Age of Vikings and Fanatics: Total war

[SkyElf]

Looks like the MOD will be very interesting. I can't wait to give it a try! Great work gentlemen.

[skeletor]

Some new test skins:



Swedish Landowner sword hirdman.



Norwegian Landowner sword hirdman.

The shields are improvised, and will be changed to more accurate once.

-Skel-

[Meneldil]

I think there are real slingers on the Bayeux Tapestry.

[Rodion Romanovich]

Some new test skins

Sweet!

Regarding stone throwers I agree that using the head hurler animation could actually turn out to be quite interesting. I suggest we give them a range around the same as for javelins, or maybe slightly greater, but damage lower than for javelins. But I'm not sure how far you can throw a stone by hand compared to how far you can throw a javelin...

[Captain-Tiguris]

Hi guys!

I havent been around much so I haven't had a chance to look through everything.

---------------------------------

I do not agree on the stone-throwing idea, stone-throwing is for slingers. Any way, they would of been used to distract the opposistion in combat whilst the other units, such as archers or javelin-throwers could pick them off....

[Wikingus]

Great skins there, nice to see things moving along.
Rest assured, there is great anticipation of this mod.

[King Ragnar]

Some new test skins: -

Very very nice

[Kamahl]

@Kamahl: There is a faction limit hardcoded in R:TW and that limit has already been reached, so no more factions can be added. If it had been possible we would have included several factions that aren't included now.

@oj121: You can get the first, simplest type of bow-armed troops in a level 1 building, I don't know what you mean with level 2 upgrade?!?!

After some consideration I've decided to include slingers in the saxon unit rooster too.

damn it i so hoped to play with my ppl.and woop those romans

[Wikingus]

damn it i so hoped to play with my ppl.and woop those romans

There was no Carantania in the Roman times anyway.

[Rodion Romanovich]

Hi guys!

I havent been around much so I haven't had a chance to look through everything.

---------------------------------

I do not agree on the stone-throwing idea, stone-throwing is for slingers. Any way, they would of been used to distract the opposistion in combat whilst the other units, such as archers or javelin-throwers could pick them off....

Ok, I'm not entirely sure either about stone throwers but it sounds cool. I had in mind a unit which gave lower missile damage than slingers and javelins and with short range, who will inflict almost no casualties at all but have a distracting effect and also slightly demoralize militia opponents somewhat. I think we'll have to discuss that more...

@ALL: I have two questions I'd like to discuss:

1. Should we use the warcry ability for any troops? I'm against it because I don't think it makes sense that units fight better just because they screamed a little before rushing into battle and fight less good if they didn't scream. Instead, in order to get the epic effect a warcry gives, I'd recommend changing the sound of the units when they charge so they scream louder. I'd like to hear your opinions on that.

2. I've run some tests with vanilla R:TW units and here are my suggestions for stats:
* Professional swordsmen should have stats somewhere between praetorian and urban cohorts
* Militia to medium quality swordsmen have stats somewhere between principes and praetorians
* Elite swordsmen have stats like urban cohorts or better but with small unit
* Militia spearmen could be like german spear warband
* Professional/armored spearmen could have stats slightly better than german spear warband
* Feudal foot sergeants and other speararmed semi-elite have stats between armenian armored spearmen and greek hoplites but with quite good morale
* Crossbows: range as chosen archer warband, same attack, very slow firing speed
* Genoese crossbows: range as cretan archers, slightly higher attack, higher movement speed, very slow firing speed
* Longbowmen: range as cretan archers, slightly lower attack, fast firing speed
* Normal archers: range as barbarian archer warband, same attack
* Militia archers: range lower than barbarian archer warband, lower attack
* Javelinmen: same or higher attack than R:TW skirmishers, samt speed
* Slingers: same stats as R:TW slingers
I also suggest better charge for all light and missile troops, but very low attack and still almost as low defense as the R:TW missile units have. Perhaps slightly better morale for the most professional missile troops.
* Militia cavalry: stats in same class as equites and greek cavalry
* Unprofessional light cavalry: stats like greek cavalry to barbarian cavalry
* Professional light cavalry: stats like desert cavalry but not with the extra large unit size desert cav has in vanilla R:TW, perhaps slightly lowered speed
* Camels: stats like bedouin camels in R:TW but with slightly better morale, attack and defense, as well as better anti-morale bonus against enemy cavalry, but stats should still be lower than the cataphract camels parthia has in vanilla R:TW
* Medium to heavy cavalry: stats like barbarian noble cavalry to legionary cavalry
* Super heavy cavalry: stats around same as cataphracts, companions and praetorians (but some of those super heavy units will have small unit size)

What do you think of these stats suggestions?

[King Ragnar]

Im not sure about the warcry there isn't really any troops that spring to mind who could use it. I think the longbowmen should have the same attack or even higher than than cretan archers, the rest seem fine.

[skeletor]

1.

1. Should we use the warcry ability for any troops? I'm against it because I don't think it makes sense that units fight better just because they screamed a little before rushing into battle and fight less good if they didn't scream. Instead, in order to get the epic effect a warcry gives, I'd recommend changing the sound of the units when they charge so they scream louder. I'd like to hear your opinions on that.

I think this is a good idea, i also think the warcry part is kind of stupid. I wold rather have the wedgeformation for infantry of unit's. The wedge were commonly used by viking army's in Scandinavia, and probably in viking influenced parts of Britain too. It was called "svinfylking" or swinearay, were you placed the bravest man in the front, and 2 less breve behind him, and so on. (Offcourse they had to abandon this tactic later when facing medieval armys from central Europe.)


2. I have looked very little at stats, so i can't really say what seems good or bad. For my part, i intend to skin the units so that the player easily can see how good the armour is.

(Dame, my gallery at imageshack is down if the pic's doesn't come back, i'll make a new gallery, sorry.)

-Skel-

[Afsin]

[removed]

[skeletor]

Wow great thnx. [added to my folder]

Any other conseptart is very welcome..

-Skel-

[The Apostate]

Hi - apologies I've not posted for a couple of weeks but had some serious job searching to do - but see there's been a lot of progress while I've been away.

Today produced a long post on provinces and cities but managed to lose it by using the back and forward buttons during composition so will have to start again...

In brief had some minor corrections/suggestions on Northern Europe and rather more on Southern and Central.

General principle is that provinces should be as close as possible to Frankish duchies, Byzantine themata etc.

Also suggested that we need more provinces in the Middle East and North Africa.

In principle other than in the Sahara and Arabia Deserta there should be cities roughly as close together as in Vanilla RTW Italy (i.e. a couple of more in Persia and Iraq, plus a few more dotted along the North African coast).

However more on these tomorrow.

Did we agree a start date? I still hold with 911 for various reasons I've explained before (Normans, Lotharingia/Italy, Abassids, Rus etc).

Finally can we set up some sub-threads for units, provinces, factions, buildings etc as this one is getting a bit labyrinthine.

[GoreBag]

I think the stats for the units should be based more on each unit's historical ability to fight instead of general ideas on how well they'd fight comparatively. That being said, don't Chosen Warbands have a better range than normal archers? Crossbows are effective at a shorter range than normal bows.

On the warcry: I think certain units should have them - this is the Age of Fanatics, after all, and the Scots, Irish and Vikings have fanaticism in plenty. It shouldn't provide an attack bonus as much as a morale bonus, though.

[The Apostate]

Agree warcry is kind of dumb - never used it in RTW.

Infantry wedges or some kind of phalanx equivalent for a shieldwall would be better.

On unit stats would generally prefer to have a lot fewer uber-units equivalent to Urban Cohorts and Praetorian cavalry as it makes the end game really boring - you build a full stack army of elite units and can steamroller over everything.

Historically there were also very few real professional soldiers - even the bulk of the Byzantine army was made up of thematic militia.

Such elite units that are allowed should also be significantly smaller (i.e no 240-strong uber infantry units like Royal Pikemen or Argyraspides).

e.g Fyrd should be 240 and Huscarls 64.

In addition all units should be way harder to kill and to rout than in RTW - however that is achieved.

Also believe that cavalry should be weaker than in RTW - few battles were won by cavalry charges in this era (if they were the Vikings would have been much less of a threat to the Franks) and even the Muslims and Byzantines tended to rely more on missile than shock cavalry.

There should also be a major difference between late (11th century) knights using a couched lance and their predessors who appear to have mainly used their lances thrusting overarm (the Bayeux Tapestry shows both as well as spears being thrown by the Norman cavalry).

This could be handled by giving all except the top level Frankish and Byzantine units much lower charge bonuses.

Also would prefer to not see many Swordsmen units as historically the spear and axe were far more common and true swords (as opposed to seaxes etc) were restricted to the upper class elites who could afford them - however even they seem to have preferred to have slugged it out with spears, axes and lances in battle and kept their swords in reserve as a sidearm.

Been reading a lot of Norse Sagas recently and while heroes might compose poems about their swords, these feature far more commonly in formal duels than in battle accounts.

The only people who employed swords as a primary weapon on foot appear to have been the Swabians from Germany.

Also believe that archers should be generally few and far between - like Gallic forester warbands in RTW only recruitable at level 3 and taking 2 turns -it took a lot more training to produce a competent archer than a spearman.

This was even more true of horse archers who should not be mass produced by the Khazars and Magyars at the rate they are by the Scythians and Parthians in RTW.

In fact there's a case for making them a hidden resource units like Spartans - historically only the Russian Steppes and the Hungarian plain were suitable for the large scale pastoralism that produced effective horse archers in large numbers.

[GoreBag]

Agree warcry is kind of dumb - never used it in RTW.

Infantry wedges or some kind of phalanx equivalent for a shieldwall would be better.

On unit stats would generally prefer to have a lot fewer uber-units equivalent to Urban Cohorts and Praetorian cavalry as it makes the end game really boring - you build a full stack army of elite units and can steamroller over everything.

Historically there were also very few real professional soldiers - even the bulk of the Byzantine army was made up of thematic militia.

Such elite units that are allowed should also be significantly smaller (i.e no 240-strong uber infantry units like Royal Pikemen or Argyraspides).

e.g Fyrd should be 240 and Huscarls 64.

In addition all units should be way harder to kill and to rout than in RTW - however that is achieved.

Also believe that cavalry should be weaker than in RTW - few battles were won by cavalry charges in this era (if they were the Vikings would have been much less of a threat to the Franks) and even the Muslims and Byzantines tended to rely more on missile than shock cavalry.

There should also be a major difference between late (11th century) knights using a couched lance and their predessors who appear to have mainly used their lances thrusting overarm (the Bayeux Tapestry shows both as well as spears being thrown by the Norman cavalry).

This could be handled by giving all except the top level Frankish and Byzantine units much lower charge bonuses.

Also would prefer to not see many Swordsmen units as historically the spear and axe were far more common and true swords (as opposed to seaxes etc) were restricted to the upper class elites who could afford them - however even they seem to have preferred to have slugged it out with spears, axes and lances in battle and kept their swords in reserve as a sidearm.

Been reading a lot of Norse Sagas recently and while heroes might compose poems about their swords, these feature far more commonly in formal duels than in battle accounts.

The only people who employed swords as a primary weapon on foot appear to have been the Swabians from Germany.

Also believe that archers should be generally few and far between - like Gallic forester warbands in RTW only recruitable at level 3 and taking 2 turns -it took a lot more training to produce a competent archer than a spearman.

This was even more true of horse archers who should not be mass produced by the Khazars and Magyars at the rate they are by the Scythians and Parthians in RTW.

In fact there's a case for making them a hidden resource units like Spartans - historically only the Russian Steppes and the Hungarian plain were suitable for the large scale pastoralism that produced effective horse archers in large numbers.

You must mean a "sax"; "seaxe" was the name of a region in England.

I agree with most of what you say other than the bit about the Swabians. The Claymore, while hollywood-ized almost enough to be a fantasy weapon, was in use at this point, and should be used by Gaelic troops in this mod.

[Captain-Tiguris]

I agree the warcry should be used. As it was probably used to unnerve the opposistion. And based on a few things, I believe some Norse battle cry when charging into combat.


As for the second I agree.

But the camels should be re-made, as the dont look great on the vanilla one.

[Rodion Romanovich]

In principle other than in the Sahara and Arabia Deserta there should be cities roughly as close together as in Vanilla RTW Italy (i.e. a couple of more in Persia and Iraq, plus a few more dotted along the North African coast).

Ok. I think it's a bonus though when the density of cities is more varied - i.e. in some places two cities almost right next to each other and in other places further apart. Also my principles were these:
1. extra density in British isles because of mod focus.
2. importance of cities should matter.
3. lower density in north africa, steppes and middle east area, no matter how it was historically, in order to prevent the abbassids from being overpowered.
4. I didn't care about province names and border drawings because the provinces aren't the main element of R:TW warfare - the city locations are. So I'm partly against being too restricted to french duchies, Byzantine themata etc. I suggest focusing on cities and cities importance. Only in cases where the are NO important cities at all in an area that was distinctly different than the rest and was for example for a long time independent from the country holding the nearby provinces (for example Britanny, Samland etc.)
5. I've already changed the province list a lot when working on the campaign map so the one posted above isn't the one I'm using right now. I've reached so far with the campaign map that I'll wait with editing things until I'm ready as feedback rather than starting point.

Did we agree a start date? I still hold with 911 for various reasons I've explained before (Normans, Lotharingia/Italy, Abassids, Rus etc).

It's 843 now. Sorry, but you were gone so long so most things have already been planned around it now.

[The Apostate]

Actually we're both wrong: it's spelled seax (no e on end).

I know of no evidence whatsoever for claymores in the viking era.

Everything I've read suggests that two-handed swords were introduced to Ireland and Scotland by the gallowglass no earlier than the 13th century (and probably considerably later than that).

Certainly Giraldus Cambrensis - who is almost unique amongst monkish chroniclers in describing arms and armour in some detail - does not mention them in his account of the Norman conquest of Ireland.

And even amongst the later gallowglass the claymore was always much less common than the axe.

The earliest depictions of galloglaich are the 13th or 14th C Roscommon and Glinsk tomb effigies all of which carry long sparth-axes and swords which are short enough to be worn scabbarded ar the waist (and which are thus not true claidheamh-mor - which as the name suggests were great swords which had to be carried like a staff or slung over a shoulder).

Only amongst much later (15th - 16th C) highlanders was the claymore at all common - although it is highly doubtful that more than a minority of a clan levy could have afforded such an expensive item of equipment and in any case it was hardly the most suitable weapon for raiding parties who had to run lightly through the heather.

In contrast Irish and Scots of the viking era appear to have been iron-poor and to have used short leaf-bladed thrusting swords like those depicted on the Aberlemno Cross (and even these were a prestige weapon).

Under viking influence the Irish adopted the axe to the degree that by Goraldus Cambrensis (12th C) an Irishman and his axe were considered inseparable - however they never took to swords to the same degree.

Even the swords used by tbe Swabians at Civitate were not true two-handed swords like the later claymore or zweihander - they actually seem to have been clsoer to what were called in the Renaissance hand-and-a-half or bastard swords (i.e. nearer to 4 than 6 foot long and balanced to be used either one- or two-handed).

[Rodion Romanovich]

Infantry wedges or some kind of phalanx equivalent for a shieldwall would be better.

Wedge is svinefylking/swinefylking/svinfylking, and by not using the "untrained" attribute for the infantry they form a straight, good shield wall by default when not moving too fast and when not using wedge formation. The phalanx formation will be saved for the spear units to reflect how a spear unit must slow down if they want to hold their formation in combat whereas the normal spear units can rush into battle at full speed which is unrealistic IMO. Militia and untrained troops get the "untrained" attribute and thus won't create an as impregnable shield wall and stand in a slight disarray although still in pretty neat lines. The horde formation will not be used other than, perhaps, for some specialist units like berserkers.

On unit stats would generally prefer to have a lot fewer uber-units equivalent to Urban Cohorts and Praetorian cavalry as it makes the end game really boring - you build a full stack army of elite units and can steamroller over everything.

In fact the R:TW morale is too low and battle speed is too high and that's the reason for this. If the professionals are only slightly below urban cohorts in stats then they aren't über-professionals compared to the other troops. The militia will for example have stats like principes to praetorians. Game engine-wise it's the relative stats that matter and if we use these stats we'll never get the feeling that the elite is as superior as you think. In fact, the elite will be less superior to the levies in this mod than in vanilla R:TW. There will be no steamrolling, on the contrary it'll make things more even. Also, the true elite will be remarkably more expensive and require more training turns than the levies, which means militia will play a major role. Finally, much of the elite units will have smaller unit size. So the historical correctness will be achieved - militia will be the bulk of most armies. That'll be further reinforced by the fact that most militia have 0 turns training time and can be recruited in large numbers quickly when needed whereas the elite will require long training so you'll hardly be able to field an army of more than 25% elite units even in the later parts of the game.

Also believe that cavalry should be weaker than in RTW - few battles were won by cavalry charges in this era (if they were the Vikings would have been much less of a threat to the Franks) and even the Muslims and Byzantines tended to rely more on missile than shock cavalry.

The urban cohorts and other vanilla R:TW troops are able to withstand most cavalry charges from the best R:TW cavalry unless you expose their flank to them and they outnumber you badly. Also, same thing here: the elite cavalry will have smaller unit sizes. I'm also considering to lower the defense stats for most of them, as well as lowering attack and charge for the cataphract equivalents. Kataphraktoi and klibanophoroi will not move much faster than infantry...

Been reading a lot of Norse Sagas recently and while heroes might compose poems about their swords, these feature far more commonly in formal duels than in battle accounts.

Ok, please come with suggestions for how the tech trees should be changed accordingly. Perhaps axe and sword units should just change places with each other in the tech trees and the problem is solved. Either way there need to be at least 4 levels of infantry buildings for most factions with most factions having new troop recruiting abilities in each building level for it to be balanced and fun. That's why I've for example made an archer unit called bowman and another called archer who only differ in stats.

Also believe that archers should be generally few and far between - like Gallic forester warbands in RTW only recruitable at level 3 and taking 2 turns -it took a lot more training to produce a competent archer than a spearman.

Militia archers will be very weak and therefore by choice not recruited much - a spearman would be preferable. Better archers will also be quite weak in comparison to other units. I've chosen stats for infantry around urban cohort level and so on, which means the archer don't achieve much. Of course, all my balancing was made with large unit size so it might be different with other unit sizes, but large or huge units is how the mod is intended to be played. If you run some tests you'll see that the archers will have little effect on such troops. However I'm considering to perhaps lower their attack stats even more, however keep the other stats the same. The battle of Hastings was won, according to my view, thanks to the archers. It was them more than the fake charges and retreats from close combat troops that forced Harold to break ranks (which made him vulnerable to the norman cavalry) and by the end of the day had weakened his position so much that the normans were able to charge him and win. The archers will still have this effect of forcing someone without archers to attack or be weakened if he camps the same position too long and therefore remain an important tactical instrument - however they'll be too weak to do much damage in a short period of time.

This was even more true of horse archers who should not be mass produced by the Khazars and Magyars at the rate they are by the Scythians and Parthians in RTW.

In fact there's a case for making them a hidden resource units like Spartans - historically only the Russian Steppes and the Hungarian plain were suitable for the large scale pastoralism that produced effective horse archers in large numbers.

Already done. They will have long training time and high cost, and are so weak in meleé that noone would recruit them to see them die quickly in their first battle. Most of them, except the generic unit called "horse archer", have zone of recruit.

[Rodion Romanovich]

But the camels should be re-made, as the dont look great on the vanilla one.

I agree

[Rodion Romanovich]

I think the stats for the units should be based more on each unit's historical ability to fight instead of general ideas on how well they'd fight comparatively.

What do you mean? I'm basing on historical evidence how well they fight compared to each other. Cavalry isn't more powerful because they weren't historically, and so on. For more detailed planning on the specific units we'll look at more historical data but it's really hard to only use historical data for giving units correct stats: in battle X unit Y might have charged unit Z from the flank rather than from the front and that's why they won and so on... Or unit X happened to be a veteran unit whereas unit Y was only semi-professional...

So if it is to have maximum historical accuracy it must be based on some general data about how certain unit CLASSES (heavy swordsmen, light cavalry, crossbowmen etc. rather than specific units like huscarle, berserker, longbowmen etc.) fought compared to other because there there is enough data to have reliable statistics about the other alternative. Then, if there is evidence of one unit type in each class having outstanding abilities in one field or lack of abilities in one field etc. we can do adjustments accordingly, starting from basic unit CLASS stats that we decide first. Also, if a certain faction had a training system which gave veterans only of a certain unit type, we could make them always start with higher stats but with longer training time etc.

On the warcry: I think certain units should have them - this is the Age of Fanatics, after all, and the Scots, Irish and Vikings have fanaticism in plenty. It shouldn't provide an attack bonus as much as a morale bonus, though.

I agree the warcry should be used. As it was probably used to unnerve the opposistion. And based on a few things, I believe some Norse battle cry when charging into combat.

Yes, warcries were used but they didn't work the way they do in R:TW - that you stand and scream for 10 seconds, then charge and get an attack bonus for it. They work more like that the unit which charges screams loud and unnerving while rushing towards the enemy. The warcry ability in R:TW is IMO badly implemented and means you can't plan tactics much. If someone attacks your line and you have a flanking troop ready, but forgot to warcry with it before, you'll have to stand for a few seconds screaming before you can go around the flank and charge with a bonus. When the unit finally hits the flank, they get two boni - one for warcry and one for charge.

As far as I know, the warcry was used when charging rather than before battle, and was ALWAYS used when charging. This 100% correlation means it's possible to achieve the same effect by giving a unit a higher charge bonus and a fierce warcry sound instead of the current charge sound. Regarding the idea of lowering attack stats for warcry - sorry but afaik it's hardcoded. Alternative would be to give the units the screeching women or druid taunt ability and change the sound if you want a taunt before battle that'll only affect morale. However, that blocks the usage of svinefylking/wedge for the units, as there's only room for one ability per unit, and I think svinefylking has higher priority as special ability because there is another way of simulating a warcry giving an attack bonus by adding it to the charge bonus. Stats of berserkers and other unnerving troops could also be affected by giving them a "frightens infantry" ability.

[Rodion Romanovich]

Ok for modding purposes we must decide which hardcoded faction will become which faction in the mod. Here's what I've been using so far:

romans_julii -> Holy roman empire
romans_brutii -> Lotharingia
romans_scipii -> France
romans_senate -> Papal states
egypt -> Abbassids
scythia -> Al Andalus
spain -> Asturia
dacia -> Bulgars
parthia -> Byzantine empire
carthage -> Danes
numidia -> Irish
armenia -> Khazars
germans -> Magyars
seleucid -> Normans
britons - Norway
thrace -> Rus
macedon -> Saxons
pontus -> Scots
greek_cities - Sweden
gauls -> Welsh
slave -> slave

[The Apostate]

And everyone had war cries - for that matter modern soldiers are still trained to scream loudly in bayonet charges although it is extremely unlikely they will ever have to use them.

I really don't think it should figure as a special ability.

On cavalry I obviously fought too many battles on VH setting where good cavalry can rout a phalanx or urban cohort head on.

Reducing speed for very heavy cavalry like Klibanophoroi is a good idea - although speed seems to have been restricted by formation rather than by the weight of armour.

There is also the issue that historically Byzantine cavalry did not perform well against western knights - even though the latter were often much less well armoured and had lighter shorter lances than the byzantine kontarion.

This was a tactical choice - according to the manual written by Nikephoros Phokas Byzantine cavalry were trained to attack at a trot in close order and appear to have relied as much on maces as on the lance - in fact Phokas specifies that the first four ranks of his klibanophoroi formation should be armed with maces with more lightly armoured lancers on the flanks and archers behind.

Indeed the way in which the Frankish charge is described by Anna Comnena seems to indicate that the couched lance was no longer used by the Byzantines by the 11th century (there was probably not that much point in couching a lance without the added momentum of a charge at the gallop) and had to be reintroduced by Manuel Comnenus in the 12th.

To model this one should probably reduce not only their speed but also their charge bonus.

On axe and swordsmen I really don't think anyone other than the Germans should use swords as a primary weapon.

This does make the troop rosters rather limited: Saxons for instance should strictly speaking just have spear units of different quality with some mediocre missile troops and no cavalry (the huscarls of Hastings were only introduced by the Danish kings and so should only be available at the very top of the tech tree).

To inject some variety you could have say fyrd spearmen at level 1, better select fyrd spearmen at level 2, thegns with sword and shield at level 3 equivalent to chosen swordsmen (actually these would have had spears as well but that would be boring) and axe-armed huscarls at level 4.

For viking armies the level 1 infantry would be spear armed bondi, level 2 might be one-handed axe and shield landsmen, level 3 two handed axe hirdsmen and level 4 royal huscarls - however this is very artificial.

High level Frankish units would have to be dismounted knights as there was no real elite infantry in this era (armoured footmen in Carolingian mss are probably dismounted cavalry).

However overall I think a three level barbarian tech tree would better reflect 9th-11th century reality outside of the Byzantine and Muslim worlds - if you want gothic cathedrals, stone castles etc you have to make it a more generic medieval mod (with all the problems that poses for conversion, crusades, etc - MTW did all that much better).

With four levels you will have to introduce a bunch of what are effectively fantasy units to fill the gaps in western rosters.

[The Apostate]

Faction list looks good.

Two suggestions:

I would prefer Italy as a faction rather than Lotharingia (which only really existed as a kingdom from 843 to 869) - again start date is crucial here.

Also don't think Asturias was important or distinctive enough to be a faction and would prefer a Muslim one based in North Africa to fill the gap between Abassids and Umayyads (which would be a better faction name than al-Andalus).

These either could be Fatimids who start off with Tunisia and Algeria or Tulunids with Egypt.

Without a North African faction you'll have to make the whole continent rebel territory (otherwise you'll have an unstoppable Abbassid Juggernaut on your hands).

[skeletor]

With four levels you will have to introduce a bunch of what are effectively fantasy units to fill the gaps in western rosters.

Viking, and anglo saxon army's didn't have any strict organisation or many specialised units with their own names... So to fill these gap's, we can use the "heavy" description, to describe bether armour and weapons that were develuped in this timeframe.

I allso made an other system for the norse/vikings to become more accurate, without adding fantasy units in an earlyer post:

The norse army's were built up by the nobles hirds (bodyguards, or personal/local army). Poor and less important nobles had small, less trained, and bad equipped hirds. The Important nobles/jarls/kings on the other hand, had larger numbers of well trained, good armoured hirdmen. When a king or a jarl went to war, he had to relay on hes "ally nobles" to support hes army with men. The nobles gathered with their hird (10 - 100 men etch) along with the Jarls/kings hird. Together they formed the army.

So the regular sword/spear/archer/axe unit's could be called sword/spear/archer/axe hird. then you get Jarls hird, as better troops, and the finest units can be called kings hird.

-Skel-

[The Apostate]

By the time of Olaf II there were three levels of royal Hird: Gestr, Huscarls and Hirdmen (note that there were only 120 men in total for the entire hird!)

Earlier Harald Fairhair is meant to have instituted a system by which each jarl should maintain a hird of 60 men and have under him four or more local chieftains called hersir each of which would maintain 20 more hirdsmen.

However many of these would be better represented as general's bodyguards than seperate units.

On reflection I would only allow a three level tech tree for vikings and have undifferentiated Hirdmen as the level three units.

There was also an equivalent of the Saxon select fyrd called the leidang which would supply the level 2 unit which IMO would be not swordsmen but good quality spearmen (even if they had them swords were far too expensive and required too much space to be used in the shieldwall).

Level 1 would be bondi spearmen representing the levee en masse.

The only other Viking units would be archers and berserkers (barring a very late saga description of Stamford Bridge there is no evidence whatsoever for viking cavalry ever being used on a battlefield).

Given that some spears were thrown one could also have a javelin skirmisher unit.

Of course in reality all these troop types (except for the royal bodyguard) would be mixed together in local contingents rather than split up into units but this is a game....

[Rodion Romanovich]

I agree with skeletor that words like heavy, chosen and elite etc. can be used to create the different levels needed. In a few emergency cases the next building can give what last building gave but with +1 xp (like equites and triarii in pre-marius time in vanilla R:TW). No fantasy units are needed. Besides a certain troop type was not exactly the same that long, there were always small improvements in fighting and equipment even though there weren't any new names for the "units".

I'll have a look at the tech trees and try to make axes more easily available but swords harder to get. In general I want it this way: if there were ANY troops at all using sword in the period, swordsmen should be possible to recruit. If they were uncommon due to costs, they should still be in the mod, but cost more. That'll be the case for dismounted frankish knights for example.

Also notice that there are different building complexes for swordsmen and spearmen etc. Better sword buildings could be made more expensive and take longer than better spear buildings too for historical balancing.

So I'd like to know which factions of those listed above should be more focused around axes. So far I'm convinced danes, norwegians and saxons should have more focus on axes and have fewer swordsmen. Saxon axe huscarles are already as it is quite far up their tech tree because it'll take long before they reach the higher city levels unless they expand and capture Paris or something... Vikings get their huscarles slightly earlier in the tech tree.

Franks will have swords for their foot knights (=dismounted normal knights), were swords common among the semi-professional franks too? By germans, do you mean HRE or all germanic peoples?

Did muslims use a comination of sables and axes mostly for their infantry?

The byzantines as well as the rus have already got focus more around spears and axes than around swords in the current tech tree.

I'm not sure the celts relied that much on axes, everything I've heard suggests they used swords much... When did they switch their swords from the ancient period to axes, only to switch back to swords again in the later Medieval period?