Age of Vikings and Fanatics: Total war

[Captain-Tiguris]

Hi guys!

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

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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.

[Rodion Romanovich]

Hi guys!

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

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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.