Viking Invasion III---A mod in development

[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.

[PershsNhpios]

Very nice work, Leith! Your units seem to be a much higher resolution (?) than what is seen in most other mods.

Are those the finished products? Or will you stain and age them a little more?

I like your ideas Leith and I will play this mod.

[Stazi]

Very nice work, Leith! Your units seem to be a much higher resolution (?) than what is seen in most other mods.

Glenn, imo these units use standard high res textures. As I mentioned in your thread here your pc gives you low res textures, although the mod provides high res too. I've found two reasons of this: graphic card with low ram memory or old card installed in PCI slot (not AGP or PCI-E). It may be drivers and/or resolution related problem too. Probably, cards with chips other than nvidia/ati aren't recognized too and game runs in safe/low-res mode. If you give me your pc's specs, maybe we will find the solution.

Sorry, for this little off topic.

[Leith]

Hello, friends

I have been busy with creating unit cards for all the units I have made so far. I have never done that before,unit cards that's, so after a couple of days I think I'm kind of happy with the results, for now at least. I have made a new bif for the Light Fyrdmen and LongSpears, for which I will post a couple of screens at the end. I have doubled the income of most provinces and increased the rest by 50% to 60%. I have removed the following units:

VikingThralls(It has been replaced by VikingMilitia)
CelticWarriors( It will be replaced by CelticWarband)
Peasants
Jomsvikings
Vikingkarls (It has been replaced by VikingRaiders)
UrbanMilitia(It has been replaced by TownMilitia)

The Huskarls, and the Housecarls will then be included, gollum, although their stats mightn't change much. The reason why these two units appear unbalanced is because, as you have rightly pointed out, most units are so weak. Thus, by upping the original stats reasonably, they wouldn't be overpowered. Unlike the original campaign, even the lowly Spearmen unit is not a pushover anymore in this mod.We will see about that when I'm done with the unit roster nonetheless.

Glad, you like the screens, Glenn, and yes this will be the final product, for these units that's, but the unit cards will be completely changed. The other skins aren't ready however. I'm working on them whenever I get some free time. Expect some more screens at the end of this post and expect some more next week!

I am still undecided as to how the Tech Tree for the Picts, Scots, and Welsh will shape up. I'm taking suggestions. Thank you for reading and posting! (In the first screen you see Light Fyrdmen in the front and Armoured Spearmen in the back. In the second screen you see Longspears)