilians - Leonese and thus unlikely to be yielding the territorial robustness that seem to be enjoying.

The Aragonese could start with Navarre or even Toulouse (as it is not much use to the French being isolated anyway), and the Sicilians with Naples.

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I'm not sure about Toulouse as it was never fully under Aragonese control. It should possibly be an independant province, but that simply gives us more rebels. Navarre could be Aragonese in the high era but not in early or late, as it would have been mostly independent in those times. It's borders, and the borders of the other Spanish kingdoms would have been very dynamic, which we can't really represent in this game. (this is why I'm largely opposed to changing the map, as you can never get it right anyway, and not enough extra provinces can be added to make enough of a difference)

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Originally Posted by Noir

If the Turks get wiped out they may be strengthened with Anatolia and perhaps even Nicaea as they were also holding them briefly after Mazinkert and in fact took the Byzantines to arrange for the Crusaders to get them back.

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I'm strongly in favour of giving the Seljuks both Nicaea and Anatolia in the early period to try and rebalance the game in this area. The Byzantine would not have held either of those provinces in 1087, they would have only held the part of Nicaea that is represented as part of constantinople in the north west and would have only reconquered parts of western Nicaea some years later. Both provinces I would start in the early period as Orthodox religion with Seljuk forces occupying them.

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Originally Posted by Noir

The Danes may enjoy a landbridge to Sweaden and so solve their chronic economic anemia and also perhaps expand towards Livonia, Lithuania, Prussia rather than going for Freisland or Saxony, as they usually do at least in vanilla.

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The landbridge already exists, as does the one from Sweden to Finland.

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Originally Posted by Noir

Certain key historical provinces are located at crossroads and thus are vulnerable, however they were founded in those locations due to the natural protection the particular location would provide.

Such places include Venice and Constantinople that are both in crossroads and as such very susceptible in falling to one conqueror or the other way too easily. Venice was a remnant of the Roman empire and was officially reckognised as such by Byzantine Imperial documents; it developed into a community of "floating houses" as protection from the various barbarian hordes that were roaming the italian North in the period 400 to 600 AD.

Constantinople, is known to all a very secure place that was facing land only on one side and was protected there with the best walls of the whole medieval period.

I suggest that these places be less of a "passage" than they currently are.

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Constantinople needs to be a small separate province on the coast with it's own specific castle map. That is pretty much beyond the scope of this mod at the moment... never say never though. Venice needs to a small landbridged island, again this involves a lot more work and deviates from the main objectives here.

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Originally Posted by Noir

Another idea for when the time comes to consider this, would be to differentiate the rosters by re-arranging units and essentially contstraining them to 1 missile/1 spear/1 light cavalry/1 heavy-medium cavalry/1 melee(sword)unit per faction/per era. These can be additive, that is the ones for a faction from the early era may complement the ones on the high.

The rosters as they stand give 2 spears, 2 missiles, 2 swords etc per faction per era. This is somehow problematic as they create a tactical abundace for the player with any faction that essentially helps him to get by with the situation he's facing on the battlefield.

It would be nice to play with rosters that make for particular advantages over certain factions and in certain terrains and also to simplify the things for the AI as he spams low tech units early in that he cannot get rid off if not attacked. On top of that he continues to prefer low tech units as they cost less for the factions with feeble income. The present units (as a number at least) are more than enough for doing this, they need only to be reaasigned to factions for that purpose i would have thought.

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I'm not sure about this, examples needed.

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Originally Posted by Noir

The overall level of warmaking is also low due to the small number of factions in the game and since the PM is not adding any this needs to be addressed in another way; in my opinion by sharing more evenly the large number of non-faction occupied provinces as stated in the above post in order to make up for more equal wars and thus a more healthy AI economy overall. In that respect the whole eastern steps being rebel is somewhat of a problem.

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The biggest problem, as regards rebel provinces, is in the east. This is only a problem in the early era as in high and late, the GH and Russians fill the void somewhat. In the early era the region is ripe for Byzantine over expansion. The remedy would be to add extra factions in that area such as Pechenegs, Cumans and others. This is a lot of work and, etc etc etc. For now I would prefer another solution, if the mod evolves into something better in the future and involves a lot of new units, factions and provinces then so be it. But for now I prefer to concentrate on refining what we have, before adding more bulk.

:bow:

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Originally Posted by The Unknown Guy

Anyways, I´ve managed to increase the survival rate of Aragon (and the Almohads) by limiting the number of Jinetes avaiable at any given time, increasing the support cost to 90 per unit. It works... after a fashion. I cant really tell, as they managed to kick the almohads nonetheles (althrough around year ll20, later than usual), but they didn´t have that many Jinetes, and had several costly battles. I think it was mainly due to having many heirs.

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Originally Posted by The Unknown Guy

I think that the easy way to do this would be restricting Iron again to a few provinces.

This makes more sense than it might seem. While all nations found iron reserves, not all iron was of the same çuality. Spanish iron mineral, for instance, is of great purity. Hence smiths had an easier time putting together good steel weapons than smiths in places with poor iron mineral (such as England). (For the record, I read somewhere that in Japan they bypassed the problem of having horrid iron mineral by hammering it over and over until they drove out most of the impurities, hence Japanese swords being of high çuality too)

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The problem is one of game balance as well as one of historical accuracy. By adding Iron to more provinces, and the addition of the Iron Mines I have given more non trade income to the AI factions. Also this enables most factions to have at least one province with a metalsmith. Restricting Iron again to the vanilla provinces would yet again imbalance the game in favour of those factions with the upgraded weapons, and remove that income. Personally I see it as either:

1) Metalsmiths, available sparsely to all factions in a larger number of provinces.

2) Removal of all metalsmiths from the game altogether.

The metalsmiths after all increase attack, which is technically improving a units ability to fight, not it's actual weapons, whereas historically it would have been longevity, sturdiness and durability that would have set these weapons above the rest. The metalsmith would also no doubt improve the quality of armour though armour is dealt with via the armourer. The metalsmith also gives an attack bonus to an urban militia man probably armed with the cheapest of weapons. The effect is far to "global" in that it improves a factions attack bonus across the board. It also places emphasis of the equipment over the men wielding it. A better system would be to have certain Spanish units that reflect the greater quality of the steel. Knights of Santiago, Jinetes and Spanish Javelinmen already represent this. Other units could be added if necessary.

Another aspect is armour upgrades. These are both ahistorical and poorly implemented. Sending your archers back to the province with the Master Armourer to be retrained with what? What do they get equipped with? Why would Gothic Knights be trained with anything less than the best armour anyway. Armour was hard to come by in those days, most was scavenged or looted and only the nobility wore full suits of it. Personally I believe the armourer upgrades need to go. This is not a Mechwarrior game where you add more armour to your chassis. Instead a valour bonus could be added to the Armourer at master level. The swordsmith doesn't upgrade swords, the bowyer doesn't upgrade bows, so why should the armourer add an extremely false defense bonus?

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Sending your archers back to the province with the Master Armourer to be retrained with what? What do they get equipped with? Why would Gothic Knights be trained with anything less than the best armour anyway. Armour was hard to come by in those days, most was scavenged or looted and only the nobility wore full suits of it. Personally I believe the armourer upgrades need to go.

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You have a point there, specially bearing in mind how the effects of armor affect the units. How are units with no armor, or very light armor, such as Psiloi, going to get "better" armor? Perhaps with better çuality leather, granted, but it should not give a "plus one" bonus, as a knight "improving" his armor gets that very same "plus one". And I don´t think that the improvement in defensive properties would be the same for a knight than a guy in a leather armor, or that the guy in leather should roast in the desert for carrying a BETTER armor than an unupgraded eçuivalent.
In fact, I don´t think the improvement would be noticeable at all, unless the armor in çuestion was falling to pieces.

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Knights of Santiago, Jinetes and Spanish Javelinmen already represen

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t this.
Concerning Javelinmen, I think they mostly represent the "historical" almugharavs, which did use hit and run tactics, (the actual in-game almugharavs are a bit puzzling, as they have an odd "defends well vs cavalry", which is unrealistic in warriors which would deal as much damage as possible, and then retreat to the hills). In fact, the muslims called "almugharavs" (bandits, or somesuch, when translated) everyone which used these tactics, which were popular in every region of Spain with mountains to do it. (Roland, the French hero, did not fall in battle with muslims, contrary to popular belief. Actually, he annoyed the Duke of Navarra -not a kingdom yet back then-, and got ambushed by his minions on a mountain pass). The term nowadays applies mostly to the Aragonese ones because it was them who started sending them around as mercs.
They´re a bit lacking in HtH skills, however, specially considering they´re more expensive than other javelinmen and that they´re described as being able to skirmish.
Another potential unit (For High or Late only) would be the Knights of Calatrava, which was a secular, non-crusading, knights order, loyal directly to the crown.

BTW: a bit off this particular subject: Arab Infantry (the "backbone of the armies of Islam" one) seem balanced to me after all (I had doubts formerly). While it´s a dangerous thing to get thrown at you, for their high attack and high numbers, their poor defense and armor makes them easy prey to projectiles, and repeated cavalry charges. Plus, while playing other factions, I´ve never really seen Egypt as able to flood the Almohads or the Turks by sheer numbers, unless they were already weakened by Byzantine or Spanish expansion.


Edit: Something I just forgot: Byzantines. As I usually played them on High, I rarely saw the "Byzantine Juggernaut". But I´ve seen it now, and indeed, is absurd. I think the problem doesn´t come from the command stats of heirs per se, but by the fact that, FOR SOME REASON, the Byzantine Emperors ALWAYS start with a very high influence (Even in High, where they are technically Emperors-in-exile), which, furthermore, doesn´t drop when a succession takes place (In my HRE and Almohad games, "succesion" is almost synonimous of "lossing one or more points of influence. Which is realistic, because a succession is the ideal moment for rebellious nobles to stage a coup or a secession movement), and which, furthermore, does not fall despite horrid defeats and losses (Come on, I lose l96 Psiloi because I mess up troop deployment, and my generals will just shrug and say "oh well, it happens"?). If their influence worked the same as with other factions, they wouldn´t be able to steamroll the steppes, because they´d suffer civil wars and/or rebellions for bloat effect. Right now in my HRE game they own ALL Eastern Europe, and all their provinces are cheerful and happy)

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Originally Posted by Martok

I have a possibly stupid question (I ask out of genuine curiosity, and not to be adversarial): Why the increase in build time & expense for every building level? Why not just make it an even 4 years & 400 florins for each one? Is there something inherently unbalanced about having equal costs and build times for each level?

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Possibly a misunderstanding so bear with me. I have decreased build time and cost for all weaponsmith buildings. This is the system I'm currently adhering to:

2,4,6,8

200,400,600,800

(orignally for bowyer, town watch and spearmaker only)

I was inviting criticism of this system. I was hoping that any proponents of the other system would make their case:

4,6,8,10

400,600,800,1000

(the old swordsmith and armourer setup)

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Originally Posted by Martok

Given that the Spanish were reknowned for their steel weapons (their swords in particular), I don't know that removing the Metalsmiths is such a great idea. I can understand removing their dependence on the presence of iron, however. Would there be any way to make the Metalsmith dependent on specific provinces instead? That way, Castille and Syria (Damascus was famous for its steel weapons as well) could still produce troops with an attack bonus. I don't know if this is feasible, but it might be an alternative solution.

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It is not possible to make the metalsmith (or any building) dependent on a province unless a resource is added. The only alternative would be to add another Iron resource called e.g. "Superior Quality Iron" and have this as the dependency for the metalsmith. I really prefer not to do that however and would like to remove the metalsmith and it's unrealistic attack bonus upgrades. I don't mind retaining it as a dependency building available in all provinces, without the attack bonuses, but I can't see it's uses as yet.

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Originally Posted by Martok

As for the Armourer(s), I think Noir may have a point. I'm not sure if they should be removed entirely, but it might not be a bad idea to at least dramatically raise their building requirements. Perhaps restrict them to Citadels and Fortresses only? That way one couldn't build more than an Armourers Workshop, and troops therefore couldn't be trained with more than 2 extra levels of armour. :book:

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That is one way of doing it I suppose, but it seems illogical. I am trying to achieve a logical tree that has some relevance to real life. Not being able to build a metalsmiths' shop at all because your castle isn't big enough is verging on the ridiculous. At least the lowest level building would be available, at Keep level.

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Originally Posted by Martok

I agree that giving Anatolia to the Turks would help. I disagree with giving them Nicaea as well, however -- while I believe you're right about the Byzantines not getting it back until the First Crusade, I think that would still unbalance things too far in the Turks' favor. I *do* propose making Lesser Armenia a rebel province, as it was (IIRC) a semi-autonomous principality largely independent of Constantinople's authority.

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I seriously don't think it would imbalance it, if both provinces are orthodox and so not that easy for the Seljuks to hold down, but not impossible either. The Seljuks really do need all the help they can get, with the Byzantine on one front and the Fatimid war machine breathing down their necks on the other. Remember that they no longer have UM, Saracen Infantry in the early era, nor do they have universal and exclusive access to Futuwwas. Turcoman Foot Soldiers are more easily available and Turcoman Horse and Horse archers are in infantry sized units, but despite this in most campaigns they fail, this is because archery heavy armies will ultimately fail in an autocalced AI vs AI battle. This is one of the downsides of the game. To remedy this the Turks need a balanced sword Infantry unit that is not armed with a bow.

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Originally Posted by Martok

1.) Personally, I feel there's already enough war going on. While I realize the name of the game isn't Medieval: Total Peace, I don't think we need to try and force the factions into attacking each more often. ~;) I know that's only my own opinion, but I would wager a good number of florins that I'm not the only one who feels that way.

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Constant war early on is very destructive and razes a lot of infrastructure. I do feel that there is enough war also, though I believe Noir may be referring to factions that have stockpiled lots of cheap units plunging further and further into the red while not breaking out and attacking. This may be remedied by changing some of the starting AI types, and by adding the extra provinces in certain eras.

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Originally Posted by Martok

2.) While historical accuracy isn't always the most important aspect of this game, I do believe it's something that Cambyses (and for that matter, myself) wanted to try and improve with the Pocket Mod. With that in mind, arbitrarily adding a lot of the "rebel" provinces to the lands of existing factions just wouldn't be realistic at all.

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The way I look at it those rebel provinces can be strengthened for now with decent generals, good infrastructure and some strong units to represent the factions they should be. If a time comes when extra factions can be added then it will be easy enough to slot them into place.

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Originally Posted by Martok

Of course, it would be more realistic to make most rebel provinces their own playable faction, but that's obviously not a possibility with the hard-coded faction limit. (That, and I know Cambyses never intended to add more factions anyway -- doing so would be far beyond the scope envisioned for the Pocket Mod.)

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New factions are something I have looked into and have decided against for now. Adding a lot of flakey factions to an already less than perfect vanilla game, with a Pocket Mod that is far from maturing would be running before walking. I too would like to see new factions such as the Navarrese, Leon, Portugal, the Nasrid Kingdom of Granada, and Cilician Armenia, to replace the rebels but that is almost another project entirely. And I would like that project to be based on the core that is laid down by the Pocket Mod.

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Originally Posted by Martok

For what it's worth, I actually agree that adding more factions would be grand, all other things being equal. Doing so would require a great deal of effort, however -- far more so that the considerable amount Cambyses has already expended. Would that I possessed modding skills myself, I might be able to help him out; but (unfortunately) I don't, so I can't. :shame: That guys like VikingHorde and BKB managed to find the time and energy to create a mod all by themselves continues to simultaneously stagger and impress me! :sweatdrop:

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I'm open to anyone providing data on extra factions, their locations and where they should be located, and especially units for those factions. The units can exist before the factions themselves exist and can be recruited by other factions or rebel only. One has to remember though, that new units require artwork to ensure they're not simply generic copies of vanilla units.

:bow:

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Originally Posted by The Unknown Guy

You have a point there, specially bearing in mind how the effects of armor affect the units. How are units with no armor, or very light armor, such as Psiloi, going to get "better" armor? Perhaps with better çuality leather, granted, but it should not give a "plus one" bonus, as a knight "improving" his armor gets that very same "plus one". And I don´t think that the improvement in defensive properties would be the same for a knight than a guy in a leather armor, or that the guy in leather should roast in the desert for carrying a BETTER armor than an unupgraded eçuivalent.
In fact, I don´t think the improvement would be noticeable at all, unless the armor in çuestion was falling to pieces.

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My point exactly. It's not as if a superb suit of armour can be somehow bettered by running it through 4 different armourers. How is the armour going to be somehow "bettered"? It would be repaired perhaps but not improved that much. And why would it's improvement mean faring even worse in the desert? Surely a master armourer would produce only the best, lightweight, durable and ergonomic armour, which would actually be better suited to the desert than a heavy and cheap tin can of a suit produced in a normal armourer. It seems that the developers philosophy was that more armour is somehow added to the man, increasing weight, which is simply not the case at all.

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Originally Posted by The Unknown Guy

YConcerning Javelinmen, I think they mostly represent the "historical" almugharavs, which did use hit and run tactics, (the actual in-game almugharavs are a bit puzzling, as they have an odd "defends well vs cavalry", which is unrealistic in warriors which would deal as much damage as possible, and then retreat to the hills). In fact, the muslims called "almugharavs" (bandits, or somesuch, when translated) everyone which used these tactics, which were popular in every region of Spain with mountains to do it. (Roland, the French hero, did not fall in battle with muslims, contrary to popular belief. Actually, he annoyed the Duke of Navarra -not a kingdom yet back then-, and got ambushed by his minions on a mountain pass). The term nowadays applies mostly to the Aragonese ones because it was them who started sending them around as mercs.
They´re a bit lacking in HtH skills, however, specially considering they´re more expensive than other javelinmen and that they´re described as being able to skirmish.

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They're an odd unit which is why I've left them as rebel only. I may turn them into the Aragonese version of Spanish Javelinmen, and change their stats, removing the cavalry defence bonus.

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Originally Posted by The Unknown Guy

Another potential unit (For High or Late only) would be the Knights of Calatrava, which was a secular, non-crusading, knights order, loyal directly to the crown.

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A possible renaming for Lancers? Give Gothics to almost all catholic factions, create Milanese Knights for the Italians and rename Lancers to Knights of Calatrava? Personally I think they already fit the bill and have a poor name that needs changing. They simply need to be restricted to Castile only. And perhaps only trainable by the Spanish and Aragonese (as they are at present).

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Originally Posted by The Unknown Guy

BTW: a bit off this particular subject: Arab Infantry (the "backbone of the armies of Islam" one) seem balanced to me after all (I had doubts formerly). While it´s a dangerous thing to get thrown at you, for their high attack and high numbers, their poor defense and armor makes them easy prey to projectiles, and repeated cavalry charges. Plus, while playing other factions, I´ve never really seen Egypt as able to flood the Almohads or the Turks by sheer numbers, unless they were already weakened by Byzantine or Spanish expansion.

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:2thumbsup:

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Originally Posted by The Unknown Guy

Edit: Something I just forgot: Byzantines. As I usually played them on High, I rarely saw the "Byzantine Juggernaut". But I´ve seen it now, and indeed, is absurd. I think the problem doesn´t come from the command stats of heirs per se, but by the fact that, FOR SOME REASON, the Byzantine Emperors ALWAYS start with a very high influence (Even in High, where they are technically Emperors-in-exile), which, furthermore, doesn´t drop when a succession takes place (In my HRE and Almohad games, "succesion" is almost synonimous of "lossing one or more points of influence. Which is realistic, because a succession is the ideal moment for rebellious nobles to stage a coup or a secession movement), and which, furthermore, does not fall despite horrid defeats and losses (Come on, I lose l96 Psiloi because I mess up troop deployment, and my generals will just shrug and say "oh well, it happens"?). If their influence worked the same as with other factions, they wouldn´t be able to steamroll the steppes, because they´d suffer civil wars and/or rebellions for bloat effect. Right now in my HRE game they own ALL Eastern Europe, and all their provinces are cheerful and happy)

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That is at the top of my "things to fix" list. I will be working on the starting royalties stats very soon. The further reduction of the number of provinces in early will also help, as will the addition of some stronger rebel provinces.

The massive trade bloat is also still an issue. Adding some deep sea regions is probably the only answer to this.

(on that topic, even bearing in mind it´s a long term thing, if at all...)
Leon, Portugal, and Navarra I´d leave with default Spanish units (as with Aragon). Granada, I don´t really know. Andalusian Infantry is certainly a fitting unit, whereas Muratibin infantry and the like wouldn´t be. Maybe, akin to the proposal concerning Sicily, a mainly-muslim unit rooster with some heavy cavalry on catholic factions lines, to reflect both the adaptation of European military tactics, and the fact that many of the rulers of the Taifas kingdoms were native Iberian nobility gone muslim. I´m not profficient on the Granada dinasty, but I do know they were originally from the north.

As for shields, Portugal, Leon, and Navarra are easy to get. Granada I´m not profficient, as it´s current representation on the Spanish shield is a pomengranate (the çuestion is whether it was always so). And Cilicia, I have no idea. I just looked into wikipedia, the most unreliable source of information since the Yellow Press, and it says it was a standing Lion. In fact, it looks the same as the shield of Leon, only looking the other way

I've changed a few things in my mod that I would like to suggest.

#1: I've set my unit availabilty so that "Feudal" units are avaible in High, and Chivalric are available in Late. This eliminates the need for gothic units, which I have changed the names of and made german only. The ealry era is "the peasantry" era, and thus the most powerful units available are generally Militia Sergeants.

#2: I have changed the use of the town watch to be used in conjunction with the spearmaker, boywer, axesmith (which I'm having trouble with the pic, the background keeps turning up the supposedly transparent green), and swordsmith to create the "peasantry" units, the metalsmith and armourer have lost thier bonus and are now used as troop dependent buildings, for high attack and high defense/armor units respectivly(speaking of which; how does defense and armor factor in during battle exactly? Armor is for ranged, and defense is for melee, right?).

#3: The royal court line is now required for all "Knight" type units, and all factions can now build up to the highest level. Also, I have added requirements for "Bodyguards", including raising the requirements for the royal courts, as it used to be easy to get CFK at a low tech level.

#4: I have made Iron a tradeable item, and have mafe metalsmiths buildable everywhere. This reflects the fact that although good Iron sources were few, the material could still be traded.

#5: I have limited the production of faction specific only units to certian areas, but have made them buildable for any faction. Religion still plays a role, so no futuwwas or JHI for the Byz or Catholics, but okay for the Byz to have RK.

A few things just to explain myself:

1. All the input here on my account is suggestions and nothing more. There are no hooks neither strings attached nor any other sort of demand of the type "do this as i enjoy playing this way" from my part. I am simply providing feedback and ideas as i don't play the PM for pleasure, but for the sake of helping Cambyses II with it and i will do that as promised till the project is complete or abandoned. Please Martok & Cambyses II treat all my further posts here on this spirit ie discuss them further if interesting and disregard them without explaining more than a line if uninteresting/unfeasible.

I do understand that its a huge time waster and source of fustration having to argue for things that they are ultimately unfeasible or out of interest for the mod and having to "convince" the casual forumite that comes here and posts his daily opinion only, and yet having to do so with "reasonable" arguments, so feel free of this obligation in our interaction.

2. Relative to the warmaking level, my own experience with altering MedMod IV suggests the following:
a) Factions tend to go in still water financially with garrison troops.
b) There are more than one for each type of unit in each era so they go in inactivity with low tech/old units usually as the AI prefers them (due to being cheaper).
c) Constant (= about a battle per 10 turns on a particular front) border skirmishing of a certain degree alleviates that as the AI gets the chance to rid of its units and build the new ones.
d) This may be achieved by: incerasing the default rebeliousness from 0 to 2 for almost all provinces and tweaking the meintanance costs in order so that the AI can still garrisson effectively the more now rebelious provinces but still can get surplus forces to invade.
e) This works as AI factions fight without progressing in conquest - they simply get rid of a stack as the newly conquered province will rebel repeatedly and the AI stack will be lost most of the time and he will retreat. As a result the AI will build the new unts.
f) The above approach is best complemented with strict homelands to further prevent and punish gigantism and overexpansion. I have implemented and playtested that and it works as i describe.

In my first campaign i've played in the PM: French/Early/Hard the Italians were a pile of militias and cheap spearmen as they haven't fought a single battle in [U]60 turns (!)[/U]. When i atacked them in 1146 or so, they fell with only 2 extremely easy battles and no hope of re-making an army before i conquer them entirely eventually. Not "enough of warmaking" unfortunately i'm afraid.

The Italian AI was too busy teching up to the higher forts before building the military buildings and as this much like in vanilla takes ages and costs millions they cannot defend themselves before they finish all that building up, that is effectively before the late early era i guess.

Note also that i don't bum rush the AI never and i am roleplaying my games and enjoy peace for empire building etc. So the "classic" argument for total peace and total war is innaproriate relative to my suggestions, i feel, with all due respect Martok.

3. Relative to provinces: Historical accuracy in the mod as it stands is feasible only in the state of compromise in my view. Asking to respect it fully without more factions and without altering the map is sort of an impossibility as far as i can see.

The Byzantines as mentioned did held only 3 of the continental provinces (Greece, Thrace and Bulgaria) that they hold at the start of the early era excluding islands yet none of you finds that odd.

In my opinion to give reasonable starting points and home lands to factions so they play better in the course of the campaign is much more important rather than arguing who held what and when for a counterargument as why the Aragonese can't hold Toulouse or Navarre. All in all the Aragonese AI targets Toulouse or Navarre anyway as he has nowhere else to go and he can train units there (homeland). The Castilians and Almohads are too much for him so he has to build from somewehere. This will also help represent the more complex situation that existed in the Iberian rather than a black/white christian vs muslim war ie it will introduce the Aragonese as a power in the equation, which makes for more interesting political/military dealings.

Making it easier for the Danes to unite Scandinavia or even giving a second Scandinavian province to them, is way more reasonable from a "historical" persepective than them ending up in Burgundy or than the Russians conquering Sweaden.

4. Relative to rosters: What i mean Cambyses II is that the Byzantines for example don't need HAs and BC as in vanilla (haven't played with them yet in the PM) - they are the same type of unit in essence and one or the other is redundant. Conversely, the Catholics dont need spearmen and Sergeants - Hobilars and Mounted Sergeants in the same era; you can decide to give one unit of each type to certain factions and the other to certain others and so simplify the roster and so help the AI in the campaign and in battle (as you can work a style for him or the player that plays the faction after that point). You can group the factions as to who gets that spearman type and who gets that missile type etc also helping with distributing homelands.

All this can be done with existing units - at most a simple renaming will be required.

The AI will play better as the phenomenon of having lower tech units will reduce/dissapear = they will be only one unit per type the AI needs to build to fight effectively. Even if he is losing a war and makes a few units for a desperate defence they will provide a much better enjoyment/resistance than the bunch of UM and simple spearmen and archers that he is getting now when on the line financially.

Many Thanks

Noir

Quote:

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Originally Posted by YourLordandConqueror

I've changed a few things in my mod that I would like to suggest.

#1: I've set my unit availabilty so that "Feudal" units are avaible in High, and Chivalric are available in Late. This eliminates the need for gothic units, which I have changed the names of and made german only. The ealry era is "the peasantry" era, and thus the most powerful units available are generally Militia Sergeants.

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I can see the sense in what you're doing there, though I would be uneasy about depriving the game of Feudal units in the early era. I have structured it presently so that Feudal units go out of date and are replaced by chivalric equivalent ones in the high era, to force the AI onto moving on to producing these unit types. Men at arms to Chivalric men at arms, Knights to Chivalric Knights, Sergeants to Chivalric Sergeants. The chivalric units then last for the last two eras.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by YourLordandConqueror

#2: I have changed the use of the town watch to be used in conjunction with the spearmaker, boywer, axesmith (which I'm having trouble with the pic, the background keeps turning up the supposedly transparent green), and swordsmith to create the "peasantry" units, the metalsmith and armourer have lost thier bonus and are now used as troop dependent buildings, for high attack and high defense/armor units respectivly(speaking of which; how does defense and armor factor in during battle exactly? Armor is for ranged, and defense is for melee, right?).

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Ensure you have the latest bif reader and which paint package are you using? Small black spots will always be an issue and you'll have to edit those out manually. The trick is to try and fil in with background space instead of leaving too many transparent "holes". It's these holes that seem to cause the problem when bif reader processes the file into a new bif. Personally I will not be implementing an Axesmith in the Pocket Mod, as that would mean me having to go down the fletcher, tanner, mason, camel breeder, halberd maker rout which I don't want to get into.

Armour is simply added to defence in battle. It is treated as a stat in that it causes units to perform poorly in the desert and is taken into account when on the receiving end of an armour piercing attack. All in all though it's the same thing as defence.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by YourLordandConqueror

#3: The royal court line is now required for all "Knight" type units, and all factions can now build up to the highest level. Also, I have added requirements for "Bodyguards", including raising the requirements for the royal courts, as it used to be easy to get CFK at a low tech level.

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By "knight type" are you including non catholics? If so then that would be ahistorical IMHO.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by YourLordandConqueror

#4: I have made Iron a tradeable item, and have mafe metalsmiths buildable everywhere. This reflects the fact that although good Iron sources were few, the material could still be traded.

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Expect to see uber upgraded units. Those factions with a poor economy - without the upgrades - will fall very fast.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by YourLordandConqueror

#5: I have limited the production of faction specific only units to certian areas, but have made them buildable for any faction. Religion still plays a role, so no futuwwas or JHI for the Byz or Catholics, but okay for the Byz to have RK.

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The Byzantine wouldn't have trained Royal Knights. Their bodyguards were Kataphraktoi type cavalry. Futuwwa are trainable by Egyptian and Turkish factions in the Pocket Mod but only in Syria.

:bow:

On the order of Calatrava: it appears that it would be slightly anachronistic as a "secular order", because althrough it indeed became so in time, it was not until the sixteenth century when it became fully secular.

I say "slightly" because, on the other hand, they did play a very significant role in the politics of the Kingdom of Castile during all the Reconçuista, becoming openly involved, and adding a significant manpower, in wars against muslim princes, other Spanish kingdoms, and succession wars, and besides, the King had a strong say in the appointing of the Grand Master (althrough "officially", it depended only on both a certain bishop and the pope).

My semi-mistake is due to a play I saw a while ago.

Addenum: apparently there WAS an earlier secular order in Castile, with the King as the Grand Master, the "Order of the Band", which was limited to the nobility, and placed a special emphasis in "chivalry, solidarity (whatever it meant), and loyalty to the king". And it was conveniently existant from around l304, and l474. So it would still be a little anachronistic in High (but just a little).
Either would do. Methinks that the Order of Calatrava is more famous, however.

Something I've just noticed... The Byzantine faction leader starts with +2 influence over all other factions which start with a standard, seemingly hardcoded, 4 influence regardless of era. This gives the Byzantine a distinct advantage over their rivals. They are exposed as cheats!! :thumbsdown:

I have reduced the start leader's command stars by 2 so far and this will hopefully make a difference. I have given Naples to the Sicilians and Anatolia and Nicaea to the Seljuks in the early era. Will reply to other comments tomorrow.

:bow:

Do they have any hardcoded non-decrease of Influence?
In my current HRE game I´ve noticed that every succession is followed by a decrease of influence (which makes sense), something I didn´t notice with the Byzantines, althrough that could have been because they already have an hyped influence, and I usually manage to, starting on High, get a stable border composed of Nicaea, Trebizond, Bulgaria, and Greece, at the very least. This makes it very handy for getting influence for browbeating incoming enemy armies.


Oh, also: shouldn´t the germans get a special if Gothic Knights (and Milanese for others) become universal?
Or maybe Swabian Swordmen and the elective nature of the HRE (which effectively means that wars with them must be carried to the bitter end, as the royal line is a secundary concern)

(posts merged - please delete)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Noir

A few things just to explain myself:

1. All the input here on my account is suggestions and nothing more. There are no hooks neither strings attached nor any other sort of demand of the type "do this as i enjoy playing this way" from my part. I am simply providing feedback and ideas as i don't play the PM for pleasure, but for the sake of helping Cambyses II with it and i will do that as promised till the project is complete or abandoned. Please Martok & Cambyses II treat all my further posts here on this spirit ie discuss them further if interesting and disregard them without explaining more than a line if uninteresting/unfeasible.

I do understand that its a huge time waster and source of fustration having to argue for things that they are ultimately unfeasible or out of interest for the mod and having to "convince" the casual forumite that comes here and posts his daily opinion only, and yet having to do so with "reasonable" arguments, so feel free of this obligation in our interaction.

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Well I for one and appreciating the input you are providing. :bow:

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Noir

2. Relative to the warmaking level, my own experience with altering MedMod IV suggests the following:
a) Factions tend to go in still water financially with garrison troops.
b) There are more than one for each type of unit in each era so they go in inactivity with low tech/old units usually as the AI prefers them (due to being cheaper).
c) Constant (= about a battle per 10 turns on a particular front) border skirmishing of a certain degree alleviates that as the AI gets the chance to rid of its units and build the new ones.
d) This may be achieved by: incerasing the default rebeliousness from 0 to 2 for almost all provinces and tweaking the meintanance costs in order so that the AI can still garrisson effectively the more now rebelious provinces but still can get surplus forces to invade.
e) This works as AI factions fight without progressing in conquest - they simply get rid of a stack as the newly conquered province will rebel repeatedly and the AI stack will be lost most of the time and he will retreat. As a result the AI will build the new unts.
f) The above approach is best complemented with strict homelands to further prevent and punish gigantism and overexpansion. I have implemented and playtested that and it works as i describe.

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a) Lots of cheap and poor quality troops do tend to bog the AI down and cripple it. your argument is that instead of giving the AI lots of poor quality troops give it 1 decent unit of every type per era that it can actually use. This does make sense though unfortunately it also makes for rather restrictive gameplay. Personally though I wouldn't miss units such as Spearmen or UM and I would definitely consider removing them. Taking Spear units as an example, currently there are a whole range of them available to catholics including Spearmen/Round Shield Spearmen, Armoured Spearmen, Feudal Sergeants and Chivalric Sergeants. I would advocate removing Spearmen altogether and converting them into a regional fuedal sergeant (known as simply "Sergeants" in this mod). That is I would structure it as follows:

Sergeants/Eastern European Infantry (mutually exclusive)

Sergeants: Western Catholic units represented by either the Feudal Sergeants info pic or the (square shield catholic) Spearmen info pic. The English and HRE could use the standard FS version and all other catholics could have the square shield one. All of these would be superceded and replaced by Chivalric Sergeants in the high era onwards.

<Eastern European Infantry>: Eastern Spearmen using either the Armoured Spearmen or (round shield catholic) info pic. The "armoured" variant could be exclusively a Danish and Novgorod version. The "round shielders" would be the Polish, Hungarian and Russian. These would last the whole 3 eras.

Alternatively it could be structured quite differently:

Sergeants/Eastern European Infantry (mutually exclusive)

Sergeants: Early Western Catholic units represented by the (square shield catholic) Spearmen info pic. High units would use the standard FS info pic, and Late using the Chivalric Sergeants. All of these units would be named "Sergeants". This would force the use of what is basically spearmen until the high era. Statistically they could be altered to give better morale, as at present they are not much good at anything except running.

<Eastern European Infantry>: Early Eastern Spearmen would use the Armoured Spearmen info pic, High and Late would switch to the standard round shield spearmen info pic (this is because the former looks antiquated and distinctly norse and is not really suited to the high and late eras). The Danes, Novgorod, Poles, Hungarians and Russians would use these types of infantry and not have access to sergeants. These would last the whole 3 eras.

Alternative suggestions welcome.

I would also advocate the 2 point increase to the default rebelliousness.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Noir

In my first campaign i've played in the PM: French/Early/Hard the Italians were a pile of militias and cheap spearmen as they haven't fought a single battle in [U]60 turns (!)[/U]. When i atacked them in 1146 or so, they fell with only 2 extremely easy battles and no hope of re-making an army before i conquer them entirely eventually. Not "enough of warmaking" unfortunately i'm afraid.

The Italian AI was too busy teching up to the higher forts before building the military buildings and as this much like in vanilla takes ages and costs millions they cannot defend themselves before they finish all that building up, that is effectively before the late early era i guess.

Note also that i don't bum rush the AI never and i am roleplaying my games and enjoy peace for empire building etc. So the "classic" argument for total peace and total war is innaproriate relative to my suggestions, i feel, with all due respect Martok.

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This is why I'm trying to make building easier for the AI. So that if the AI wants to tech up to a certain unit it can do so easily and be in the position to train other units on the way. Making all of the weaponsmiths more easily available helps. The Italians have an extreme shortage of decent units in the early era anyway, except for Italian Infantry which I rarely see the AI training, and have an valour bonus for UM in Tuscany which means they'll develop those and start training many of them.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Noir

3. Relative to provinces: Historical accuracy in the mod as it stands is feasible only in the state of compromise in my view. Asking to respect it fully without more factions and without altering the map is sort of an impossibility as far as i can see.

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As I've said before, more factions is a possibility in the future but I wish to lay a foundation before starting work on the furnishings. The map is another issue. Boundaries changed so frequently that no map can be accurate throughout 1087 to 1453 anyway, this is why I see changes to the map as secondary at the moment. The provinces are purely representational and if for example Lesser Armenia is far larger than Cilician Armenia that is purely cosmetic. The province is still in the same place, can be attacked by the same neighbours and has the same attributes. The difference is simply it's size and appearance on the map. Splitting and adding provinces is another matter, but there are not, IMHO, enough free "slots" to add the sufficient amount of extra provinces required to do it justice. Just botching in Mesopotamia or Murcia won't really help much.

:bow:

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Noir

The Byzantines as mentioned did held only 3 of the continental provinces (Greece, Thrace and Bulgaria) that they hold at the start of the early era excluding islands yet none of you finds that odd.

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I have always found it odd, yet have not gotten around to altering it yet. Just because I haven't changed something it doesn't mean that I am not aware of it/ignoring it. It is basically because I am trying to do many other things in a limited amount of time as well as reading up on the subject.

It has now been finally altered and I have added Anatolia and Nicaea to the Turks. I will have to work on balancing the garrisons and adding basic fortifications and ports to the entire map. It bothers me that many provinces start entirely empty in the early era.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Noir

In my opinion to give reasonable starting points and home lands to factions so they play better in the course of the campaign is much more important rather than arguing who held what and when for a counterargument as why the Aragonese can't hold Toulouse or Navarre. All in all the Aragonese AI targets Toulouse or Navarre anyway as he has nowhere else to go and he can train units there (homeland). The Castilians and Almohads are too much for him so he has to build from somewehere. This will also help represent the more complex situation that existed in the Iberian rather than a black/white christian vs muslim war ie it will introduce the Aragonese as a power in the equation, which makes for more interesting political/military dealings.

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You're quite correct, but historical boundaries have to be respected. The English will probably go for Scotland also, so why not have them start with Scotland. Give the Danes Sweden and Norway and give the Novgorod a good chunk of those rebel provinces? You see the argument "give them the provinces" can apply to any faction, the challenge is to get it working properly without resorting to this. I think the answer is to eventually add a Navarrese faction.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Noir

Making it easier for the Danes to unite Scandinavia or even giving a second Scandinavian province to them, is way more reasonable from a "historical" persepective than them ending up in Burgundy or than the Russians conquering Sweaden.

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Not necessarily. By today's standards yes, but in those times where Normans ended up in Sicily, anything was possible under the right circumstances. The simple issue here is Sweden's rebelliousness. Reducing it will assist the Danes in holding it down. The other issue is that the Danes spam vikings, spawn bodyguards and then become crippled. Because you're playing an old version of the PoM you won't have the lower cost bodyguard units I'm working on at present. These cost little to support and so don't paralyse the economy. Aragon and Poland are benefiting greatly from this as are all other factions. The Danes are still the main problem. When testing for 200 years, I found that of all factions only the Danes still went into the red. I was quite pleased with the results.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Noir

4. Relative to rosters: What i mean Cambyses II is that the Byzantines for example don't need HAs and BC as in vanilla (haven't played with them yet in the PM) - they are the same type of unit in essence and one or the other is redundant. Conversely, the Catholics dont need spearmen and Sergeants - Hobilars and Mounted Sergeants in the same era; you can decide to give one unit of each type to certain factions and the other to certain others and so simplify the roster and so help the AI in the campaign and in battle (as you can work a style for him or the player that plays the faction after that point). You can group the factions as to who gets that spearman type and who gets that missile type etc also helping with distributing homelands.

All this can be done with existing units - at most a simple renaming will be required.

---

BC don't exist in the Pocket Mod. They have been replaced by the Pronoiarioi Kavallarioi Toxotai which are a version of Pronoiarioi Kavallarioi (Pr0n Cav) armed with bows. I agree though that the Byzantine don't really need the HAs and eliminating and restricting redundant units has been one of my priorities all along.

Hobilars and mounted Sergeants are another one. I feel that all factions with Sergeants should also have mounted Sergeants, thus Hobilars would seem somewhat redundant. Hobilars though were gaelic mercenaries and should have a place. It may be better to give the French and English Hobilars instead of mounted Sergeants.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Noir

The AI will play better as the phenomenon of having lower tech units will reduce/dissapear = they will be only one unit per type the AI needs to build to fight effectively. Even if he is losing a war and makes a few units for a desperate defence they will provide a much better enjoyment/resistance than the bunch of UM and simple spearmen and archers that he is getting now when on the line financially.

Many Thanks

Noir

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I will look into all of this.

:bow:

Quote:

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Originally Posted by The Unknown Guy

Do they have any hardcoded non-decrease of Influence?
In my current HRE game I&#180;ve noticed that every succession is followed by a decrease of influence (which makes sense), something I didn&#180;t notice with the Byzantines, althrough that could have been because they already have an hyped influence, and I usually manage to, starting on High, get a stable border composed of Nicaea, Trebizond, Bulgaria, and Greece, at the very least. This makes it very handy for getting influence for browbeating incoming enemy armies.

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There also appears to be a +1 command star bonus to the Byzantines, though I can't be 100% certain of this. I will check this out more thoroughly later this evening. I did notice that the first faction leader in the early period, faction leader 0, Alexius I IIRC, starts out as follows:

Code:

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FAMOUS_KINGS::        FN_BYZANTINE        8
//name                no.        c        d        p        a        portrait            vnv
6,                1,        4,        5,        4,        5,        -1,                        defender2
0,                1,        2,        5,        3,        4,        -1,                        lawman1
7,                1,        3,        5,        3,        3,        -1,                        tyrant1
6,                5,        3,        3,        3,        3,        -1,                        secretkiller3
5,                11,        3,        3,        3,        3,        -1,                        tyrant1
3,                3,        2,        6,        4,        5,        -1,                        builderking3
7,                2,        1,        3,        5,        1,        -1,                        pious2
3,                6,        3,        4,        4,        5,        -1,                        educated1

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The first column indicates the name of the faction leader, no 6 "Alexius" in this case. The second is the number of times someone bearing his name has been king before (e.g. 1 = Alexius I, 2 = Alexius II etc). This is modified further in the setstartleader line in the startpos file. The third (c) is command, next is dread, then piety, acumen, special portrait and vnvs. Alexius starts with 4 command +2 command from the expert defender virtue to give a total of 6 command, except on the campaign map he clearly has no less than 7 command stars. Am I missing something here? :shrug:

Reducing his command stars by 2 had the difference of reducing the stats of other starting units considerably. If I find no other way to fix this influence bonus I will have to reduce the command stars of all the Byzantine leaders considerably more.

As to whether their influence deprecates normally I can't be certain either. It may that they simply tend to win an awful lot which gives their leader the illusion of having unshakeable influence, who knows. All I know is that +2 influence is a killer and makes all the difference. It also gives the Byzantine better generals from the outset.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by The Unknown Guy

Oh, also: shouldn&#180;t the germans get a special if Gothic Knights (and Milanese for others) become universal?
Or maybe Swabian Swordmen and the elective nature of the HRE (which effectively means that wars with them must be carried to the bitter end, as the royal line is a secundary concern)

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A valour bonus? This brings me again to the biggest issue with valour bonus regions, and that is the AI tendency to do nothing with the province except to build it up to produce the valour bonus unit. I'm reluctant to create more of them and have considered removing them and implementing them in another way perhaps. More use could be made of the ruler advantage column instead of the region advantage one. Certain factions would be able to produce those units cheaper, as they were famous for them. This is not as ideal as the regions but IMHO the regions simply don't work as the AI cannot handle them at all.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Cambyses II
You're quite correct, but historical boundaries have to be respected. The English will probably go for Scotland also, so why not have them start with Scotland. Give the Danes Sweden and Norway and give the Novgorod a good chunk of those rebel provinces? You see the argument "give them the provinces" can apply to any faction, the challenge is to get it working properly without resorting to this. I think the answer is to eventually add a Navarrese faction.

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I see where you are getting at, but IMO you are presenting the wrong example. The English do have a load of provinces and so they don't need to be "strengthened" with Scotland or Wales - their starting position is fine and so i dont propose that we "divert" from historical corectness for the sake of gameplay.

The Novgorodians have it easy also because of those rebel provinces - not to mention that being a generic "Russian" faction they should be representing the Kievans also that held three or four of those steppe rebel provinces in the south.

It is the Aragonese and Danes that suffer because of this. If having Toulouse the Aragonese AI may go for Vanecia or even better take it to the seas, I'd say that this is way more historical that it staying put for ages and not taking any part in the "Reconquista".

Of course you are the boss :)

Making the weaponsmiths easier to build is a good approach - also i would suggest that you treat their cost and building times - effectively the cost and building time the AI can churn out decent troops. The ones you have presented sound a bit high still to me - but remember that i haven't seen any playtest campaigns with the verson you are working on. In my experience the AI stubbornly goes on to complete them all - this is why he is building all the forts first (to guarantee their security) and then goes on to finish them till the last level before considering making anything else like for example economic buildings.

As for valor bonuses, as i said in another occasion, i would have them minimal or remove them entirely as they really hamper the AI's game in my experience - a substitute for them campaign-wise is to actually get certain units recruitable only in a single province.

Quote:

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Originally posted by Cambyses II
Lots of cheap and poor quality troops do tend to bog the AI down and cripple it. your argument is that instead of giving the AI lots of poor quality troops give it 1 decent unit of every type per era that it can actually use. This does make sense though unfortunately it also makes for rather restrictive gameplay.

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If this means restrictive gameplay with having less than two or three units for a unit type (ie spears or missiles) i object it. Gameplay is actually improved for both the player and the AI if that single unit per role is decent per faction (and you can play around with that to create "styles" ie faction X may have strong infantry and decent cavalry while faction Y decent infantry and strong cavalry etc).

The tactical AI can greatly benefit by having available a single decent unit at every role as in vanilla is hampered by having 3,000 of each of very variable quality and his "choice" is often a function of his economic situation and that means that usually he goes for the cheaper. This is actually killing the gameplay in MTW as unlike STW the cmpaign can be won on the strategy map. The great "variety" of units benefits the player only - for the AI is definitely a great minus. Many of SP players play to play with this unit type or the other (Gothic Knights - so cool, Ah katanks so powerful, Lancers yeah!, JHI whoa! etc), however the point of the game is to play with tactics. I wouldn't play just to say "ah! Gothic knights are great, look how they charge and rout everyone" - that's not the point, every unit and every army should have a counter if played correctly and their strengths should be denied if one plays to their weaknesses - at least for me. The player shouldn't have infinite adaptability to rosters, circumstances, climates and terrains with just any faction. He should be playing with the strengths and weaknesses of his faction choice.

Battles in SWs mod for example that has the restricted roster of STW are extremely difficult and the player needs to shed a lot of effort into playing better to get anywhere in the campaign. You cannot win by simply swarming either, as profit is restricted. In MTW vanilla, you can win and lose simply by difference of strength most of the time. This is unacceptable for me, you should be playing with slightly less troops than the AI to get the best enjoyment in tactical terms in my opinion and with equal strength units overall (if you have better cavalry they have better infantry or missiles etc).

An equivalent for MTW would be to have a simplified roster for each era and for each faction and then make sure that all AI factions can have immediate access to them in the beginning of every era and that they cannot build their older units.

Many Thanks

Noir

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Cambyses II

Hobilars though were gaelic mercenaries and should have a place.

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That's a bit of a generalization. While it is true that they took the inspiration from light Irish horse, they would not have fought in the Gaelic manner, with no stirrups and using javelins. The Hobilar was mainly a term for light horsemen in English armies of the period. Hackney, Galloway or Bogtrotter horses would have been designated this term. There was also dismounted Hobilars, which probably would have been referred to as Welsh or Cornish foot during the HYW.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Noir

I see where you are getting at, but IMO you are presenting the wrong example. The English do have a load of provinces and so they don't need to be "strengthened" with Scotland or Wales - their starting position is fine and so i dont propose that we "divert" from historical corectness for the sake of gameplay.

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Perhaps that was a bad example, but you are looking at it from a gameplay and tactics perspective, whereas I am trying to juggle gameplay, tactics and reasonable historical accuracy. My main point was that giving Navarre to the Aragonese in the early era would be like giving Scotland to the English, giving Egypt to the Seljuks or whatever - from an historical perspective.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Noir

The Novgorodians have it easy also because of those rebel provinces - not to mention that being a generic "Russian" faction they should be representing the Kievans also that held three or four of those steppe rebel provinces in the south.

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The Novgorodians are something that I will be moving on to next. I personally don't much like the Russian/Novgorodian situation as it is. Surely in 1087 the Kievan Rus state would still have existed? It would have broken up in the early 13th century. Such a state is just a feasible as the HRE or any other feudal state. It seems that one Kievan Rus faction would be better in the early era and perhaps Novgorod as a faction and the other Kievan Principalities lumped into another faction for high and late?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Noir

It is the Aragonese and Danes that suffer because of this. If having Toulouse the Aragonese AI may go for Vanecia or even better take it to the seas, I'd say that this is way more historical that it staying put for ages and not taking any part in the "Reconquista".

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Again I'm not sure about handing the Aragonese Toulouse, it seems ahistorical.

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Originally Posted by Noir

Making the weaponsmiths easier to build is a good approach - also i would suggest that you treat their cost and building times - effectively the cost and building time the AI can churn out decent troops. The ones you have presented sound a bit high still to me - but remember that i haven't seen any playtest campaigns with the verson you are working on. In my experience the AI stubbornly goes on to complete them all - this is why he is building all the forts first (to guarantee their security) and then goes on to finish them till the last level before considering making anything else like for example economic buildings.

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2 years, 200 florins for the lowest doesn't seem high to me?

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Originally Posted by Noir

As for valor bonuses, as i said in another occasion, i would have them minimal or remove them entirely as they really hamper the AI's game in my experience - a substitute for them campaign-wise is to actually get certain units recruitable only in a single province.

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I have homelands already, for most units and many units that are recruitable in just one or two provinces.

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Originally Posted by Noir

If this means restrictive gameplay with having less than two or three units for a unit type (ie spears or missiles) i object it. Gameplay is actually improved for both the player and the AI if that single unit per role is decent per faction (and you can play around with that to create "styles" ie faction X may have strong infantry and decent cavalry while faction Y decent infantry and strong cavalry etc).

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Originally Posted by Noir

The tactical AI can greatly benefit by having available a single decent unit at every role as in vanilla is hampered by having 3,000 of each of very variable quality and his "choice" is often a function of his economic situation and that means that usually he goes for the cheaper. This is actually killing the gameplay in MTW as unlike STW the cmpaign can be won on the strategy map. The great "variety" of units benefits the player only - for the AI is definitely a great minus. Many of SP players play to play with this unit type or the other (Gothic Knights - so cool, Ah katanks so powerful, Lancers yeah!, JHI whoa! etc), however the point of the game is to play with tactics. I wouldn't play just to say "ah! Gothic knights are great, look how they charge and rout everyone" - that's not the point, every unit and every army should have a counter if played correctly and their strengths should be denied if one plays to their weaknesses - at least for me. The player shouldn't have infinite adaptability to rosters, circumstances, climates and terrains with just any faction. He should be playing with the strengths and weaknesses of his faction choice.

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Originally Posted by Noir

Battles in SWs mod for example that has the restricted roster of STW are extremely difficult and the player needs to shed a lot of effort into playing better to get anywhere in the campaign. You cannot win by simply swarming either, as profit is restricted. In MTW vanilla, you can win and lose simply by difference of strength most of the time. This is unacceptable for me, you should be playing with slightly less troops than the AI to get the best enjoyment in tactical terms in my opinion and with equal strength units overall (if you have better cavalry they have better infantry or missiles etc).

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Originally Posted by Noir

An equivalent for MTW would be to have a simplified roster for each era and for each faction and then make sure that all AI factions can have immediate access to them in the beginning of every era and that they cannot build their older units.

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The STW unit roster was indeed superior in this way. Any specific and practicable input on this would be good.

:bow:

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Originally Posted by The Blind King of Bohemia

That's a bit of a generalization. While it is true that they took the inspiration from light Irish horse, they would not have fought in the Gaelic manner, with no stirrups and using javelins. The Hobilar was mainly a term for light horsemen in English armies of the period. Hackney, Galloway or Bogtrotter horses would have been designated this term. There was also dismounted Hobilars, which probably would have been referred to as Welsh or Cornish foot during the HYW.

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Good to know, thanks. :bow:

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I can see the sense in what you're doing there, though I would be uneasy about depriving the game of Feudal units in the early era. I have structured it presently so that Feudal units go out of date and are replaced by chivalric equivalent ones in the high era, to force the AI onto moving on to producing these unit types. Men at arms to Chivalric men at arms, Knights to Chivalric Knights, Sergeants to Chivalric Sergeants. The chivalric units then last for the last two eras.

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I see what your getting at here. I mainly did it so that the player couldn't overrun the computer with the feudal units as the computer was still stuck with peasantry. This way, they are on a more equal (albiet forced) footing.

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Ensure you have the latest bif reader and which paint package are you using? Small black spots will always be an issue and you'll have to edit those out manually. The trick is to try and fil in with background space instead of leaving too many transparent "holes". It's these holes that seem to cause the problem when bif reader processes the file into a new bif. Personally I will not be implementing an Axesmith in the Pocket Mod, as that would mean me having to go down the fletcher, tanner, mason, camel breeder, halberd maker rout which I don't want to get into.

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I am presently using a rather jury rigged setup that involves bif reader, paint shop pro, and purpgrab. There are no "holes", just the green background isn't transparent, which I believe has something to do with the bif reader.

I use the axesmith as a catch all for "axe like weapons - polearms included. I reasoned it didn't make sense to have the Varangian Guard use a "spearmaker" when they are an axe unit.

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By "knight type" are you including non catholics? If so then that would be ahistorical IMHO.

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Sorry, I was being a bit too general there. What I meant was any "royalty" or "nobility". This includes Kataphractoi, Ghulam Bodyguards, and Royal Knights, Varangian Guard, etc.

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Expect to see uber upgraded units. Those factions with a poor economy - without the upgrades - will fall very fast.

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Iron is just a rather High income trade good now. Metalsmiths and armourers are now required to "make" the powerful units, such as Chivalric Knights, and no longer provide any bonus to attack, defense, or armor.

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The Byzantine wouldn't have trained Royal Knights. Their bodyguards were Kataphraktoi type cavalry. Futuwwa are trainable by Egyptian and Turkish factions in the Pocket Mod but only in Syria.

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I understand that. The Byzantines can train them only as normal units, to reflect that the catholics wouldn't quite be "Byzantine". They would continue to hold on to their past. At least thats the way I imagine it. Plus, it reflects the fact that you could't just walk into a islamic province and start training say, Byzantine infantry. I also believe that it could represent a form of changing military, allowing all faction to become more adaptable to changing warfare/climate/enemy. The other driving force behind it was the fact that people don't just move across the border when a faction is defeated; many stay, and could be recruited.:2cents:

May I just make one quick remark on the landbridges between Denmark-Sweden and Sweden-Finland?

I've already earlier in the first thread about this mod questioned the existance of a landbridge between Sweden-Finland as I find highly unrealistic and ahistorical. Indeed the Baltic was not a theatre of great naval warfare until the early modern era and the 16th century, but it was still impossible to transport troops between Sweden and Finland for the kings of Sweden unless they had a sufficient navy to do so.

The landbridge between Denmark-Sweden is even more inaccurate. Yes, Öresund isn't very wide but naval control of these waters was still vital to the kings of Denmark during the medieval period, and in the 17th century, when the Danish had lost control of the eastern part of the strait (Scania) naval battles here were frequent to decide who should be able to obtain the Sound Dues (established in 1429, but dues obtained by the Danish existed earlier).

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Originally posted by Cambyses II
Perhaps that was a bad example, but you are looking at it from a gameplay and tactics perspective, whereas I am trying to juggle gameplay, tactics and reasonable historical accuracy. My main point was that giving Navarre to the Aragonese in the early era would be like giving Scotland to the English, giving Egypt to the Seljuks or whatever - from an historical perspective.

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I see the point, however what i tried to convey is that i would not wish to change anything that matches gameplay and historical accuracy - if something however would work in the campaign better for a slight sacrifice in historical accuracy (not gross errors) then i would go for it. I would repeat the example that all of us were playing with the Byzantines occupying Anatolia, Nicaea and Naples at the beginning of the early era which is similarly ahistorical and i am glad that you've changed it as it will help the Seljuks and the Sicilians as well.

You are the boss in any case :)

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Originally posted by Cambyses II
2 years, 200 florins for the lowest doesn't seem high to me?

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Yes, however if that increases to 4, 6 and 8 turns for the subsequent upgraded versions it gives a 4+6+8 = 18 turns wait for the AI to finish and start "considering" economic buildings. That is 18 turns per military building. In order to finish them all he would need say 5x18 = 90 turns for a single province. Not to mention that the time and cost for upgrading the fortresses is also added (another 18+ turns possibly with all the delays that the AI would make to actually find the money), not to mention any delays due to attacks/sieges/loss of province etc etc.

This brings up a total of i would say roughly 100+ turns before the AI accounts for his economy in most cases as he goes on to complete his military buildings before he builds anything else most of the time. During all those turns he has to defend himself with what he's got and that's why i'm saying that simplifying the rosters would help alot. You won't be getting chore battles with any faction even if they are not at the increase financially.
100+ turns of wait to develop the economy means that he is probably cornered and bankrupt, or swollowed by that time in vanilla at least apart from a couple of superfactions and the player.

This also explains why the AI gets most of his income by occupying land and why he is so desperate to expand rather than keep the expansion-turtle&upgrade process that the player does. Its simply because his building queu is dominated by military buildings alone until he more or less completes them and to myunderstanding this is hardcoded in order for the AI factions to keep up with the player in bulding the new units as i explained in the AI psychology thread.

Last but not least the Kievan/Novgorodian idea is certainly better than how things stand at the moment.

Again i am saying that i haven't played the version you are working on and i dont have a clue how it works overall. All the above is just speculation.

Many Thanks

Noir

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Originally Posted by YourLordandConqueror

I see what your getting at here. I mainly did it so that the player couldn't overrun the computer with the feudal units as the computer was still stuck with peasantry. This way, they are on a more equal (albiet forced) footing.

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I can see the sense in it, as I've said before, and i think it could work if vanilla spears were uprated to lower class Sergeants to fit the early era (see my post above on this).

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Originally Posted by YourLordandConqueror

I am presently using a rather jury rigged setup that involves bif reader, paint shop pro, and purpgrab. There are no "holes", just the green background isn't transparent, which I believe has something to do with the bif reader.

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Everyone uses the same array of unsuitable tools so you're not alone. I'm not sure what could be causing your problem as I've done very little bif editing and creation for months now. It may be that you don't have the latest version of the bif reader. Version 23C is the latest I believe?

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Originally Posted by YourLordandConqueror

I use the axesmith as a catch all for "axe like weapons - polearms included. I reasoned it didn't make sense to have the Varangian Guard use a "spearmaker" when they are an axe unit.

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Personally I would use the Swordsmith for this. The Spearmaker is simply representative of a pole turners', he would need the services/use of a forge to make spearheads. I would say that battle axe, pike and polearm units could rely on both the Spearmaker and Swordsmith. An "Axesmith" is a fantasy building in that Axesmiths didn't exist as pure axe makers. Axe heads would be forged, ground and hafted by a blacksmith, as axes were chiefly a work tool taken up as arms in times of war.

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Originally Posted by YourLordandConqueror

Sorry, I was being a bit too general there. What I meant was any "royalty" or "nobility". This includes Kataphractoi, Ghulam Bodyguards, and Royal Knights, Varangian Guard, etc.

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I have the Bodyguard units all depending on the Royal Palace only. The way I see it is that the Palace incorporates the court anyway. The Royal Court building I have as one of the prerequisites for Feudal Knights.

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Originally Posted by YourLordandConqueror

Iron is just a rather High income trade good now. Metalsmiths and armourers are now required to "make" the powerful units, such as Chivalric Knights, and no longer provide any bonus to attack, defense, or armor.

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That is probably the best way to do it, though I would just scrap metalsmiths altogether, unless they could be renamed as "Blacksmiths" and used as a prerequisite for all cavalry (shoes, bits, stirrups, spurs etc - the blacksmith was absolutely vital to most cavalry), and axe / polearm units?

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Originally Posted by YourLordandConqueror

I understand that. The Byzantines can train them only as normal units, to reflect that the catholics wouldn't quite be "Byzantine". They would continue to hold on to their past. At least thats the way I imagine it. Plus, it reflects the fact that you could't just walk into a islamic province and start training say, Byzantine infantry. I also believe that it could represent a form of changing military, allowing all faction to become more adaptable to changing warfare/climate/enemy. The other driving force behind it was the fact that people don't just move across the border when a faction is defeated; many stay, and could be recruited.:2cents:

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:bow:

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Originally Posted by Innocentius

May I just make one quick remark on the landbridges between Denmark-Sweden and Sweden-Finland?

I've already earlier in the first thread about this mod questioned the existance of a landbridge between Sweden-Finland as I find highly unrealistic and ahistorical. Indeed the Baltic was not a theatre of great naval warfare until the early modern era and the 16th century, but it was still impossible to transport troops between Sweden and Finland for the kings of Sweden unless they had a sufficient navy to do so.

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The problem is that in order to do this, we have to start questioning other Landbridges, and to remove all of those effectively cuts the Danes off from Sweden and Norway. If they do conquer them and then send their ships elsewhere you get the cut off effect and the provinces will rebel instantly.

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Originally Posted by Innocentius

The landbridge between Denmark-Sweden is even more inaccurate. Yes, &#214;resund isn't very wide but naval control of these waters was still vital to the kings of Denmark during the medieval period, and in the 17th century, when the Danish had lost control of the eastern part of the strait (Scania) naval battles here were frequent to decide who should be able to obtain the Sound Dues (established in 1429, but dues obtained by the Danish existed earlier).

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Vital yes but not a wide channel as far as channels go. Inland rivers and mountain ranges were also vital but provinces between these are linked directly.

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Originally Posted by Noir

I see the point, however what i tried to convey is that i would not wish to change anything that matches gameplay and historical accuracy - if something however would work in the campaign better for a slight sacrifice in historical accuracy (not gross errors) then i would go for it. I would repeat the example that all of us were playing with the Byzantines occupying Anatolia, Nicaea and Naples at the beginning of the early era which is similarly ahistorical and i am glad that you've changed it as it will help the Seljuks and the Sicilians as well.

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:bow:

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Originally Posted by Noir

Yes, however if that increases to 4, 6 and 8 turns for the subsequent upgraded versions it gives a 4+6+8 = 18 turns wait for the AI to finish and start "considering" economic buildings. That is 18 turns per military building. In order to finish them all he would need say 5x18 = 90 turns for a single province. Not to mention that the time and cost for upgrading the fortresses is also added (another 18+ turns possibly with all the delays that the AI would make to actually find the money), not to mention any delays due to attacks/sieges/loss of province etc etc.

This brings up a total of i would say roughly 100+ turns before the AI accounts for his economy in most cases as he goes on to complete his military buildings before he builds anything else most of the time. During all those turns he has to defend himself with what he's got and that's why i'm saying that simplifying the rosters would help alot. You won't be getting chore battles with any faction even if they are not at the increase financially.
100+ turns of wait to develop the economy means that he is probably cornered and bankrupt, or swollowed by that time in vanilla at least apart from a couple of superfactions and the player.

This also explains why the AI gets most of his income by occupying land and why he is so desperate to expand rather than keep the expansion-turtle&upgrade process that the player does. Its simply because his building queu is dominated by military buildings alone until he more or less completes them and to myunderstanding this is hardcoded in order for the AI factions to keep up with the player in bulding the new units as i explained in the AI psychology thread.

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So which is the major issue here, time or money? Or perhaps both? Do military buildings need to increase in cost but not in time? In fact should they function as "upgrades" should. That is should the first building cost e.g. 500 and each subsequent upgrade 200? After all one is adding on to, or otherwise improving, the existing building and not rebuilding it entirely. Perhaps 4 years for the first building and 2 years at 200 for each upgrade? That would be only an additional 6 years and 600 florins to complete the workshop, guild and master levels. The issue here is that the AI would get to the +1 valour bonus at master level rather quickly...

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Originally Posted by Noir

Last but not least the Kievan/Novgorodian idea is certainly better than how things stand at the moment.

Again i am saying that i haven't played the version you are working on and i dont have a clue how it works overall. All the above is just speculation.

Many Thanks

Noir

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I can see no other solution at present apart from that. Extra factions are probably needed.

:bow:

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Originally posted by Cambyses II
So which is the major issue here, time or money? Or perhaps both? Do military buildings need to increase in cost but not in time? In fact should they function as "upgrades" should. That is should the first building cost e.g. 500 and each subsequent upgrade 200? After all one is adding on to, or otherwise improving, the existing building and not rebuilding it entirely. Perhaps 4 years for the first building and 2 years at 200 for each upgrade? That would be only an additional 6 years and 600 florins to complete the workshop, guild and master levels. The issue here is that the AI would get to the +1 valour bonus at master level rather quickly...

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I think they need to decrease both - as you've said they are both the issue and also consider as to their dependency relative to the forts; the AI will go and build the citadel before doing merchants and the higher farms most of the time.

In the MedMod IV, at about 120 turns in the camaign the map was swarmed with Fortresses but not with 40% and 60% farms or secondlevel merchants at all. The AI was suiciding financially to build all the military buildings.

So what i did was take out the dependncy for all the higher level military buildings (4 and 5) and reduced it to the third level castle and standasdise the build times and costs to 4 turns and 400flrns and it worked very well that way: the AI was finishing all the military buildings within max 25 turns and then hit it with merchants and farms.

This also helps the AI to get the units of each era right away, even if there is a lot of pillaging because he can rebuild them cheaply and quickly.

Many Thanks

Noir

Well it can only be tested to see what the AI makes of it. :shrug:

Just a suggestion, but is it possible to limit certain buildings being built in certain eras? This might alleviate the "build to fortress syndrome", which may also explain why Byzantium can become such a super power, considering Constantinople is already half way there.

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Originally Posted by Cambyses II

Vital yes but not a wide channel as far as channels go. Inland rivers and mountain ranges were also vital but provinces between these are linked directly.

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The main difference being you don't need to have naval superiority to defend and control a mountain range~:rolleyes:

For my part, i'm all for cutting off landbridges but only in cases where the cut off area can produce enough income for a faction isolated there to get back into the game.

In that respect islands arejust death traps for factions and this is unnacceptable. In my home mod of MedMod IV i've connected them all to the mainland getting rid of the phenomena of bankrupted Byzantines in Cyprus with 3000000 katafractoi Princes.

In that respect cutting off England works well, as a dominant faction there can return after a number of turns to being competitive in the game.

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Posted by YourLandandConqueror
Just a suggestion, but is it possible to limit certain buildings being built in certain eras? This might alleviate the "build to fortress syndrome", which may also explain why Byzantium can become such a super power, considering Constantinople is already half way there.

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Not that i know of, but it would be a one off solution to this problem as you suggest. Indeed the problem is that the AI won't stop building military buildings until they are complete and having access to all of the tech tree from the early era he does so.

As for Constantinople having an advantage well, that's another reason why i connected all military buildings to the 3rd level castle. Nobody gets any advantage other than the University, the higher Gunpoweder buildings and the Cathedral and Military Academic + the fortification. Most of these come very late in the campaign though so the others have time to catch up, not to mention the possibility that Constantinople is... sacked! :pirate2:

The Ai responded well in the change i saw the first fortresses over 180+ turns in the campaign.

Many Thanks

Noir

A side note for Cambyses II:

It won't be an issue if the AI gets to +1 valor bonus quickly for two reasons:
1. Everyone will be getting as fast there (the player included) and actually with much less lag than in vanilla.

2. You can remove the +1 valor bonus altogether.

There's nothing better in TW than building up veteran units and paying attention to how and whom of your generals are performing in battle.

All this was strangled by the "deep" campaign tech-tree in MTW, disregarding completely how the AI does things and destroying his game on the battles and the strategic map at the process. As i said in another occasion its simply bad design. It was the first but decisive step towards shaping TW into a conventional RTS and of course boosting sales.

At least in those days they weren't making "leaked" patches and subsequently polls (!) to "how many are satisfied with it" (!!). What a shame!

Many Thanks

Noir

Update on the "peasantry" era I am trying in my mod. It seems the Byzantines and Turkish have quite the advantage, as Byzantine has few quality competitors for its units, and the Turkish still have to many archery units, which go from very poor in combat to decent with my mod. Of course, once the clock hits 1205, everything changes, with the catholics getting a more even footing. By 1321, Byzantium is gone, the Turks are in power and fighting off the Egyptians and Hungarians, and suprisingly enough, the HRE is still alive and kicking. I am going to play through a couple of times, to see what happens, but everything is going quite well. Oh, sorry if this seems off topic, but I wanted to inform Cambyses II on how the changes went, so he can decide if you wants to consider them.

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Originally Posted by Innocentius

The main difference being you don't need to have naval superiority to defend and control a mountain range~:rolleyes:

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I believe you may be missing the point here. Natural defences are natural defences. I perfectly understand your ideas of naval control cutting off islands, the problem is that this has absolutely no strategic value in the game itself. Cutting off Crete for example does nothing other than causing possible Byzantine faction reappearances on the island. It also turns it into a worthless backwater that once protected by fleets will never be under threat again. The same goes for Ireland. Totally isolated and often untouched by the AI until the English go there. I have seen a full scale English reappearance on Ireland alone. Without a port and financially crippled supporting a huge army, they are effectively dead. The same goes for the effective two province Island (an island in game terms) of Sardinia/Corsica. The Italians can reappear here, or even the Sicilians, when they do, it's often game over for them - they're trapped there. Your proposal of turning Norway/Sweden into a similar two province island would have much the same results. With no decent income apart from that which is gained from trade, useless if you've no ships and no port, they would be another death trap to reappearing factions. Having the link from Finland to Sweden is logical as those regions are linked by land - they are not islands. Yes the land route is not the most pleasant of journeys nor the preferred route (you will find that sea was often the preferred mode of transport for men and provisions - not just in Scandinavia), nor the most practical, though neither the is the land route through Arabia, Syria and Edessa to get to Rum. A faction cannot find support in those two provinces alone as one can in Britain, so why isolate it?

I dislike landbridges as much as the next man, though I have come to terms with the fact that in this game they are a necessary evil. I played the game with all land bridges modded out for almost a year. I witnessed the usual trapped factions and crusades all heading along the same route through Constantinople. The sad fact is that the AI shipping cannot be relied for this, and that land bridges are unavoidable. The only landbridge that can be removed is the one from Flanders to Wessex, and this is only because the British Isles can provide reasonable support for a faction. Other islands simply cannot.

It is obvious to me that more land bridges are needed and that ships alone should never be relied upon as a means of reaching any part of the map. The ships are there to protect the coasts from seaborne invasions, provide long distance transport and to prop up a global trade infrastructure, they are not portable landbridges. The AI has no clue as to how to utilise them in this capacity, and the player should not be able to exploit this.

:bow:

The only way to restrict buildings to provinces is to bind those buildings to a resource (as with mines).

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Originally Posted by Noir

As for Constantinople having an advantage well, that's another reason why i connected all military buildings to the 3rd level castle. Nobody gets any advantage other than the University, the higher Gunpoweder buildings and the Cathedral and Military Academic + the fortification. Most of these come very late in the campaign though so the others have time to catch up, not to mention the possibility that Constantinople is... sacked! :pirate2:

The Ai responded well in the change i saw the first fortresses over 180+ turns in the campaign.

Many Thanks

Noir

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When you say, bound to the 3rd level castle, are you referring to allowing all levels of smiths, militias and horse breeders to be built at that level? This sounds feasible. If so what would be the distribution? I intend to stick with the castle structure I have currently with the fort as the basic garrison building for holding down the province while the keep is being built. Perhaps the first two military building levels at Keep level and the last two at Castle level?

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Originally Posted by YourLordandConqueror

Update on the "peasantry" era I am trying in my mod. It seems the Byzantines and Turkish have quite the advantage, as Byzantine has few quality competitors for its units, and the Turkish still have to many archery units, which go from very poor in combat to decent with my mod. Of course, once the clock hits 1205, everything changes, with the catholics getting a more even footing. By 1321, Byzantium is gone, the Turks are in power and fighting off the Egyptians and Hungarians, and suprisingly enough, the HRE is still alive and kicking. I am going to play through a couple of times, to see what happens, but everything is going quite well. Oh, sorry if this seems off topic, but I wanted to inform Cambyses II on how the changes went, so he can decide if you wants to consider them.

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I am certainly considering them, though I would have to make a lot of changes to the unit roster as I had detailed in an earlier post. The spear units in particular would need an overhaul, as would UM/MS. The militia buildings are another point I'm still not happy with. I have removed militias and the militia buildings, except the first, from the Byzantine, Turks and Egyptians as they are simply wrong. The Almohads still have both to try and represent the Andalusian soldiery, which they vaguely resemble (they certainly don't resemble anything else either Turkish, Egpytian or Moorish that I know of, though this is still far from the perfect solution. The rest of the UMs would then need to be doled out among the catholics in an era specific fashion. The UM as Early Urban Militia and the MS as High/Late Urban Militia perhaps? Feudal men at arms I consider as already done as they're early only. Chivalric would be high/late.

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Originally posted by Cambyses II
When you say, bound to the 3rd level castle, are you referring to allowing all levels of smiths, militias and horse breeders to be built at that level? This sounds feasible. If so what would be the distribution? I intend to stick with the castle structure I have currently with the fort as the basic garrison building for holding down the province while the keep is being built. Perhaps the first two military building levels at Keep level and the last two at Castle level?

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Yes, this is exactly what i did.

The distribution is up to you; the main differentiating point is the cost and build time of forts 2 and 3 (Keep & Castle). The other factor is how many of these military buildings need to be combined for each unit.

For example more professional units such as the Byzantines', would require a larger number of buildings to become available for training while more "amateur" units such as the Turkish in early may be more easily available.

Many thanks

Noir

I've been looking into the Kievan Rus provinces for the early period and as far as I can tell they would be occupying most of the east including Pereyaslavl, Cherginov, Smolensk, western Muscovy, southern Lithuania, northern Kiev, Ryazan, Volhynia and Novgorod. They would not be in control of Khazar, Livonia, Moldavia, Volga Bulgaria, or Crimea from what I have seen so far. The problem arises with provinces where there is clearly only partial control, though the Rus were in control of the capitals of these provinces. I am tempted to add only Kiev, Pereyaslavl, Cherginov and Smolensk, though I'll need to look into this more.

The Kievian/Novgorod problem could be resolved by using the original Novgorod faction and the Russian faction. They are identical in almost all respects, including faction color and flags, so a little work in that area is going to be a must. Also, I my self have never played Byzantium long enough to know (I get bored after killing off the Egyptians), but do they have REAL glory goals besides homelands? If they don't, or you don't care one way or another, use one of the FREE# factions to replace Byzantium, as this should get rid of the hard coded influence bonus, since they are no longer officially "Byzantine". This would work espescially well during High, when they are left with Nicea only. Again, this would require a little more work then you are looking for. I treid this with the HRE and France, which cuased everyone to go after the French (obvoiusly~:rolleyes: ), but was rather humourus when the French had to reunite the Holy Roman Empire, and the HRE had to make a cathedral in paris:laugh4: .

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Originally Posted by YourLordandConqueror

The Kievian/Novgorod problem could be resolved by using the original Novgorod faction and the Russian faction. They are identical in almost all respects, including faction color and flags, so a little work in that area is going to be a must.

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That's what I was thinking of doing, but the difficulty will be the faction shields and other graphics. Also without new units, they will be effectively clones of each other, though the Aragonese and Spanish are to all intents and purposes exactly this of course.

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Originally Posted by YourLordandConqueror

Also, I my self have never played Byzantium long enough to know (I get bored after killing off the Egyptians), but do they have REAL glory goals besides homelands? If they don't, or you don't care one way or another, use one of the FREE# factions to replace Byzantium, as this should get rid of the hard coded influence bonus, since they are no longer officially "Byzantine". This would work espescially well during High, when they are left with Nicea only. Again, this would require a little more work then you are looking for. I treid this with the HRE and France, which cuased everyone to go after the French (obvoiusly~:rolleyes: ), but was rather humourus when the French had to reunite the Holy Roman Empire, and the HRE had to make a cathedral in paris:laugh4: .

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I was also thinking of doing that (did you see the other thread where I had posted about this? :laugh4: ), the problem is that I'm worried about messing up the GA game. I don't play it myself but would like to retain it's functionality for those that do. I wonder about CA's reasoning behind the Byzantine influence and command bonuses. :inquisitive:

Note: Summary (finally) updated to 1.0.6b - see first page of thread.

Yes, about 15 minutes ago. I even posted in it!:laugh4:
Anyway I have another update, and its about your mod this time. It appears that with the landbridges available, the Danish end up in a war with the Novgorod 6 times out of ten (although this is playing only ten times in early for 30 years). I added a substanial navy to all factions (about 8 ships for those with a historical background for naval travel, 5 for those that don't). It actually helps get the AI every now and then, but I have no I dea if it is historically accurate. I attempted to curb the AI gang attacking the HRE by increasing the Infrastructure overall (as each "province" was in fact a pricipality, and there for self sustaining) and added a few more units. I ended up with the exact opposite of what I hoped for, with everyone still ganging up on the HRE, but losing horrible in the process. I could attempt to create another "HRE" faction, but that would kill the GA part. Looks like its back the drawing board.

The way to treat the Spanish Aragonese roster sounds good Cambyses II.

Also, my opinion relative to "twin" factions: it doesn't matter. Its better having them like this and without adding new units as: in most cases factions that are presenting this problem represented vaguely the same "ethnicity" (Rus and Spain). On top of this it may limit the fighting "styles" that you may be creating along the way for factions. One per faction is too much and probably you'll never cover it as their is a ceiling on how many units you can get in the game. One per geographical area though (roughly: Russia/steppes, Iberia, North Italy, South Italy/Sicily, Greece/Asia Minor, The Balkans, The Middle east/Egypt, North Africa/Southern Spain, Eastern Europe,Germany/France/England and Scandinavia).

In the practical level it also helps with creating more restrictive homelands for factions even to their simpler units and introduce the parameter of logistical strength for factions.

Many Thanks

Noir

I'll be having a go at the rus and Novgord using the Russian And Novgorod factions respectively as a basis soon. I may also try adding some factions, but bear in mind that they will be unfinished. I'm pretty sure that FN_FREE21 through FN_FREE30 are the only new factions that can be added? I will first work on disabling face shields first as they are hardcoded to certain unit graphics folders and crash when used with new factions.

The Spanish are set usually by default to catholic expansionist and that 160 (almost) is quite high.

Just to add a comment on something from your earlier posts Cambyses II. Develop provinces to a certain degree at the beginning of the early era is a welcoming addition gameplay wise; it will also help the AI factions to perform better as well as your self to "regulate" better initial conditions for them more effectively. You can make also for more historical conditions examples from my home mod of MedMod IV:

1. The walls of Antioch (fortress in Antich)
2. The Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem (large Mosque in Jerusalem)

Many Thanks

Noir

Regarding the Russians and Novgorod. It seems to me that the best approach is to include "Russia" in the Early and High eras as the Principalities under the Kievan Rus holding the core provinces. In the high period this would be extended to cover Volhnya and others, though Novgorod would emerge as a stronger independent faction - using the Novgorod faction of course. In the late period there would be two factions, the Russians in Muscovy and the Novgorodians. The rest would be again rebels, Golden Horde and Poland/Lithuania. I believe that this will handle the eastern rebels problem well.

Sounds good to me.

Many Thanks

Noir

Another dilemma is Lithuania. During the early era in the game this would have been mostly part of the Principalities of Polatsk and Kiev. The Lithuanian state would not have existed as the superpower it was to become. It may be a good idea to place this province under the Kievan Rus with Pagan religion. It's rebelliousness will provide quite a challenge.

Its much better than having Lithuania as a rebel province.

On the other hand, its also worth consider to adding them as a faction as they did became a superpower in that very less populated map area. This will give some challenge to the Polish game too, as they'll be squashed between HRE, the Lithuanians and the Steppe factions - currently they are invading HRE in a form of an inverted Blitz, most of the time.

Many Thanks

Noir

I would prefer to have a Grand Duchy of Lithuania faction and separate Poland faction in the Late era only and have Lithuania as a Kievan Rus possession in early and rebel in high - avoiding the earlier Pagan Lithuanians altogether. he problem with this is that correct representation would need more provinces in that area and would need the Teutonic Order to be added to the Late era to complete the whole scenario. In the high era a separate Pagan Lithuanian faction might be an idea, but I'd prefer to avoid all of this for now.

So for the time being I would go with:

Early Lithuania: Kievan Rus
High Lithuania: Rebels
Late Lithuania: Rebels

Note that the HRE could have the Teutonic Order crusade against a rebel pagan province. Or Orthodox Rus, for that matter.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Noir

The Spanish are set usually by default to catholic expansionist and that 160 (almost) is quite high.

Just to add a comment on something from your earlier posts Cambyses II. Develop provinces to a certain degree at the beginning of the early era is a welcoming addition gameplay wise; it will also help the AI factions to perform better as well as your self to "regulate" better initial conditions for them more effectively. You can make also for more historical conditions examples from my home mod of MedMod IV:

1. The walls of Antioch (fortress in Antich)
2. The Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem (large Mosque in Jerusalem)

Many Thanks

Noir

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Wouldn&#180;t this conflict with some GA goals?


Regarding the Jinetes, I didn&#180;t mess with the priorities (I didn&#180;t dare, either), I took an approach to checking the Malthusian problems they generated.

On possible info about the Kingdom of Granada: this month&#180;s National Geographic History magazine came with an article about the muslim taifas kingdoms in Spain (previous to the Almohad assistance/invasion cocktail), but no cigar about their military, other than it was a mercenary force, which they could afford because as a general rule their lands were wealtheir than those of the christian kingdoms in the north, but despite all it was weaker than theirs, and in fact began to pay these first to avoid wars, then to hire them as thugs to maul their muslim enemies.

I remember an article concerning Boabdil in an older issue, but I can&#180;t find it right now...

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Originally pposted by The Unknown Guy
Wouldn´t this conflict with some GA goals?

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Most likely the walls of Antioch wouldn't - its a citadel in Tripoli for the kerak GA goal of the French, i think. I've never played Egyptian GA, however i have a hint that they need a Grand Mosque in Egypt (although i might be wrong).

Many Thanks

Noir

yes, those two are the ones I have in mind.

Edit: how goes the tweaking of the Rebel faction&#180;s cash?

(Suggestion for finding out whether they really have an inbuilt bankrupcy: isolate some province, give it to them, and give it a huge income)

Oh, I don&#180;t know if I mentioned: perhaps give trade goods to ALL islands? so that a beaten-back faction can still make up enough cash and resurge? This applies particularily to Italy, Sicily, and Byzantium, but any faction could end up like that. Once I played a game where France was mainly Cyprus.

edit:
A last note concerning the Taifas Kingdoms: apparently there was woe in muslim Spain when Toledo fell to Castile, as it was the former capital of the visigoth kingdom (thus kind of pointing out that things had taken a turn for the worse for them, and them beseeching almohad help). A historical insight I just found in the formerly mentioned NGH magazine, I don&#180;t know if it will help in any way with either the Almohads, or a long-run Granada.

The issue with Navarre, Aragon, Leon, Castile, Portugal and Granada is that in order to do the region justice provinces need to be altered and new factions need to be added. This in itself is not the main issue however. Concentrating over much on one region is. There are very many inaccuracies that need addressing and fixing these would be much more conducive to good gameplay than adding many small one province factions to Spain and altering all of the provinces.

First of all if we look at this circa 1100 map:

http://www.euratlas.com/time/sw1100.htm

The Taifa kingdoms are represented in the game as being under Almoravid Suzerainty, and this is probably better as it is. Barcelona would be too complicated to represent and would again be another one province faction, which leave only Navarre and Aragon. To be continued...

In MedMod IV, there are 3 Christian factions (Cast/Leon - Portugal - Aragon) and two Muslim ones (Almoravids weak but rich in Spain - Almohads strong but less rich in North Africa).

This gives a better combo of possibilities and interactions in the area IMO, for whenever you go introducing factions. It also works as 3 more provinces are added one of which (Castile) is completely internal.

With the present No. of provinces and their arrangement the 3 factions there work well i find.

Many Thanks

Noir

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Noir

In MedMod IV, there are 3 Christian factions (Cast/Leon - Portugal - Aragon) ...

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The problem with this is that, though Castile and Leon may have been united at the start of the early era they would not have been in high era for some time, though to all intents and purposes they are best represented in the game as the Castilian-Leonese. Portugal would not have appeared as an independent kingdom until the 12th century - thus a high era faction. Navarre, pretty much always independent during the timeframe of the game probably needs to be added as an independent faction.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Noir

...and two Muslim ones (Almoravids weak but rich in Spain - Almohads strong but less rich in North Africa).

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This seems pretty ahistorical. Almoravids would be early era only, controlling Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Sahara (i've never been sure about Cyrenacia, a small western part perhaps but not the whole province) and Granada, Cordoba and Valencia in Iberia. Personally I see the representation of the Cid's occupation of Valencia as an irrelevance. He would only have held Valencia for a matter of years before his death. It was back in Almoravid control quite quickly.

Portugal fits the bill as an emergent faction for the 12 century, as it cannot be represented in any other way that i can think of other than being present from the early period. In that way it adds to the complexity that characterised the Christian kingdoms, as it was uncertain as to who will emerge as a unifier. In addition, later on in the campaign the Spanish after having vanquished the Moors need to fight for the control of the eastern Iberain lands (as it was historically), instead of establishing unopposed a superempire.

The Almoravid/Almohad, as "ahistorical" as it may be, it represents well the state of the Northern African Muslim kingdoms that did not comply to the Moroccan/Iberian main rule and may well have challenged it and also at the same time adds greatly from a gameplay persepective to either playing as an up and coming Almohads or an established but two way threatened Almoravid.

Again, we differ in the "historical accuracy" view - i believe that it is possible in a more abstract way that would also serve gameplay while you are more sensitive in preserving it in a more absolute sense.

As always you are the boss and this is your mod - my suggestions were more in the direction of indicative numbers of factions and provinces that would give an interesting interaction IMO. You may add a North African Dynasty and call them Hammadids

http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/maps/1090map.htm

Many thanks

Noir

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Noir

Portugal fits the bill as an emergent faction for the 12 century, as it cannot represented in any other way that i can think of other than being present from the early period. In that way it adds to the complexity that characterised the Christian kingdoms, as it was uncertain as to who will emerge as a unifier. In addition, later on in the campaign the Spanish after having vanquished the Moors need to fight for the control of the eastern Iberain lands (as it was historically), instead of establishing unopposed a superempire.

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It makes sense to add Portugal to the early era as a county, not as a kingdom, though in the high era they could be added as a kingdom. To represent this fully one would need to add an Algarve province however.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Noir

The Almoravid/Almohad, as "ahistorical" as it may be, it represents well the state of the Northern African Muslim kingdoms that did not comply to the Moroccan/Iberian main rule and may well have challenged it and also at the same time adds greatly from a gameplay persepective to either playing as an up and coming Almohads or an established but two way threatened Almoravid.

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The Almohads pretty much swept away the Almoravid Dynasty from within as what was effectively a large scale Islamist rebellion. Representing them as two sovereign nations is pretty flawed. The last remnants of Almoravids became effectively rebels. If you want to think of this in game terms, think of a civil war perhaps where the player backs the rebels.

In the early era there needs to be one main Muslim faction based around Morocco that faction being the Almoravids. The high era needs to have only the Almohads additionally in possession of Valencia. The late era would need an extra faction. The Nasrid Kingdom of Granada, and possibly three muslim factions along the North West African coast, though I would include only the Marinid Sultanate in Morocco for now, though the provinces as they are in the game would lend themselves to the implementation of Zayyanid Algeria and Hafsid Tunisia very well.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Noir

You may add a North African Dynasty and call them Hammadids

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During the early era Tunisia should probably be Fatimid lands to represent the Zirids - Fatimid vassals. Cyrenacia again, is another problem. This land would have been mostly populated by nomads and would never have been claimed by any dynasty for long. It should probably always be rebel anyway. Whichever sources you consult many will show completely different versions, and maps so it is not easy to paint a clear picture. Algeria could indeed be the base of a Hammadid faction also.

I have considered removing Cyrenacia, and Indeed Sahara (again) already as I feel that these would have been areas of non conquest. This would also split North Africa in two giving two separate regions. This would also free up two provinces to be reallocated elsewhere if it ever came to adding provinces. If I were to do this though I would extend Morocco province to the south and west to the edge of the map.

Thanks for all the historical info it added certain points to my existing knowledge. The civil war from whithin you mention may be two factions too, because the player may play so as it never happens.

"Portugal" as a kingdom or county was not my point but how that actual faction (and any of its future evolutions/incarnations may be added to the game).

Quote:

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Originally posted by Cambyses II
I have considered removing Cyrenacia, and Indeed Sahara (again) already as I feel that these would have been areas of non conquest. This would also split North Africa in two giving two separate regions. This would also free up two provinces to be reallocated elsewhere if it ever came to adding provinces. If I were to do this though I would extend Morocco province to the south and west to the edge of the map.

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I am certainly glad to hear this, have you playtested it? It worked well when i did!

Those two provinces are very well used elsewhere and the divisoin between east/west in North Africa, "pay dividens".

Many thanks

Noir

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Noir

Thanks for all the historical info it added certain points to my existing knowledge. The civil war from whithin you mention may be two factions too, because the player may play so as it never happens.

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At present the Almohads in the early era are renamed as Almoravids, and in Late Marinids.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Noir

"Portugal" as a kingdom or county was not my point but how that actual faction (and any of its future evolutions/incarnations may be added to the game).

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My point was that Portugal could be added in earl as "County of Portugal" and in High and Late as as kingdom. It is fairly easy to do this.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Noir

I am certainly glad to hear this, have you playtested it? It worked well when i did!

Those two provinces are very well used elsewhere and the divisoin between east/west in North Africa, "pay dividens".

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I would like to eliminate this area as a crusade route to the east. I haven't tested it as yet, nor am I certain about it. The immediate problem would be the sea zones, many of which would have to be merged. I would like to eliminate this area as a crusade route to the east. Cyrenacia is a pretty poor and redundant province anyway. Part of Eastern Cyrenacia was annexed by the Fatimids and it would probably be an idea to extend Egypt to this small area - as far as Benghazi - or leave it as it is rather than create another province there.

Another province to remove would be the Sinai, annexing this to Egypt, creating a larger Egypt in the process. This was always part of either Fatimid, Ayyubid or Mamluk Egypt anyway (I know there is a mod that has done this but can't remember which). This would free up three provinces in total. Egypt and Sinai combined seem to be representative of the core of Fatimid Egypt around the early 12th century.

The Levant is also incorrectly occupied by the Fatimids in 1087. The Early era setup is more reminiscent of early Fatimid or the earlier Tulunid Dynasty of Egypt. Antioch should be Seljuk in the early era and not Fatimid. Tripoli should also perhaps be Seljuk and Palestine should probably remain Fatimid - for the lack of any other faction to give them to and to avoid making them rebel. The provinces are really rather too large and unsuitable for the era. The Fatimids were in decline in that period and the Seljuks were on the up, the game doesn't reflect this at all in it's vanilla state.

Kiev:

http://images.google.com/imgres?imgu...%3D1%26hl%3Den

Many thanks

Noir

Hi Cambyses II,

I have read some interesting things. I have some free time this night and tomorrow and I will provide info for Kievan Rus' kings and heroes and perhaps some info about the Almoravid/Almohad matter.

If you are rigorously historical I would say that Almoravids were not established in any Andalusian province in 1087. Yusuf ibn Tashufin (1061-1106), the greatest Almoravid amir, made his first crossing of the Strait of Gibraltar in 1086 and defeated the Castilian-Leonese at the battle of Zallaqa/Sagrajas, near the city of Badajoz, but he returned to Morocco afterward. In 1088 made his second crossing and it was a failure (siege of Aledo) but at least it served to awaken him to the disunion of the Andalusian rulers. He embarked for the third time in 1090/1091 and this time he arrived in Algeciras with a precise plan: to put an end to the Andalusian taifas.

In past I took part in the Almoravid/Almohad scenario in early for the Medmod, but at present I would prefer an Almoravid/Taifas scenario. In this case we could add an Andalusian faction ruled by al-Mu'tamid of Seville, "the epitome of the cultivated Muslim Spaniard of the Middle Ages—liberal, tolerant, and a patron of the arts" according to the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Belisario

Hi Cambyses II,

I have read some interesting things. I have some free time this night and tomorrow and I will provide info for Kievan Rus' kings and heroes and perhaps some info about the Almoravid/Almohad matter.

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:bow:

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Belisario

If you are rigorously historical I would say that Almoravids were not established in any Andalusian province in 1087. Yusuf ibn Tashufin (1061-1106), the greatest Almoravid amir, made his first crossing of the Strait of Gibraltar in 1086 and defeated the Castilian-Leonese at the battle of Zallaqa/Sagrajas, near the city of Badajoz, but he returned to Morocco afterward. In 1088 made his second crossing and it was a failure (siege of Aledo) but at least it served to awaken him to the disunion of the Andalusian rulers. He embarked for the third time in 1090/1091 and this time he arrived in Algeciras with a precise plan: to put an end to the Andalusian taifas.

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Quote:

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Originally Posted by Belisario

In past I took part in the Almoravid/Almohad scenario in early for the Medmod, but at present I would prefer an Almoravid/Taifas scenario. In this case we could add an Andalusian faction ruled by al-Mu'tamid of Seville, "the epitome of the cultivated Muslim Spaniard of the Middle Ages—liberal, tolerant, and a patron of the arts" according to the Encyclopedia Britannica.

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I wouldn't say rigorous but I would like to get it as close as possible. Though if for (fictional) example some faction or other was holding a certain province between 1086 and 1089 after which time it returned to the previous owner, I would prefer to omit this kind of thing. The Almoravids occupying the al-andalus in 1087 is fine by me, but adding the Taifa kingdoms is in interesting prospect.

I have been looking into the map around the north african region, and am still perplexed over the Morocco province. The castle location for Marrakech in that province is much too far north. It looks to be in the approximate location of Fes. The answer seems to be to remove Sahara and extend the Morocco province southwards so that it encompases more truly Almoravid territory at the time.
http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~rs143/umayyad.jpg
http://content.answers.com/main/cont...ire-en.svg.png
The issue is editing the lukmap to do this. In the past I have had no luck with the LBM files in PSP (through versions 4, 5, 7, X and XI), as it seems to change the palette no matter what. The only solution appears to be the LMM editor which I have downloaded and have it running but it seems rather complicated. I don't want to set castle positions I just want to move some province borders!? If anyone has any ideas about this I'd appreciate it. I also need to merge Sinai and Egypt together into a single province and perhaps extend Egypt's western border slightly and tweak Algeria and Tunisia perhaps. :dizzy2:

I have been testing with Sahara and Cyrenacia disabled and it appears to work well. I gave 9000 each income to both provinces and it keeps the rebel economy afloat. This will be a temporary solution however as I may use those provinces elsewhere on the map if I can actually get a working lukmap. Thanks to CA for using a file format that went out in the dark ages. :thumbsdown:

Three main protagonists of the Kievan Rus' scenario at the beginning of the Early Era

Vsevolod I Iaroslavich

born 1030
died 1093

Grand prince of Kiev from 1078 to 1093.

Vsevolod was the son of Grand Prince Iaroslav I the Wise (ruled Kiev 1019-54), and brother of Iziaslav I Iaroslavich (ruled Kiev intermittently 1054-78) and Sviatoslav II Iaroslavich (ruled Kiev 1073-76). To ensure the unity of the state, his father Iaroslav I introduced primogeniture, according to which his eldest living son, Iziaslav, was to succeed him as grand prince and ruler of the Kiev and Novgorod lands; Sviatoslav would rule the Chernigov land to Murom-Riazan', and Tmutarakan'; Vsevolod, the Pereiaslavl' and Rostov-Suzdal' lands; Igor', the Volhynia land; and Viacheslav, the Smolensk land. However, as a result Kievan Rus' state began to fall apart.

At first the three oldest sons of Iaroslav ruled in harmony; they defeated the Pechenegs in 1060, but in 1068 they took some losses from the Cumans on the Alta River near Pereiaslavl', and the Kievans dethroned Iziaslav I. Iziaslav with the help of Poles took Kiev a year later and overrode the rebels, but events of 1068 became an important turn in history. With Vsevolod's help Sviatoslav deposed Iziaslav in 1073 and took over as grand prince of Kiev. When Sviastoslav II died, Vsevolod inherited the Kievan throne but ceded it to the banished Iziaslav I (1077) in return for Chernigov. But Oleg Sviatoslavich, son of Sviatoslav II, was not willing to compromise. In the subsequent war Oleg and his Cuman allies were defeated, but Iziaslav I died in battle and Vsevolod succeeded him as grand prince of Kiev (1078). During his reign, Vsevolod managed to maintain control of most of the central region of the Kievan state, but he was continually pestered by his nephews seeking more lucrative towns to rule. He was assisted by his capable and popular son, Vladimir Monomakh, who followed his father's lead and did not contest the throne, inviting Iziaslav I's son, Sviatopolk II Iziaslavich to rule (1093-1113).

Vladimir II Monomakh

born 1053
died 1125

Grand prince of Kiev from 1113 to 1125.

Vladimir was the son of Grand Prince Vsevolod I Iaroslavich (ruled Kiev 1078–93) and Irina, the daughter of the Byzantine emperor Constantine IX Monomachus. He became active in the politics of Kievan Rus', helping his father and uncle Iziaslav I Iaroslavich (ruled at Kiev intermittently 1054–78) defeat his cousins Oleg Sviatoslavich and Boris Viacheslavich at Chernigov (1078) and succeeding his father as prince of Chernigov when Vsevolod became grand prince of Kiev. While his father was alive Vladimir ruled Smolensk (from 1067) and Chernigov (1078-94), he led successful military campaigns in his father's name, and participated in diplomatic missions. After his father's death he became prince of Pereiaslavl' (1094-1113) and assuming a leading role among princes of Rus' at the conferences held to avert perpetual warfare among themselves and to unite the princes against the Cuman threat (Liubech 1097, Vitichev 1100, Dolobsk 1103). When his cousin Grand Prince Sviatopolk II Iziaslavich (ruled Kiev 1093–1113) died, the city council of Kiev named him successor.

During his reign, as prior to it, Vladimir was almost constantly involved in wars, fighting primarily the Cumans, who had settled in the steppe region southeast of the Kievan state and had been raiding the lands of Rus' since 1061. In addition to his martial qualities, Vladimir Monomakh was known as an adept administrator, whose ability to curtail the internecine warfare among his princely relatives revived, if only temporarily, the declining strength of Kievan Rus'. He was also noted as a builder; he founded the city of Vladimir on the Kliaz'ma River in northeastern Russia, which by the end of the 12th century replaced Kiev as the seat of the grand prince.

Oleg Sviatoslavich

born circa 1050
died 1115

Oleg was the son of Grand Prince Sviatoslav II Iaroslavich (ruled Kiev 1073-76). After his father's death in 1076, Oleg inherited Chernigov, but the new grand prince, Oleg's uncle Iziaslav I Iaroslavich (ruled at Kiev intermittently 1054–78), gave Chernigov to another uncle, Vsevolod Iaroslavich. Instead Oleg ruled Volhynia, but he was driven out in 1078 by Iziaslav and sought refuge in Tmutarakan', a Chernigovian domain on the Black Sea shore. In 1078 Oleg and his cousin Boris Viacheslavich tried, with Cuman help, to regain his patrimony in Chernigov, but they were defeated by Iziaslav and Vsevolod's army. Oleg returned to Tmutarakan', where he was captured by the Khazars in 1079 and handed over to the Byzantines. He lived in exile on Rhodes until 1083, when he returned to Tmutarakan'.

In 1094 Oleg took Chernigov, after his Cuman allies had ravaged it, from his cousin Vladimir Monomakh. He was driven out by Monomakh in 1096, and then took Murom and Rostov from Monomakh's son Iziaslav. Oleg then attacked Iziaslav's brother, Mstislav I Vladimirovich of Novgorod, but was defeated and forced to attend the Liubech congress of princes in 1097. There Oleg forfeited Chernigov, Murom, and Riazan' but was given Novgorod-Severskii (in the Chernigov land), which he ruled until his death. Because of his enduring ties with the Cumans (he also married a Cuman princess) Oleg refused to join Kievan Rus' military expeditions against them. Oleg's descendants, the Ol'govich house of Chernigov, struggled for control of the Kievan state against the descendants of Vladimir Monomakh.

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I have been testing with Sahara and Cyrenacia disabled and it appears to work well. I gave 9000 each income to both provinces and it keeps the rebel economy afloat. This will be a temporary solution however as I may use those provinces elsewhere on the map if I can actually get a working lukmap.

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Well, on the bright side: then it is something amiss with the buildings, right?
I&#180;ve seen the AI build inns in the last version of the mod. There was one in Norway, at least. Maybe the cathedral income is grossly limited? (maybe it could be made so that inns added to rebel provinces an obscene "harvest cash bonus", on the order of 500%?)

Another note (concerning Varangian Guard):
How about implementing the "Early" and "High" versions, since it&#180;s already there?

Early would be the Varangians more or less as they are in-game right now, 60 men units. Using the "early" pic, and maybe removing the "bonus vs armored troops bonus", and having them wield a sword (following the pic. style)

High would be 30-sized axe-wielding units, maybe with a small armor bonus.

This would reflect both the integration of the VG in the imperial household, and the lesser avaiability of far-away mercs for Byzantium from High&onwards.

@Belisario: Thanks for the info, I'll get onto that later. :2thumbsup:

Quote:

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Originally Posted by The Unknown Guy

Well, on the bright side: then it is something amiss with the buildings, right?
I´ve seen the AI build inns in the last version of the mod. There was one in Norway, at least. Maybe the cathedral income is grossly limited? (maybe it could be made so that inns added to rebel provinces an obscene "harvest cash bonus", on the order of 500%?)

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Well, the income is there, on the treasury parchment, as clear as day, but for some reason the AI doesn't get any of it. I will have to try LEV1_INCOME instead of CATHEDRAL_INCOME and see if the AI get's an income from that. I'm not sure about FARM_INCOME, which is a percentage (120%, 140%, 160%, 180%) of the provincial income set in the starpos file. Only one structure has FARM_INCOME type and that is the Improved Farmland, that structure is upgraded so it is really unique in a province. If a province has two or more of such structures stating different percentages it may not know which percentage to use, unless it can somehow add them together (which would be ideal).

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Originally Posted by The Unknown Guy

Another note (concerning Varangian Guard):
How about implementing the "Early" and "High" versions, since it´s already there?

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The problem is that after the loss of Constantinople during the Fourth Crusade in 1204, that the Varangian Guard pretty much disappeared from history. The unused early VG you're referring to seem to be classic 9th - 11th century VG and look much more like those I have seen in old paintings, textbooks etc. The ones that appear in the game currently are a representation of VG using Byzantine equipment as opposed to their own equipment, though I'm not entirely sure how accurate this is. As with the Byzantine Infantry, the equipment they are using is very dressy and may only have been worn by nobility. I have read somewhere that they were painted like that in the roman tradition but seldom if ever wore that kind of gear. I believe the axes were always retained. From what I have seen and read they are synonymous with axes.

I had commented before about reducing their numbers, and that seems a good idea - I'm thinking a 20 man scalable unit. Basically I don't want to turn the Byzantines into a force that can spam these "Vikings", I prefer to have the main Byzantine Force as the main focus with their combined arms of Skutatoi, Kontaratoi, Psiloi as the main Infantry force and Pronoiarioi Kavallarioi, Pronoiarioi Stratiotai, Armenian Heavy Cavalry and various Steppe Mercenaries as the main cavalry force. The Kataphraktoi and Varangian Guards will be much harder to obtain and only in the Early era. In the Vanilla game the Byzantine are a mish mash of ineffective, overpriced strangely named and ahistorical units combined with 2 highly overpowered units. Fixing this may have temporarily turned them into a juggernaut, but that is being remedied (less provinces in early and starting command stars lowered for faction leaders). The Vanilla Byzantine, were all about VG, Byzzie Infantry and Kats - this is what we need to get away from.

Unfortunately, the LMM requires you to redraw the borders of EVERY province and sea I'm afraid.