Rome Total War: The Viking Invasion

[The_Ferret]

Since people have begun to adapt Medieval mods to Rome. I thought why not recreate the expansion pack. This is simply a gauge of interest and if I get 5 members in a small enough time I'll consider taking it further. If you are a part of any of the other mods I am in this does NOT mean I have forgotton all about you dont worry.
I reckon we could go as close as possible to MTW:TVI.

The Vikings would be three seperate groups. Danish Vikings, Norweigen Vikings, and the Icelandic Vikings, governed by a lead body of Vikings, a high King or whatever (there is the Senate-Roman relation sorted)

The Kingdoms of England (Cumbria, Mercia etc...)

The Saxons

The Irish

The Picts and the Celts

Map would be from Iceland in the North-West to Denmark in the South-East with a bit of Greenland, Britain, Normandy and Scandinavia.

if you are interested state your Skill and Your Hotmail adress (if you dont have one just put your e-mail down but strive to get MSN or AIM at some point)

[King Ragnar]

Ill help u with some research if u wish i could try to do some skinning but i cant convert the files etc i would need lots of help to do that

[crcar]

Hi Ferret

I can help in the historical research, as in WWI total war.

[The_Ferret]

descent response given the period its been up. OK, I'll make a forum for it. link in a minute.

Also, I'll post some turorials there on skinning etc...

[The_Ferret]

link

[Rodion Romanovich]

There is already some other Viking invasion mod, but which included more of Europe and the normans etc., with more variety. Maybe if they're still working on that mod you could team up with them because I think they already have some work completed. If you're interested in someone with very little time and very little skills but an interest in seeing a mod of the period being completed as soon as possible, I might be of help. Especially if the mod will include more than just the British isles.

[The_Ferret]

It will be more than the British isles.

Also, I thoroughly checked for 'rival' mods but they have all died out.

[Meneldil]

/me wonders how someone can work on WWI:TW, Battle for Greece:TW, Troy:TW and RTW:VI in the meanwhile

[Rodion Romanovich]

It will be more than the British isles.

Also, I thoroughly checked for 'rival' mods but they have all died out.

Ok. My suggestion is 800 AD to 1100 AD and factions perhaps being:

IN THE BRITISH ISLES AREA:
- Saxons
- Picts
- Scots
- Irish
- Welsh
etc.

VIKINGS:
- Norway
- Sweden (or perhaps divided into: "Vaestgothia" - spelling needs to be checked for that, and "Svea Rike" to reflect that the country during that time is best described as two larger "dynasties" and smaller independent tribes/rebels in between)
- Danes
- Novgorod/Kiev dynasty (or any other way of depicting the first Russians - perhaps there could be a local faction which is up for grabs for the easternmost Swedish vikings to conquer, or we'll start the game with a Russian dynasty already existing - it depends on which starting date is picked)

OTHERS:
- Normans
- French
- Different muslim factions
- Papal states
- Holy roman empire

The French and others here will own very few provinces and be surrounded by rebel territories from start to reflect how little control the monarchs had in the feudal period. Those factions have to quickly grab the rebel territories - who will be guarded by quite formidable rebel armies from start so it won't be too easy - in order to be able to put up a good resistance against the vikings. The French and other factions will have better units later in the game, but won't be able to access them early due to their weak control over the lands and weak economies. The viking units should be cheap and easily accessible early, and their ships should be better than any other ships in the game - at least for a very long time.

I suggest we use a map very much like the vanilla R:TW map but with more of Sweden and Scotland included - perhaps also Iceland etc. The Russia part of the R:TW map also needs to be improved much IMO. In Nnorth Africa, we could perhaps remove some and use a map much like that of M:TW with north africa represented by only a thin borderline of land at the edge of the map as there isn't much of interest deeper into the desert anyway.

If you think this sounds good we can discuss provinces and units later.

[Paul Peru]

/me wonders how someone can work on WWI:TW, Battle for Greece:TW, Troy:TW and RTW:VI in the meanwhile

No wonder he's overworked!
He probably has some kind of extreme capabilities - a 'moron-savant' kind of thing.

[The_Ferret]

exactly

[Meneldil]

The French and others here will own very few provinces and be surrounded by rebel territories from start to reflect how little control the monarchs had in the feudal period.

Actually, in 800, the king was owning all of his territory and the state (France at least, but I think the same would goes for Germany and some other califates) was quite centralized (sp?)
It was not before the 11th century that he lost his power to major nobles.
All of France except Normandy, Britanny and Burgundy was the king's land.
Things are different for the italian peninsula (though there might have been a strong lombard state in northern italia, not too sure about that) and probably for Spain.
Here's what we were planning to do for Viking Age : Total War, if that can help you :



Of course, we had more than 21 factions, as we were hoping for 1.2 patch (or Xpack) to allow us to create new factions. We also had a version with less faction, but I can't find it anymore.


edit : I just noticed you're planning to have only britain and northern france, sorry for being out of topic

[The_Ferret]

you people who know about the period... ENLIST AS RESEARCHERS

[Rodion Romanovich]

edit : I just noticed you're planning to have only britain and northern france, sorry for being out of topic

Not necessarily.

Actually, in 800, the king was owning all of his territory and the state (France at least, but I think the same would goes for Germany and some other califates) was quite centralized (sp?)

Ok, interesting. Then how come the Vikings who were pretty unorganized at first, could do so much damage there? The siege of paris which was ended with a tribute etc...?

Thanks for the map by the way. I believe you mod was the one I had been looking at previously. Pity you never completed it...

[Rodion Romanovich]

NEW SUGGESTION:

Time: 800 AD to 1100 AD

Factions:
As there is a limit to number of factions, some will have to be excluded. Because the mod focuses on northern factions and vikings in particular, none of those will be excluded. Here's my suggestion:

NORTHERN FACTIONS
For British isles I believe Saxons were dominating in that period, Scots have to be there because they later dominated the northern part. Picts are perhaps unnecessary - perhaps they should be a rebel faction to give room for more southern factions or others, as they were weakened enough to give room for Scots pretty quickly in real life in this period (or am I wrong in that? and would there be enough interest among the mod's players in playing the picts?). Welsh have to be there because of their longbowmen etc. Irish would also seem strange to exclude. Mercia and others from the MTW:VI have to be excluded - perhaps replaced by a worked-through rebel faction with mercian-specific units in that area?
- Saxons
- Picts
- Scots
- Irish
- Welsh
Splitting up "vikings" in Norway, Sweden and Danes seems necessary. After all, if Vikings are the focus of the mod they more or less HAVE to be depicted as separate factions.
- Norway
- Sweden
- Danes
Novgorod, Normans, French and Germans also HAVE TO be there, I believe. Removing those is IMO out of the question.
- Novgorod
- Normans
- French
- Germany/Holy roman empire
Burgundy could be discussed, but I think a wrong picture of the France area would be the result if Burgundy wouldn't be included. Polish are probably necessary.
- Burgundy
- Polish (I believe the polish had an empire around 1000 AD but then got eliminated as a nation and didn't create a new polish kingdom/empire until much later, so perhaps they should be a rebel faction?)

SOUTHERN FACTIONS
For these factions, I wouldn't mind if several are merged or more generic, symbolic factions are used to represent an area. For example the Hungary area was crowded with different kingdoms, but by making Hungary slightly larger than in real life we could perhaps achieve a good approximation from the area without exceeding the 21 factions limit? Splitting up Egypt and Almohads/western African muslim dynasy is a must IMO, as the west African muslims were known for their good ships and raids (somewhat like viking raids) whereas the eastern muslims were more peaceful in that period.
- Almohads/Almoravids (don't know for sure who owned western africa and spain area back then)
- Spain (perhaps Castilians or whatever... I don't know exact years for the wars in the Spain area. something says the spanish back then were a quite small factor compared to the muslims - until around 1100 when Alfonso X, I believe, ruled). Probably necessary to reflect the complex political/geographical etc. situation in the France-Spain area.
Edit:
- Abbasid khaliphate
- Fatimid khaliphate
- Lombard league states

- Papal states - necessary if we want a "senate"-like faction that can hand out orders/desired missions etc.
- Byzantine empire - probably a too large power factor to be excluded from the mod
- Hungarians

I believe that is a total of 21 factions.

Victory conditions/Implementation of "senate":
I don't know if this is possible, but it would be great if the papal states could be the new "senate", but without having a great alliance/pact between all catholic countries. Is it possible to make all catholics get "senate" missions from the papal states without all being allied to each other from start? If possible the papal states could give pretty few missions early but more advanced crusade-like missions later, especially close to 1100, when the real crusades began. But crusades are out of the period, so I guess they'll only be a minor factor, and the "senate" in shape of the pope shouldn't control the behavior of the catholics too much in the mod. How will it be with victory conditions? Do you have to have a 50 province goal or can you choose another number of provinces? Do you have to have a certain city that must be taken? Is it possible to set many cities as victory condition requirements - for example force the player to capture ALL british isles provinces AND 50 provinces in order to win?

Map: All of Europe, more of northern Russia than in R:TW, more of northern provinces than in R:TW, iceland should be included (as rebel faction with own banner - I believe that is possible - own rebel type name and some own units with special look - same technique should be used for all factions that have to be rebels instead of own factions due to the faction limit).

Cultures: Culture penalty is decided by number/percentage of buildings in a province that have been built by a certain culture. If same culture, no penatly, otherwise penalty. I suggest these cultures should be used: catholics, orthodox, muslims (perhaps eastern muslims and western muslims? how intensive was the conflict between shia and sunni then? would it be correct to have same culture for both, i.e. no culture penalty for conquering?), germano-nordic (for vikings and british isles inhabitants - probably a better name for this culture is needed). I believe the schisms in the christian church was mostly about orthodox vs catholic then so I don't think they'll need to be split up into more cultures.

[Meneldil]

Ok, interesting. Then how come the Vikings who were pretty unorganized at first, could do so much damage there? The siege of paris which was ended with a tribute etc...?

Thanks for the map by the way. I believe you mod was the one I had been looking at previously. Pity you never completed it...

Vikings weren't that much unorganized. Most of viking leaders knew when and where they should raid. They were disciplined and used elaborated battle plans.
They did some much damage mainly because
1 - europeans weren't prepared to face such raiding armies. The same thing happened in Hungary and eastern Germany, against steppe raiders.
2 - Local nobility wasn't powerful enough to defend its land against any invader, precisly because nobles weren't enough powerful and wealthy. They had to fight with other lords to be able to stand a fight against the vikings. The most powerful lord being the king, they had to stay in good term with him.

The Vikings were also one of the reason of the king's loss of power over his retainers : as protecting their subjects and their lands became more and more difficult, nobility was allowed to build fortified castles and strongholds (building fortified places was previously submited to the king's agreement), which increased nobles' power.
Not to forget that the vikings created Normandy, one of the most powerful and wealthiest european 'country' (often more powerful than France).

Basically, in France, the King is considered as 'weak' from 987 (beginning of Hugues Capet's reign) to 1453 (lot of things happened this year).

BTW, you're wrong about some factions that are on the map :

Spain is Kingdom of Asturia
Southern/Muslim Spain : we planned to call it Al Andalus, though I'm not too sure it was called this way back then.
The 2 other muslim factions are the Fatamid Abbasid Caliphates
Hungarians are Magyar I'd think.
Italy was either Italia or Lombard kingdom, don't remember.
I think we had better names for the 3 viking factions, but I'm don't remember them (they were un-understandable nordish names )
The Problem with having normans is that the mod has to start in - at least - 911 AD, which is why I thought this mod shouldn't have been called Viking Age, but rather 'An Mil' or something like that.

Anyway, I wish you the best of luck for this mod, as it's a great idea. Unhappilly, I doubt anyone will ever achieve that.

[Rodion Romanovich]

Combat: slower speed than in vanilla R:TW. Combat will be centered around infantry in the beginning but with better cavalry later, especially in the non-viking factions. Cathapracts of the byzantines will be strong from start, though. Muslim factions will from start have very good light cavalry with anti-cavalry ability. Hungarian cavalry will also be an exception from bad cavalry in the beginning. Vikings have good units easily available early, but later the other factions get better units, although it takes time. There should be great variety in infantry. Basic spearmen should perhaps use the phalanx formation, but with so low stats that they easily get the formation broken and lose in a front engagement with swordsinfantry (but inflict pretty heavy casulaties on the swordsmen before formation is broken, and be able to rout lower morale swordsmen). Axemen should be more rare than swordsmen, perhaps by lower availability, higher price, more training turns, higher tech level, and perhaps VERY low defense stats so they can't be relied upon as line troops. All units should have the "line" unit formation (but many should be "untrained" so they still don't keep exactly straight lines in their formations) and only special, small units like berserkers should have "horde" formation. If possible, many heavy infantry units of the vikings should have wedge formation, but called "svinfylking"/"svinefylking"/"swinefylking" instead of wedge. The testudo formation could perhaps be of use? After all any infantry with shields can go close together and use their shields close together to create a wall against arrows? Or perhaps we just skip usage of testudo altogether for all units?

For naval warfare, vikings and Almohads should have much better ships than others. If possible with more movement points too to reflect their mobility.

Unit/army/special abilities/building suggestions:
- Saxons - huscarle swordsmen, huscarle axemen (harder to get, perhaps 2 training turns and VERY low defense compared to the sword counterparts).
- Picts
- Scots - clansmen?
- Irish - bonnachts?
- Welsh - longbowmen!
- Norway - hirdmen (as general's bodyguard?), berserkers, shrines to odin (xp upgrades), freya (population growth bonus), thor (weapons upgrades)?, good ships (is it possible to have different movement points for different ship types? if so, I think these ships should have at least double movement points compared to others)
- Sweden - hirdmen (as general's bodyguard?), berserkers, shrines to odin (xp upgrades), freya (population growth bonus), thor (weapons upgrades)?, good ships, good ships (is it possible to have different movement points for different ship types? if so, I think these ships should have at least double movement points compared to others)
- Danes - hirdmen (as general's bodyguard?), berserkers, shrines to odin (xp upgrades), freya (population growth bonus), thor (weapons upgrades)?, good ships (is it possible to have different movement points for different ship types? if so, I think these ships should have at least double movement points compared to others)
- Novgorod - boyars?, druzhina cavalry (or will druzhinas be depicted in the shape of a different general's unit than other factions have?)?
- Normans - good archers, good cavalry.
- French
- Germany/Holy roman empire - urban militia?
- Burgundy
- Polish - joms vikings?
- Almohads/Almoravids - light desert troops without much armor, very good light cavalry, camel warriors, good ships (is it possible to have different movement points for different ship types? if so, I think these ships should have at least double movement points compared to others)
- Spain
- Mamluks/Egyptians/etc. - light desert troops without much armor, very good light cavalry, camel warriors, some horse archers
- Baghdad Khaliphate - light desert troops without much armor, very good light cavalry, camel warriors
- Papal states - a full stack of standard units of high quality to make it hard to conquer them early, apart from that probably nothing special
- Byzantine empire - cathapracts, varangian guard (as mercenaries, or as elite unit with long training time?)
- Hungarians - good cavalry, some horse archers
Buildings for all catholics should be "chapel", "church", "cathedral", "great cathedral".
Buildings for all orthodox should perhaps be the same.
Buildings for all muslims should be "mosque", "great mosque"

Cities/forts:
I suggest usage of cities rather than forts even though that is possible to mod, because not only forts were considered important targets during this era. City fortifications could be "wooden pallisade", "wooden wall", "large wooden wall" (if possible a wall with wooden look and feeling but with ability to move around on top of it like with stone walls in vanilla R:TW), "stone wall" (like in vanilla R:TW) and "epic stone walls" (should be used for Constantinople from start, but perhaps not be built in many other cities).

If possible I'd like it if we could implement more than one fort type. If not, I think the current fort of vanilla R:TW would do. If it's possible, it'd be awesome if several fort levels could be created. I suggest forts should be MUCH cheaper than creating better walls for cities, so that the player has a reason to actually build forts instead of better city defenses in many situations and try to guard the paths TO cities rather than cities themselves. If possible, siege time for forts should be increased to perhaps 5 turns, at least for some types of them in case it's possible to have different types of forts.

Mercenaries:
- Huscarles (medium chance)
- Genoese crossbowmen (medium chance)
- Hirdmen (common)
etc.

Wonders:
- The grave of the Lord and the mosque on the rock in Jerusalem - should add loyalty to all provinces (because if you conquered the city as muslims they'll like that you hold the great mosque, and if you conquered the city as christians they'll praise you because you're holding the grave of the lord - thus all game mechanics problems with needing TWO wonders because only one wonder will be needed).
- Hagia sofia in Constantinople?
etc.

Please help me complete these lists, these were just my suggestions before doing much research (I've probably mostly mentioned the most obvious things...)

[King Ragnar]

LegioXXXUlpiaVictrix, have you been to the sperate forum yet for this mod?

[Rodion Romanovich]

Vikings weren't that much unorganized.

The earliest raids weren't exactly though-through battle plans, rather robbery. That's what I meant. The later viking raids weren't raids, they were well planned conquests. For example Danish conquest of England etc. I agree about that.

Basically, in France, the King is considered as 'weak' from 987 (beginning of Hugues Capet's reign) to 1453 (lot of things happened this year).

Yes, therefore France shouldn't be too strong strategy wise on the map. Perhaps tactically, but they should be represented in a way that makes it likely for them to lose power by around 1000 AD.

BTW, you're wrong about some factions that are on the map:

I never spoke of the factions on your map, just suggested those I thought would be best to include in this new mod.

However Spain would perhaps best be called Kingdom of Asturia.

Thanks for the muslim faction names, I believe Fatamid Abbasid Caliphates is the correct term for them in that period.

Calling Hungarians Magyars is also more correct, and in my opinion the best alternative.

I believe we'll need a faction "Lombard league" for Italy, but I don't know which other faction will have to be removed to give room for them. Edit: aha, changing the muslim factions I suggested to Abbassid and Fatimid gives room for one more faction in the shape of Lombard league. I believe that could work.

Having a Norman kingdom in the mod despite that the real Norman kingdom rose 911 AD isn't a problem in my opinion. Perhaps the mod starting date could be moved to 850 or 900? It doesn't have to be so exact about that as it'll still stratetically and militarily be pretty correct to have them there even if the mod starts 900 AD.

Unhappilly, I doubt anyone will ever achieve that.

Why? I believe there's room for you too if you want to help :)

BTW, Ferret, what types of modders are needed? Do we have skinners, animators and modellers and all that? "Hacking" the textfiles, planning, beta-testing and balancing of the mod and stuff like that is among the few things I can help with...

[Rodion Romanovich]

LegioXXXUlpiaVictrix, have you been to the sperate forum yet for this mod?

Wow, I checked 10 hours ago and then it was empty... Now it's full of posts...

Edit: Damn, it looks like they want to take the mod into another direction than I wanted. Perhaps I should start a new thread and a new mod... 10 hours and all that happens behind you back... Grrr... I'll see if Ferret posts anything here, if he doesn't I'll consider making a new thread for my idea.

Edit2: BTW is the factions limit 21 factions INCLUDING rebels, or is it 21 factions AND rebels making a total of 22 factions?

[King Ragnar]

LegioXXXUlpiaVictrix, you could still help us with it and try to get yout opinion across and who knows it could change?

[Meneldil]

Thanks for the proposal, but I'm already working on my own mod, and it's take about all my free time ;-)
No doubt you've the willing to achieve this mod, but the problem I see is that you'll likely lack the modelers, skinners and animators required for such a huge project. That's what happened to Viking Age, and what happens to a lot of mods being on the workbench.
Even if we are about 7 people in the Diadochi TW team (with 3 very skilled skinners and modelers), we're having a lot of issues and lack some more people.

[King Ragnar]

Lets hope our mod oesnt die every one at the minute who is on the team seem optimistic

[The_Ferret]

Sorry, been sleeping. Well, I think that our concept map is a little small. We will go further east slightly further west and a bit further south (no further that France)

Anyway, the faction lists are subject to change and from what I have uncoverered the Swedish should be a seperate faction and the Icelandic vikings should become Norweigen. Legio(forgotten the rest) if you're interested I'll PM you the password for the HIDDEN FORUMS OF DOOM (i.e the passworded ones)

[Rodion Romanovich]

Sorry, been sleeping. Well, I think that our concept map is a little small. We will go further east slightly further west and a bit further south (no further that France)

Anyway, the faction lists are subject to change and from what I have uncoverered the Swedish should be a seperate faction and the Icelandic vikings should become Norweigen. Legio(forgotten the rest) if you're interested I'll PM you the password for the HIDDEN FORUMS OF DOOM (i.e the passworded ones)

I posted a reply in your forum recruitment thread. I'm starting a new mod, but maybe we'll be able to share a lot of work as many parts will essentially be the same (viking factions etc., especially units - I don't know if you like my building/tech trees). I'm starting a new thread for that mod now and we can discuss sharing of work in that thread or in this one, if you're interested.