Viking Invasion III---A mod in development

[Leith]

Greetings,

The aim of this mod is to make the original viking campaign more enjoyable. To that end, units' graphics will be altered using my modification of some of the Hellenic:Totalwar skins. In addition, the unit roster for each faction will be revised. Some minor sound effects, like grunts and death cries, will be replaced.

Adding more regions will not be possible without some major help from other modders. Adding new factions will be considered but my priority will be to make each faction stand out.

You can choose to be active in the making of this mod by making suggestions as to what you would like to see in it. Right now I'm tampering with the unit roster and your help would be appreciated. I'm thinking of starting the mod in 740-750 A.D so we could have probably some sort of 'reforms', which would render some units obsolete (spearmen, for example) while introducing some more powerful ones.

The first two units I intend to implement are:

Town Militia (Recruited through building a muster field and is available to every faction except the vikings who get the 'Viking Militia' instead.Town Militia are peasants equipped with short spears and small shields and have poor morale)

Spearmen (Recruited through building a blacksmith and is available to every faction except the Irish who get 'Kerns' instead. The standard spearmen retain the same stats of the original game but get +2 honour. Kerns on the other hand are spearmen equipped with light javelins.)

I look forward to reading your comments and suggestions!

P.S It's a one-man-project right now but this could change if you wish to.

[PershsNhpios]

Thank you for the announcement of this surprise, O Leith of Syria.

I think you will be most popular for initiating a new attempt on improving the VI campaign - the most neglected of all in the game. You will see in our beloved Main Hall an argument in which many factions are criticised for being generic and without specific and embellished identities.
Since this is what you mainly intend to address, it seems you will have the support of many.

I do not know what you specialise in as a modder, and I am not a modder myself, but my suggestion is to improve AI aggression, strategy and other decision making rather than adding new factions or units.

Although I love the addition of factions to the MTW campaigns, I do not see any reason to make more factions for VI unless a considerably larger amount of provinces is planned as in Britannia Divided.

I think that if you could do as Gollum has done (And maybe you will find assistance from him), by ignoring cosmetic improvements and rather focusing on making a balanced, challenging and immersive game with the AI functioning as well as it possibly can - you will be highly respected for your work.

Most importantly, everyone will be playing VI as if it were a new game and not a necessity for installing MTW mods!

Thank you for putting this forward and I hope you find help.

[gollum]

Well, the Viking invasion campaign in my view is ripe for a satisfying campaign due to of course the period, the setting and the better representation of Britain.

The first thing i would aim to balance would be the Houscourles and the starting forces/incomes of factions. Of course, these goa after you determine the rosters and the dependencies. Its good to have some elites, but not too difficult to access for the AI factions.

Will post again as you progress and as time allows.

Good luck in your undertaking :)

[Leith]

Hello, Glenn,gollum!

Thank you for posting! The major reason why gamers prefer RTW and MTW2 to MTW is because of the graphics, plain and simple. If we want to renew the interest in MTW, graphical improvement should be a priority. A game with beautiful graphics but with a weak AI on the other hand will ruin the fun in the long run. The ideal option would be to include both, which is what I will try to do. I don't specialize in any field actually. I only started learning Photoshop on my own two months ago. But I have the determination to improve things, which is what counts in my opinion. Through reshaping the Tech Tree among other things I think I will be able to influence the AI behaviour. You see, my friend, Glenn, a major problem that the AI, and the whole campaign as a whole, suffers from is the incredibly low moral of most units. Even the supposedly powerful Armoured Spearmen have a moral of 0. Now having upped the moral a bit, a battle may last more than a couple of minutes! Another problem is that the factions are not distinct enough. For example why should you play as the Scots? They only have one lousy unique unit, with a moral of 0. Apart from that they lack character. So this mod is not about including new units because that sounds nice but because the units that already exist are either nearly useless, like peasants for example, or underpowered, Armoured Spearmen for example, or too good for their cost, like Gallowglasses.

Would it be historically accurate to include the Housecarles, gollum ? If so, do you think they are too good for their cost ? I think they're all right but I will certainly remove the Jomsvikings, who unbalance the game in my view. I am thinking, to maintain historical accuracy, to include the Royal Hirth as the bodyguard unit for the Saxon factions. I intend to include Hirdmen as the bodyguards for the Vikings. As for the other factions, I have not decided yet but will take suggestions.

The units that have been done so far:

Hirdmen
Viking Armoured Spearmen
Armoured Spearmen
Viking Raiders
Spearmen
Peasant Archers
Saxon Archers
Town Militia
Viking Militia

Units I am working on right now:

LightFyrdmen
Longspears

In the first screenshot, you see Viking Raider
In the second, you see Armoured Viking Spearmen
In the third, you see Speamen

[Leith]

[gollum]

Wow, got busy. Nice skins :)

The Houscarles are most certainly historical. They are the heart and soul of the Viking campaign. They just need to be balanced out - they are too strong. being too strong impacts on the autocalc as well as the battlefield.

One way to do that is reduce their stats a bit and make them slightly better than the stats of the average units of the campaign. AP stats and high attack and high armor, is a bot too much. Also the rest of the units in the VI campaign have comparatively low stats, lower than the core game overall, and that means that the gap between the average VI unit (spears etc) and the elite Houscarles (that are easily available if memory serves), makes them too good.

But all this makes sense, only after you determine the rosters. Fix the rosters first and you can balance them afterwards, once cast in stone.