The Ilsamiren Wars

[NodachiSam]

That is some very interesting info, that northern kingdom sounds very interesting

I don't really think slaves works too well with ores, they are sailers but they arn't stupid (Unless the ores are also modified so that they become something like spiked clubs). Perhaps you could make them fishermen and they could have 1 or 2 javelins (fishing spears) and modified fillet knives or something. I don't have RTW but there is a unit like that isn't there? I guess the spike ores could work afterall. I like the idea for seamen alot, like swashbucklers !

Perhaps the ocean goers can be jade and blue since it is more watery and to avoid being too similar to the western kingdom. Perhaps the northern kingdom can be dark brownish red and white.

The whole thing sounds even cooler now :)

You should give www.photobucketcom a try. I've had no problems with them and it is really quick.

[Ilsamir Lord]

The fillet knives are a good idea, and yes there are units like that in R:TW (Cilician Pirates, from near modern Turkey, armed with harpoons and axes).

Thanks for the recommendation. Those colour ideas are good too!

[GrimSta]

Howabout giving the Seabourne corssbowmen a pavase (veyr large shield) to hide behind when firing....it could be like shield wall it would just lower the firing speed as well

[Ilsamir Lord]

That's a definite possibility, but we would need a new animation I think. I'll be adding more information on units in a while.

[Lonely Soldier]

I like the idea for the ethed! Hope this all goes well for you. You should probably start advertising on other sites as well.

[Ilsamir Lord]

I would, but for some reason I'm not allowed to post in the Mod Discussion forum...

I'll advertise at the SCC and the TWC though.

[GrimSta]

you cant post in Mod Discussion because your a junior member, just wait a bit, get your post count up and it'll change.

I Could always post for you, but it would be better if the creater posted.

[boastj]

Hi if found your post on the WOT-TW forum and thought I’d check it out.
Love the originality
Couple of questions
It sounds brilliant but do you think that you have too few factions why don’t you add a few barbarian tribes or something, everyone loves barbarians and maybe a few desert tribes that have been left alone by The Mechathenain (if they are the ones fleeing the encroaching desert).
Haw about a slave kingdom, one city or something.
Will you have any original buildings?
What sort of mercenaries will there be?
Will you have anything equivalent to elephants?
hope it all goes well and when will it be out

[NodachiSam]

I would love to do concepts for you but I can't spare any time until my animation is done That'll be winter break for me.

[Ilsamir Lord]

NoDachiSam - no problem - life must come first. It's very generous of you to offer in the first place!

Thanks for the compliment!

On to your questions:

More factions?

Possibly, but I have only seven simply because of the culture limit - I want the most variety between them as possible, so that playing as each faction is a unique and interesting experience - even if there are fewer of them.

Will you have any original buildings?

Definitely. We will also have new walls and things. Ideally we need a modeller to focus only on buildings, as they will be a big job. I'd also like to have unique seige weapons, but I don't think that's possible.

What sort of mercenaries will there be?

That's a good question! And one that I hadn't yet considered... Well, the mercenaries will be appropriate to the climate I expect - they will also be much less professional than the ones in R:TW - you won't have units of hoplites and such, mostly smallish bands of brigands etc.

Will you have anything equivalent to elephants?

I'm not sure yet... we will probably have some large animals, but I'm not really sure. They would be very rare and expensive if we did, and perhaps exclusively available as mercenaries until quite a late stage - to illustrate the difficulty of finding and training them.

[boastj]

will you be including any "historical” battles

[Ilsamir Lord]

Another good question! I would hope to, they would be a good subject for a demo! I've just had some ideas about a few we could do because of your question! Thanks!

[GrimSta]

Remember! If you can model (god knows im trying to learn) then we need you as this project is in vital need of them!!

[Ilsamir Lord]

I'll second that! We are still in the planning stages at the moment, but soon we will have concepts to work from and any modellers will of course welcomed with open arms!

Grimsta - do you know why I'm still a junior member? I've broken fifty posts... what number did you have to get to?

[Casmin]

Sounds like a great idea! I used to write in the fantasy adventure genre. This is right up my alley. Keep up the great work!

[Ilsamir Lord]

Some more units:

THE OCEAN TRIBES

Spear Throwers
These are the lowliest warriors of the Ocean Tribes, but they are still quite able to inflict casualties. They wear no armour, as soldiers are expected to provide their own, and carry flint headed spears.

Foresters – hide in woods, long and short range
These men have lived all their lives in the jungles and forests of the scattered islands of the Dividing Sea. For this reason they are expert at hiding in woodland. They too carry flint headed spears and wear light armour but they also carry long handled, flint headed axes.

Waitanath Warriors
These men have been groomed as warriors since their births. They are truly fearsome, beginning every encounter with a terrible war cry and then charging to the fight with flint edged fighting sticks which the wield with terrifying speed and deftness. They wear little armour, but their martial skills more than make up for this.

Waves
Waves carry massive stone headed clubs and wear armour made from plates of wood. They are best used to break up formations of heavy infantry before their lighter armed comrades mop up.

Phanga-Huilin
Phanga-Huilin means Death Rain in Oceanic and indeed these men do rain death upon their foes. They are armed with large bows which are bound in vines and sinews to add further to their power. These men are trained to fire very quickly and with great accuracy, hurling their massive arrows hundreds of yards. They are not well trained for melee, but the strength in their arms makes them more than a match for light infantry.

Tanl-Aoirin
Tanl are the fierce sea-birds which flock around the islands of the Dividing Sea, scavenging and hunting. The Aoirin are their keepers, their friends and allies. They are experts in signalling to the Tanl and can order them to attack specific targets with the knowledge that they will fight until they or their enemies are defeated.


THE NORTHERN KINGDOM

INFANTRY
Peasants

Mountaineers
Hardened by life in the harsh mountains of the north, these men, though not as well armoured as their professional comrades, are extremely hardy and brave. They are armed with sharpened staves (which they usually use for climbing) and are only really effective against other light infantry - though they will easily defeat peasants.

Halberdiers
Halberds are brutal weapons, usually consisting of a large, heavy axe-head on the end of a long pole. These men are trained to use them as they should be used - with wide swings - in loose formations. For this reason they are somewhat vulnerable to cavalry. They are heavily armoured.

Foot Knights
These are simply knights who fight on foot, they therefore give up their lances in favour of their long sabres, but they do retain their shields. They are just as heavily armoured and against other heavy infantry are nearly invulnerable except when heavily outnumbered.

Spearmen
Armed with long spears and capable of forming clusters against cavalry, these men are best used to protect weaker infantry.

Swordsmen
Armed with long curved swords these men fight with slicing motions, and are therefore not as effective against steel armour as against lighter protection. They are still excellent at holding positions against infantry.

Archers
Armoured and armed simply and economically these soldiers should not go unwatched when the fight nears but are good for thinning out enemy formations.

Siege Archers
These men are armed with fearsome, large bows of incredible draw weight and are used mainly in sieges, when firing rate is not as important as piercing armour.

CAVALRY
Ethed Chariots
These chariots are drawn by armoured ethed and crewed by swordsmen.

[professorspatula]

It is nice to see a bit of originality and a good concept, although you have given yourself - and your team - a massive task to undertake. You will require dozens of new models, and some new animations, new textures, plus a massive new map et al. At this stage surely posting suggested unit lineups and historical battles is a bit pointless until you have actually got the means to carry out the proposals. A project like this will require literally hundreds of hours of work (before testing), whereas typing out a unit list takes just a few minutes. Amazingly you are hoping others will be able to produce the majority of the work, for your own idea and project. I hope if you manage to assemble a group of willing modellers and skinners etc that they are given a creative freedom of their own otherwise there's very little in it for themselves. Keeping them motivated is perhaps amongst your hardest tasks. Generally, those who can model can pick and choose what mod they want to work on, which puts them in a powerful position if you can't do that yourself.

That said, good luck with your mod. I personally would suggest aiming for a smaller project for now, rather than the entire thing. Perhaps setting the mod on just one of the major land masses, and having just a few factions involved would be a more realistic goal for now. You'd require much less work, and importantly - fewer new models and a much easier to make map. With less of a workload for your modding team, they have smaller target to aim for, which is more likely to keep them motivated. That way you'd have a much greater chance of getting something playable released that if the public like, will mean you can go on to make the rest of world - possibly with an increased number of willing modders to help. Like it or not, you are competing with every other mod out there, and getting something complete released that the public want to play is a priortiy. Anyway, I hope the mod gets past the basic 'feature-list' stage which is sadly where many mods get stuck at, before being forgotten entirely.

[Lord Winter]

Looks good thou you might want to add more calvary to both factions.

[Ilsamir Lord]

professorspatula - Thank you for the wish of luck, and what you say is true, there will be a lot of work. However, given the amount of interest I have recieved in the short time the thread has been up, and that I already have a mapper, two part time modellers, two skinners and two concept artists, I think the mod will be successful. If there is truly not enough interest to complete the whole world map idea then I will reduce it accordingly.

Destroyer of Hope - those two factions are island nations, horses are not native to there regions, though they will probably be able to recruit horse units if they conquer regions with horses.

[Lord Winter]

Destroyer of Hope - those two factions are island nations, horses are not native to there regions, though they will probably be able to recruit horse units if they conquer regions with horses.

They could still import horses, maybe you could make them more expensive and less powerful on the islands.

[Ilsamir Lord]

Well, I see where you are coming from, but horses are only available to one faction (at least at the start) and that is a deliberate balance. Other factions have their own powerful units, or at least units which are the best in their class etc., the Ilsamiri happen to get horses, the Northern Kingdom gets the Ethed, the Ocean Tribes get Phanga-Huilin and Tanl-Aoirin.

[NodachiSam]

Thanks for the imput professorspatula. We will do well to keep in mind what you've said. We have to remain flexible like that. We've just begun and its a long road but we'll make it. Underaiming ourselves is a good idea. We can always add more later.

Ilsamir Lord: I reccomend that we work at giving each faction (or culture if we want rebels) a relatively distrinct look. This mod is in a fantastic setting after all (with gods and such). Even the Ilsamiri and the northern kingdom should look somewhat distinct while remaining similar.

Also, I hope that the history of the ilsamir alliances doesn't prevent the mod from being a total war game. In your story the Ilsamir may be the strongest but in the mod each faction should be somewhat balanced against each other so things don't always go the same way. Otherwise we'll have a very dull mod with less replayability.

Does every faction have name a for itself? Only 3 factions seem to have real names so far.

The relationship between the ilsamir and the western and southern kingdom might be difficult to put into game. In our source material the ilsamir protect with west in exchange for food. For balance issues we don't want one to be vastly superior to his neighbour so perhaps instead the western provinces have tradable foods and a trading post (what is the equivalent in RTW? *sigh* I'll get it eventually. That's the reason I'm keeping myself to only concept and pre-development for now)) and the Ilsamir trade to them weapons or something combat related. (they both must start with trading capabilities or quickly gain them). In this way we could simulate their benefitial relationship without having to get too deep into coding for it.
The southern-middle kingdom relationship is easy enough though.

The Macanthenian situation is certainly interesting but I wonder what is keeping this kingdom together since they don't have their own source of food. Perhaps these guys have rich deposits of minerals or daimonds that make their arid home worth keeping and they rely on trade for income and foodstuff. Maybe they are simply invading other areas to get control of food production areas because whoever (maybe seaborne and oceaners) are demanding unreasonable amounts for the food. They could have low farm income in own their lands and require trade income to make any money. They also need to invade somebody or they might be somewhat stagnant.

Ilsamiri, do you want to do most developement here or on our website? If we do it there it'll be easier to seperate discussion between different categories instead of just having everything in one thread. On the other hand though we do want to attract potential team members and keep our mod in the public eye a bit.

[Ilsamir Lord]

Faction Distinctions, Balancing and Names - I heartily agree on the distinctiveness suggestions. The distinctions in design should be based "historically", so yes, the Northern Kingdom should be similar, but different to the Ilsamiri. The Southern and Western Kingdoms are also somewhat similar, but they are also independant, just as the people of Iberia had their own culture even after the Romans had their influences.

The balancing for the Ilsamiri should not be too difficult. Though they are powerful militarily they are weakening and stagnating at this time, their northern settlements are quite weak and they will begin with relatively small armies.

All the factions have names for themselves, I'm finalising those at the moment.

Western/Southern/Ilsamiri Alliance - We should be able to work something out. The Western Kingdom will provide trade in Grain and the Southern in everything else. I'll have to think more about this.

The Mechathenain - Mechathenain society is inherently peaceful, and many of its officials are deeply optimistic and religious. They have for many years believed that their lands would be revived by the Bezhan (their gods). By the time the mod starts, their lands are still desert and they are living in subsistence. They are not able to make profit from their grain stocks as these are dwindling. Their religiosity guides them away from exploration, as they believe that there is nothing else beyond their lands. In a last ditch attempt, they build and stock a fleet to seek new, more fertile lands.

Development - The development will be easier to do at our forums, but we will still publish a lot of our work here. I'll check back here periodically to answer questions too. So most of the development will happen at our forums.

[Lucjan]

The mod looks like it's coming along incedibly well Islamar...I still say damn you for announcing yours not 10 minutes before I logged on to announce mine...It was for the best though, thank you. Now I have time to work on it in a form of comfortable obscurity so that I can have the majority of the grunt work done before the actual announcement.

I'm becoming quite interested in these Ilsamiren Wars though too. And I think I'd like to help out. If you need any help on mapping, scripting, 2d animation for banners, icons, screens, or whitty fictional quotes for loading screens, I can help you out. Just drop me a line and let me know.

[Ilsamir Lord]

Cheers Lucjan :) .

Everyone - the MII thread is up and running, and will be the place for all further updates on the mod at these forums. Please post comments there from now on :D