Update on progress.

I've been working on which cities/provinces to include in the northern half of the map. At this point I have around 40, but we may want to think about cutting that down a bit. I think it would be better to have *more* provinces in the south of the map than in the north, so the Crusader states wouldn't need to conquer huge tracts of Asia Minor in order to get their 2/3 victory. To me, it would be nice if a Crusader kingdom could conquer from Egypt through the Holy land eastward and call it good; but that may be just me. Anyway, I think the number of provinces I have right now will give the opportunity for plenty of action; the Sicilians/Italians would be able to invade several parts of Greece and the Balkans, and Asia Minor is split up into about a dozen provinces. East of that I'm just making cautious guesses, but hopefully it'll work.

Just saw Kingdom of Heaven again in theaters today with my wife to keep up inspiration for the mod . I can't wait for this thing to be playable!

I don't know if I'm violating any protocol here, but just to keep everyone informed about what's up: Fader_It, who has recently posted his great-looking Italy mod on this same page, has kindly volunteered to help us with making the campaign map for this mod. At this point we're working out cities and provinces, and then we'll ship the whole thing over to him to get started. Big thanks to Fader for this support!!!

I wanted to respond to a bunch of suggestions that have come up recently, at least from my own perspective. Of course I can't speak for everyone else involved:

@KingHenry: we've already got a basic map to work from, but thanks for the offer! If you look back I think on page 2 you can see it. Basically it doesn't have as much to the West but has more to the East.

@Iustinus: it's great that you're working on the music. Keep it up and let us know when you get close to finishing it. For the Byzantine units, I honestly hadn't given it a lot of thought, but I think there should be *some* mix of cav and infantry. Anyone who's more of an expert on that aspect of military history? All input appreciated.

@newagebassist: For the Assassins, again this is an area that I'm not 100% sure of. Sheerly for gameplay smoothness, I'd think we should give them the opportunity to train *some* kind of regular infantry other than just trebuchets, crossbows and hashishin. Maybe some fanatical axe unit or something. My history is lacking here as well, but in order to make them a viable faction I think we'd need to include some more stuff for them.

And here's a new idea I wanted to bring up for everyone: On the .com modding forums, there was some experimentation with increasing castle garrison limits, for the purpose of making longer sieges. This is something that apparently can be done through Gnome editor. Basically, by increasing the amount of soldiers that can fit in a castle, you increase the number of years the garrison will last, and therefore increase the probability of an AI assault. Also, when the AI assault comes, your garrison will not be scraps of beat-up forces that managed to run from the last battle, but they could be a full stack of hardened troops. So you'd get the chance to defend with a decent force, in other words. Some tests were done and it was found that only 1 stack could fit in the castle, no matter how big the limit was, but that still that 1 stack could be made to last for a very long time.

My question to everyone is, Is this a feature you'd like to see implemented in this mod? It would obviously work both ways: not only would the AI be more obliged to assault your citadel, but you'd likewise be obliged to assault an AI castle -- but to me this seems like an advantage in a game that is sadly usually lacking in fun siege battles. As long as it's tweaked so that the castle would fall SOMEtime, like in 10 years, so you wouldn't always be required to assault, this is something I'd be interested in. Anyone else?

OK I think that's it for now. I'm getting really excited about this -- hopefully the map will get done within a couple weeks and we can get started on the factions and everything else. Keep the suggestions coming,

CountMRVHS