Westeros Total War

[Massi]

It's nice Bigwig!!

I'm also a complete noob, but I love the idea of the mod very very much. I will try to do anything on the editing of units and banners, let's see what I get out . Actually I 'm a but scared

As for Renly, we could make him the only heir for Stormend and "not too difficult to assassinate". This way, after possible Renly death Stannis could have easy way in adsorbing part of the Stormlords. Well, this depends on how we organise the campaign, anyway.

I had some ideas on the main campaign (maybe is just crab, if it is, doesnot matter )

All the campaign should be played in the time frame of 2-3 years, each turn being 1 or 2 week (to have enough turns).
This would be the most close to the book, but there are some drawbacks:
1. city improvements. The reasonable time to build a structure would become several turns long, that is that in every settlement you could build probably not more than 2 structures in the whole campaign. From one side is a drawback, the players being VERY limited in expanding the cities. From the other side, it might make for a carefull, deep planing of your construction during the whole campaign.
2. population increase. We would have to reduce the population increase to small fraction of percents (kind of 0.01%) to have it realistic. Again, not real population increase during the campaign.
3. troop/ships recruiting. This means limited possibility of recruiting and/or healing wounded units. What you have from the beginning, (plus some more levies you can call to arms) is basically all you will ever have during the campaign. On the other side you must really be carefull on how much people you remove from the harvest: if you want to feed your troops (have enough money to mantein them) better if you have left enough population in your settlements. If you are the Lannisters, maybe you have a good income and you can hire more sellswords (mercenaries).

The campaign will have a very different feeling respect to the campaign in vanilla RTW, but I think it also very good, because a mod should really offer for some different game play to be appealing.

[Bigwig]

Thanks Massi!

About your suggestions, I think the game would be better if instead of simulating one war in the book it simulated a broader section of the Westeros time period, so I'm going to have to disagree on the 2-3 years thing. Imho, restricting the time period and events too strictly to that of the book would take away from the "open endedness" that I love the TW series so much for.

My suggestions:

- The game should start at the very beginning of GoT before any major wars break out, letting the player decide more how to change the course of the story.
- "Building up" should have less of an emphasis in the game, as it should be about tactics and subterfuge. Therefore the cities and factions should already be a little bit "built up" at the beginning of the campaign, moreso than in R:TW.
- Troops should be mostly province specific, like Spartan hoplites and the units in Medmod, so no training of Umber men-at-arms on Dragonstone for example. This would make armies rely on sellswords more the further abroad they are. That means lots of hidden resources, if that's possible.
- Population growth should be very low over all, and almost non existant in towns that were designed to be military outposts, or ruins (Harrenhal, Moat Cailin, Golden Tooth)
- I heard the Senate is hardcoded into the game, and I was wondering what that would mean for this mod. Maybe the senate could be turned into the Night's Watch and made unattackable by all factions, or it could based in King's Landing. If you can change the names of the special titles the Senate gives out you might have some interesting opportunities, like including members of the Kingsguard or other high offices (Hand of the king, master of coin, etc)
- Westeros should be in a state of summer each turn, because the seasons in the book are so irregular (maybe it could snow a bit north of the Wall).

Anyways, I have a lot more suggestions and ideas (of course), but I'll keep it simple for now. Keep up the great discussions!

[5000]

dood bigwig, that was good work on the map. how did you change the samll radar map in the lower left, if you look at my pics, its all distorted.

yeah i agree with both you guys, i think population and city buildings should be limited, one thing i don't want is for winterfell at the end of the game to be a huge city with 24,000 ppl in it, just not realistic, same goes for other cities. so i figured we could change the base farm level of the provinces, i htink that'll slow the population growth, not too sure. so like massi says the armies you start with will be more or less all you get, so you need to be very careful with your armies. i wanted each town to be pretty well built up already based on size, so that players wouldn't have to build so much, i think it would be better if they only had to concentrate on recruiting and troop movement.

i was thinking the roman senate as king's landing, my map would crash until i put them in there, don't know if you had that problem with yours.

great idea on the senate office list, if we could change like ponitficus maximus to hand of the king or something like that, great idea


>- Troops should be mostly province specific, like Spartan hoplites and the >units in Medmod, so no training of Umber men-at-arms on Dragonstone for >example. This would make armies rely on sellswords more the further abroad >they are. That means lots of hidden resources, if that's possible.

another good idea. i like.


yeah as for the whole winter summer thing, back when i first started, ppl were working on this, and at that point, it had been discovered that characters only age during winter months, and i think that someone had been able to get it to advance a month at a time. not too sure what the progress on that is currently. i wanted it to stay summer for a good number of turns and then at some point have it switch over to winter.


hey bigwig, i hate to suggest this after you put so much work into your map ( i remember the patience ( ) it took me to get mine to finally load )
but if you want we could work on mine, i could send you copies of the files i have, there are still some areas that need to be fleshed out, and some areas i'd like to improve. i am still working on Dorne ( mountains are pretty tough to get looking nice ). the westerlands, the reach, and parts of the north still need to be done. also provinces still need defining, as of right now i only have a limited number. we can send files back and forth and i can cut paste the areas into each other.



and once again to ppl, who swing by these forums and want to help, but say they can't do anything, when it comes to modding. I HAVE ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA WHAT I'M DOING. i stumbled on these forums back in early dec. and was like 'wow you can mod rome total war, thats awesome.' i then read a little on what to do to change the map and got started, there are a good number of tutorials, posted by the good ppl running these forums that give step by step instructions on how to mod certain things. if you don't think you have the patience, thats cool, you can help by throwin out ideas.



and one question, so is this mod officially underway?



-5000

[dajamieson]

If you can change the names of the special titles the Senate gives out you might have some interesting opportunities, like including members of the Kingsguard

Given that the Kingsguard serve for life (well, up until you-know-what) and cannot inherit land\titles I doubt this will be practical - the other suggestions are good one tough.

Would it be possible to create Maester\Grand Maester retainers? Or perhaps you could have Maester\Grand Maester as a city improvment and, say, hedge maesters as retainers?

[5000]

...perhaps you could have Maester\Grand Maester as a city improvment

great idea, iwas thinking just using them as retinue, but thats better, keeps em in the cities

I'm trying to get some decent program (Photoshop 7) for editing the CAS files for the units, I see that I need also some plug-in

i'm not sure if you can edit .cas files in photoshop, i think you can only edit the .dds files, which i believe are textures that get mapped to the cas files
( you do need a plug-in for .dds which i have, i think i got it somewhere around these forums )
i was workin on this yesterday, or trying to, but i've never used 3ds max before

i finished up the placement of cities in dorne, and i think i'm done with the marches








i stopped workin on the map, spent too much time lookin at it
so i started messin around with other things










i haven't figured out how to edit banners, i was tryin to find the files, but

I'm curious on how will you guys bring the Wall on the strategic map

no clue, i had found a text file called template, (it was a list of command lines for decr_strat, (descr_strat handles the placement of cities, units, wonders, resourc,etc.) in this file there was a command line for the placement of walls and roads. i have been told howevr that this file is completely out of date, so unless these command lines are added with the patch, i think the wall is out.
i hope they do add them, being able to specify where a road goes would be awesome for representing the King's road, still haven't figured out how to do that either.



-5000

[Massi]

wow it's great! I'm in a hurry now, I have just one question:
5000, why don't you take the lead and open a forum for ourselves, somewhere? I think you should be the project leader

[Massi]

for the wall, can you paint a "special mountain"? inserting 3 cityies as for the 3 fortresses still hold by the night watch...

[Massi]

and one question, so is this mod officially underway?

well I would say so
we already have a small team, as I see it: 5000, Bigwig, dajamieson and me. I'm trying to get some decent program (Photoshop 7) for editing the CAS files for the units, I see that I need also some plug-in, as soon as I get a clear picture and I 'm able to start, I will post all the necessary very newbie operations to do, so that also other like me can help.

As for the units, I completely agree with having City specific units! Since this is a medieval world and knights have their importance, I would say that every House we decide to put in the game should have his special heavy cavalry units, with banners, slighlty personalised stats and (maybe) special design (Robb knights unit may have Grey Wind on the side of the units leader for example). Man at arms and other foots can have a unique design, changing only the shield maybe, and the colours.

On the senate use.. dont know, we will find a solution.
I'm curious on how will you guys bring the Wall on the strategic map

check this , we could use some portraits for the general units:
http://www.amoka.net/eng/news.html

I will ask.

see you soon!!!

[Massi]

Maester/granMaester as a city improvement is a good idea :) In the tactical City map we could have the buiding "Maester tower", just close to the castle, i like the idea!