Preview September 27th 2005

[Rodion Romanovich]

From now on we'll start collecting our latest work in nice previews like this one, which will be posted in this forum every now and then.

First of all, we can mention that the faction list is final (for those of you who didn't already know). The factions and their faction icons are as follows:

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Before we move on to the traditional screenshots of units, we'd also like to show that we're also paying attention to details like the banners/standards carried by the units. Units of the Abbassid khaliphate will go to battle with this impressive banner:

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Please note that the unit shown below the banner is not an Abbassid unit, the screenshot is merely an example of the beautiful banners that will appear in AOVAF.

The commander of a viking faction, or the victim of one, will most likely see these units in the battlefield:


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Viking huskarls - professional heavy axemen


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Geirmen - professional heavy spearmen

We'd like to point out that even though our mod is named after the vikings, we are in no way neglecting other factions. The Frankish Empire, which was split up into several parts at the starting date of the mod, has just become the Western Frankish empire (later to become the kingdom of France), the Central Frankish empire (for a period known as Lotharingia), and the Eastern frankish empire (later to be known as Imperium Romanum Sacrum, or the Holy roman empire). These three factions will be important powers in western Europe, the northern Italy area and central Europe, respectively. The Frankish armies relied much on their heavy cavalry.

The comes were among the most professional heavy cavalrymen of the period, and it's claimed that, although lighter than the Byzantine kataphraktoi, these troops were capable of defeating the latter in a frontal engagement. These troops were also responsible for the defeat of the muslims at Tours in 732 AD, and in many ways the basis for the Frankish successes on the battlefield during the military expansions of Charlemagne. The early comes shown below were equipped with a small round shield, whereas the later comes used a kite shield.


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Early comes, Western frankish empire


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Early comes, Eastern frankish empire

Finally, we'd like to preview some of the units of the gaelic Alba and Éire. Contrary to common misconception, the armies of the Kingdom of Alba (later Scotland) were mostly using gaelic equipment and tactics, rather than the equipment typical to the British and North European celts. These armies were based on spearmen, skirmishers and infantry, with limited cavalry and missile support. The kingdom of Alba recieved some influences from the Picts, whereas the Irish kingdoms remained fairly uninfluenced by outside cultures for a longer period. They were later influenced by the viking raids and conquests, by the introduction of the bonnachta, which are however out of the timeframe of this mod. Previewed below are soikernbannal, archers of militia quality, both the Irish and the Scottish version.


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Finally, here's a small image displaying which parts of the world the map will cover. We're using a slightly greater scale than the vanilla R:TW map, so that distances will be slightly longer. This is made in order to allow for insertion of more provinces. The AOVAF map will contain nearly 255 provinces and the terrain will also be improved compared to the vanilla R:TW map.

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Note that everything previewed above is or might be work in progress.

Enjoy!