MTW-Redux Beta Released!

[Axalon]

…And people wonder why my regard for the community is low?

[Axalon]

[Plato]

I have been meaning to write up a preliminary report on the French, having played something over a century. If you want, I have plenty of excuses, but hopefully I'll find the time this week. Appended below.

As I am still playing, will it be safe to upgrade to beta 1001? Would there be any risk to my savegames?

The French - Interim Findings (Beta 1000)

Settings
- Unit Size: Default
- Difficulty: Standard
- Mode: Glorious Achievements
I might have misjudged this, but I was curious as to what this mode might offer. Having started in 700AD, I find points only come into play in 1100AD - I hope to be long finished by then. This was probably a mistake on my part, but it wasn't something that I was strongly steered away from.
No restarts: I've made my bed and I'll lie in it. Also, I was enjoying myself too much.


Start Position
There appear to be a fair few opportunities at the start. The Burgundians stupidly vacate their homeland while attacking Lorraine, allowing me to waltz in. The English lose a lot of regions, particularly in France, to uprisings and I gradually mop those up. The HRE over-extends itself westward: when I defeat their vanguard the provinces behind fall to rebellion, and I leave those as buffer zones. At some point the Lombards try unsuccessfully for Burgundy and get chevaucheed in return.
It is now about 735 and, by and large, peace reigns everywhere until 760.


Mid-game
I've focussed on trade and got fleets around the coast of Europe ("from Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic"); net income has been as much as 25,000 florins a turns - so much I'm having difficulty spending it.
Using my fleets I cut the Moors in two by landing in Granada. A few more sea-borne invasions later and they were done for. The Lombards collapsed through not having an heir, so I bribed Genoa and Lombardy to join my realm, and invaded Provence. The Aragonese have also been swallowed up.
I've got to 810AD and the Byzantines have attacked some of my ships - the end-game has commenced.


Superpowers
Only the Byzantines challenge me: I'm the richest and mightiest, they occasionally get technical achievement. It has seemed inevitable, no one else has got a look in and I'm surprised the Saracens have lasted up until now.


Strengths / Weaknesses (of the French)
None. Though after a very virile start the lack of male heirs is beginning to worry me.


Rebels & Pirates
Pirates can be annoying when they interrupt trade routes, but they can gradually be pushed back. I'm not sure of the best way to deal with them; I assume it's a matter of seizing their home provinces. Unfortunately the faction AI doesn't seem particularly interested in going after them (or other rebel regions eg. Ireland and Finland which don't even have armies in them).
Rebels? Certainly at the beginning they felt like some axis of evil or terror network. How else to explain a combined Scots-Italian rebellion in Flanders, or Northumbrians in Sicily? I'm more sanguine about them now.
However, the restiveness of conquered territories gives me cause for concern. Adjusting the tax rate has a predictable effect on the happiness of a province, but in recently-conquered areas even just moving out one unit can cause it to plummet.


Enemies in battle
There are many factions that I have yet to fight but, broadly speaking, they do feel different. However, since it's the same old AI which tends to behave the same, the differences are at the unit level: something I wouldn't pick myself (such as Champions) or something I've not faced before. For a first play it's certainly holding my interest.


Strategy
I'd call it punctuated equilibrium - I'm happy to sit back and develop but try to take opportunities when they arise (or I engineer them) and then try to maintain offensive momentum. It's worked well so far, but is likely to change once the showdown with the Byzantines is in full swing.


Units (French)
Foot Knights and Feudal Footknights feel like a duplication.
The change in units' size with upgrades does jar sometimes, eg. Archers (100) but Feudal Archers (40), Crossbowmen (40) but Frankish Crossbowmen (100).


Units (Other)
Galleys (Byz but probably Rebel also) have a movement range of 3, outpacing my Royal Warships.


Tech Tree
Too much can be achieved at the Castle level of development and, so far as I can see, Fortresses are pointless. Citadels seem only to be worthwhile in regions with iron deposits (for the Metalsmiths Guild upgrade and Order Palace), everything else can be done in Castles. So, despite being the richest, I have little advantage over other factions.
Military Academy appears useless.


Faction Graveyard
The Portugese and the Polish seem to have had the toughest time: both have been extinguished and returned; they were suffering territory-wise anyway, and continue to do so.
Neither the Spanish nor Aragonese have done well, focussing on the rebels in Navarre rather than the Moors. The Spanish succumbed eventually. The Aragonese were notable for spamming Travellers.


General Thoughts
I had misgivings about the unhistorical start; it all seemed too advanced for 700AD. I then realised that a better way to think of it might be as beginning in 980AD and there being two turns in every year.


Crashes
I have had a couple of game freezes. They've occured in the end-of-turn results phase while playing the schiiick-clang sound for reporting some military action. I suspect it to be related to Rebels in someway since the most persistent incident was when I felt I couldn't hold on to Mauritania and moved my army out completely. After I took steps to maintain control and avert an uprising, it didn't give me any more problems.

[Axalon]

Hi, thanks and very interesting Plato….

Hopefully other people find this just as interesting as I do. Despite this stuff is not from a finished campaign, it useful and valuable info all the same (in several ways, and entertaining too). Much obliged for this stuff.

For me, what matters in this context is your (and others) perspectives and experiences as acquired while managing the French crown (or faction X) – thus I guess it is better if I won’t make any detailed comments on this – unless explicitly asked too. Still if anybody else would like to comment somehow on this – feel free to do so. I don’t see any harm in that, and it could be fun and interesting too.

One note however, I would suggest to not focus too much on the supposed period as such – AD 700-1260. It is essentially just a necessary evil due to MTW-hardcoding. To me at least it is just a matter of turns (always were) basically set in some undefined medieval period. The years-concept is already in the dumpster in my mind, and thus any fixed or a certain period and related progression to that is as well. The only “years” I have ever played in TW was in STW1. Anyhow, we got similar problems with the glorious achievements mode – while still technically possible to play it in this state we are no less forced to only receive points at the specified points due to MTW-hardcoding (which certainly screws things up, for me at least).

A general note on citadels and fortresses… These increase and influence stability-, mercenary- and garrison-levels… See file for details…

As I am still playing, will it be safe to upgrade to beta 1001? Would there be any risk to my savegames?

Nope, it should be safe, RXB1001 is supposed to be save-game compatible. Just install and put in the saved games and play on….

- Cheers

[Axalon]

Ok, the links are active…

[naut]

I'll give Poland or Italy a whirl over the next couple days. =)

[western]

Axalon
This isn't the most useful feedback but it's the best I can give you
My son has been playing as the Italians for WEEKS - turtling unless attacked.
Very stable - no crashes or freezes.
The big factions have been the Lithuanians, Byzantines, French, Spanish and Germans. All have waxed and waned while the Saracens have quietly owned the Middle East.
The Byz are the faction that built a big sea empire - then smashed by the Italians, and for ever afterwards they have been reappearing in random parts of the map each time they were wiped out.
The Spanish built huge herd like armies that graze gently over Spain, southern France and North Africa, never really doing anything.
The French, Lithuanians and Germans expanded more steadily and logically until they bumped into the Italians and got their noses bloodied.
One or two factions have gone permanently, but most others have a province or two here or there, not always islands.
No crusades have been witnessed
The game is obviously challenging and entertaining him - I can only think of one other Mod that he played so long - and that was about 5 years ago when he was easily amused!!
I think the killer features for him are (aside from stability) the variety of units - he had an army of champions at one point - the difficulty of permanently destroying factions (if you're not careful, raiding them only causes loyalist revolts that bring them back even stronger) and the challenge of trying to maintain a trade network since there's always at least one faction or rebels pumping out ships.
For my part, I'm a rotten beta tester because I start tweaking straight away. So on a parallel installation, I turned the Portuguese into the Fatimids (in their original base of Tunisia) and set off to conquer Egypt. I did that OK, but the Italians not only invaded Tunisia and beat off my various attempts to expel them - they then followed my track to Egypt gobbling up each of my provinces en route and knocking me out of the game. I like it when the AI acts as though it knows what it is doing!
Be assured though, if I ever find a bug I check that it's there on the original installation and not something I've imported
I'll keep my eyes open on the new version now