Gameplay Discussion: Campaign Map

[Andreas]

So, I noticed that the KOD Thread was becoming more and more infected by talk about the gameplay in the mod, and less about kod and things related to that so I open these two topics, one about the Campaign and one about the Battles, Here you can ask questions, discuss your views of what you want and so on. We will try to answer your questions as much as we can. Have fun:)

/Andreas

[Andreas]

So, I will start this off by addressing, and copying, some questions and responses from the KOD topic that didn't fit there(something I intended to do yesterday...).

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Is there a possibility to add false dragons to spawn once in time as rebels? (4th Dimension)
Yes it is though they'd just be rebels... No special flag or anything (Myrddraal)

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Will the Shadow feature and/or be playable in the Early Era, or are you concentrating on the interaction between the human nations? (Antagonist)
The Shadow will be featured in both eras (Andreas)

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Which year does the first era start? (4th Dimension)
As for when the early era will start, we do not have a absolute number for that yet, but it might be somewhere around 100 years before the aiel war. The late will start with the fall of cairhien. (Andreas)

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Just a thought, would it be possible to script the emergance of a Malkieri Horde, with the sole purpose of fighting the Shadow? (Wigferth Ironwall)
We have talked about making The Golden Crane a playable faction in the late era. (Andreas)

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As a clarification, I can repeat the fact that we will have two eras, one pre-Rand and one with Rand. The difference will be in which factions (the early will have all the nations, the aiel, the shadow, Malkier and the sea folk) and the late will remove the nations of the Sea Folk, Mayene, Tear, Cairhien and the Aiel and add Seanchan, People of the Dragon, the Golden Crane, the Prophet and the Shaido Aiel. There will also be channeling troops in the late era and some other modifications regarding units.

[cdaulepp]

I have a couple of questions about territories. The biggest difference, and I mean the biggest, that I can find between Barbarian Invasion and Rome Total War is money $$$$$$$$. In Rome Total War, money was tight, but I could earn enough through keeping trade routes open and through taxes.

I really don't like Barbarian Invasion because I always run out of money. I am not sure if the decrease in the number of provinces is the cause or if when the expansion came out, they reduced the number of tradeable items or the income gained from trading. Maybe they did both. Also, I don't remember having ancillaries that gave me so many penalties to collecting taxes in Rome Total War as I get in Barbarian Invasion. It seems that every one of my generals, no matter which faction I play, ends up with -30 to -50 % tax penalties from ancillaries.

The nations in the Wheel of Time, even the smaller ones, seem to be fielding armies near 100,000 men. While the stronger nations seem to be able to support well over 100,000 men with no problem.

I hope this won't be an issue in The Wheel of Time: Total War. What have you done to test that each faction has an appropriate amount of money, and more importantly, money earning potential?

Changing the subject slightly...When the Aiel left the 3 fold land in The Fires of Heaven, each clan brought about 40,000+ spears to the "wetlands" implying they have even more than this because they would have left some men at home. With 12 clans, they had well over 500,000 men that were capable of going on campaign. I've heard that you plan for the Aiel to only have 4 territories. Are they going to be super rich? They should be in my opinion. Each one of those 4 territories represents the same production power as Andor, for example, from a militaristic point of view. If you'll remember, Andor can only field about 130,000+ men, and many of those will be new recruits and poorly trained. All of the Aiel are highly trained and experienced. What are your plans for the Aiel territories?

Is there any particular reason you chose only 4 territories for the Aiel instead of sub-dividing their lands?

cdaulepp

P.S. New_Name at wotmania.com updated his/her map today.

[GreyHuntr]

I don't know if the armies are that numerous. The combined forces of the West in the Aiel War were about 130,000 I think, and the Aiel numbered less than 100,000. There was also mention of 5,000 men being a sizable force in the days just before Rand. I think it was brought up when Elayne was talking to her advisors.

[Lord Sivart]

I agree with GrayHuntr, your numbers are way to big.
In the books (that i recall) the only people to get armies regularly over 100,000 are Rand and the Seanchan.

All four borderland counties have a cumulative army of 200,000 or so. Rounding off figure each brought 50,000 armsman. Figuring they left at least 1/3 of their men at home, thats about 67,000 or so soldiers from each borderland country.

Illian under Sammael most likely got over 100,000 but from that tone in the books he was grabbing every man he could.

Speaking of Sammael how are the forsaken going to be used in this game?

[cdaulepp]

I'm getting those numbers from the wotmania.com FAQ about the Military Forces of the Mainland. The FAQ is here: http://www.wotmania.com/faqtopic.asp?ID=107

The people at wotmania.com research that stuff a lot. Also, there's some guy/gal there named "New_Name" who is the ultimate poster when it comes to that type of stuff. He/She has a map with all of the armies on it, and there are a lot of nations with more than 100K men. I was just repeating what the FAQ says and what New Name said. I figured they knew their stuff.

cdaulepp

[Andreas]

I have a couple of questions about territories. The biggest difference, and I mean the biggest, that I can find between Barbarian Invasion and Rome Total War is money $$$$$$$$. In Rome Total War, money was tight, but I could earn enough through keeping trade routes open and through taxes.

I really don't like Barbarian Invasion because I always run out of money. I am not sure if the decrease in the number of provinces is the cause or if when the expansion came out, they reduced the number of tradeable items or the income gained from trading. Maybe they did both. Also, I don't remember having ancillaries that gave me so many penalties to collecting taxes in Rome Total War as I get in Barbarian Invasion. It seems that every one of my generals, no matter which faction I play, ends up with -30 to -50 % tax penalties from ancillaries.

The nations in the Wheel of Time, even the smaller ones, seem to be fielding armies near 100,000 men. While the stronger nations seem to be able to support well over 100,000 men with no problem.

I hope this won't be an issue in The Wheel of Time: Total War. What have you done to test that each faction has an appropriate amount of money, and more importantly, money earning potential?

Well, the last part will have to wait for betatesting, but I can tell you that the numbers of possibilities to trade will be more numerous then in the vanilla game, but also keeping large armies will be more expensive then in the normal game, and you will ahve to plan what you build. (You income form farming will for example be lower if you choose to produce loads of troops in a settlement...). We do this for a higher reality (the soldiers in WoT get a fair payment) and to avoid people stacking large armies everywhere, ehich is not very realistic.

And IIRC, we do not have alot of traits and ancillaries with negatives for tax income.

Changing the subject slightly...When the Aiel left the 3 fold land in The Fires of Heaven, each clan brought about 40,000+ spears to the "wetlands" implying they have even more than this because they would have left some men at home. With 12 clans, they had well over 500,000 men that were capable of going on campaign. I've heard that you plan for the Aiel to only have 4 territories. Are they going to be super rich? They should be in my opinion. Each one of those 4 territories represents the same production power as Andor, for example, from a militaristic point of view. If you'll remember, Andor can only field about 130,000+ men, and many of those will be new recruits and poorly trained. All of the Aiel are highly trained and experienced. What are your plans for the Aiel territories?

Is there any particular reason you chose only 4 territories for the Aiel instead of sub-dividing their lands?

cdaulepp

P.S. New_Name at wotmania.com updated his/her map today.

The layout of the provinces are not absolutes, but as for why we ATM has only 4 aiel regions is to make it harder for the person playing aiel, since the aiel has advantage in the fact that they can produce much better troops at much lower city levels then anyone else, troops not taking has high wage as normal troops. We also want to prevent the person playing the aiel from producing a large army in just a few years and then overrun the "wetlands". But the number might change.

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As for army numbers, I would say most nations field as many troops they can ATM in the books, because of civil wars, rebellions, seanchan threats, conflict about the dragon and so on, and I would say most field more then 100K, except the smallest nations. Also, since a lot of troops are tied to other forces then their native (the prophet, Rand, the Tower Guards, Seanchan and the Shadow), I would say the large part of the rand worlds men is in some kind of army. This was not the case before the Dragon of course, where most nations probably only had a core of soldiers, the elites and border patrols, as many countries has today (for example my native sweden, which has only a small number of paid soldiers, but in case of war could gather a pretty large force).

I want to add... I had written a much longer post, but my browser crashed before I could post:/

[Werthead]

It's true that the Aiel only brought 90,000 men or so with them in the Aiel War but remember that only FOUR clans, one-third of the total, crossed the Dragonwall. In Fires of Heaven I think it said that Rand's combined strength, the 11 Aiel clans following him plus the armies of Mayene, Tear and Cairhien are approaching the half-million mark.

The Borderlanders left behind enough men to face anything save the Trolloc Wars come again (big hint for what happens in Book 12, but there you go). I'd guess that the 200,000 men in the army represents no less than one-third of their total strength but possibly one-half.

Andor's combined military strength between all the houses would be about 200,000 men according to Knife of Dreams. However, the quality of some of these troops would be lacking. Andor is the largest and most populous Westland nation, so no individual nation should have more troops than Andor. However, I'm guessing Cairhien, Illian and Tarabon would not be far behind (although Cairhien is fairly ravaged by war), with Tear and Arad Doman just behind them. The Borderland nations are difficult to guesstimate, as are Amadicia and Altara (Altara would probably be pretty big if it was unified). Ghealdan and Murandy have the smallest armies from the look of things.

The Wotmania FAQ is pretty interesting but I don't think it has been updated to reflect the events of Knife of Dreams yet. The army size given for Arad Doman (the proper army plus the Dragonsworn, minus what now appears to be Rand's forces, would not far behind Andor in numbers) would indicate that the 'total mobilisation' numbers for the nations are far larger than what has been thought of previously. Previous wars, notably the Whitecloak War, were not 'total mobilisation' conflicts, but were instead fought with small, professional, mobile armies. For standing armies numbering in the hundreds of thousands, you have to go back to Artur Hawkwing's time.

[cdaulepp]

It's true that the Aiel only brought 90,000 men or so with them in the Aiel War but remember that only FOUR clans, one-third of the total, crossed the Dragonwall. In Fires of Heaven I think it said that Rand's combined strength, the 11 Aiel clans following him plus the armies of Mayene, Tear and Cairhien are approaching the half-million mark.

The Big White Book is uncertain on the number of Aiel men that crossed the Dragonwall during the Aiel War. On page 123, it says that the Alliance of Wetlander Nations totalled 170,000 men. Then it says that some reports put the Aiel numbers at twice that. Other reports, more reliable, put the Aiel numbers around 100,000 . Later reports, from the Aiel, say they had 70,000 spears. So there's no way to know for sure how many men the Aiel brought across.

Where in Fires of Heven does it say that Rand's Aiel plus all of his wetlander nations combined equals half a million men? A quote or chapter would be good.

In Lord of Chaos we do see how many men 5 clans of Aiel can field.

LoC - Chapter 4 - A Sense of Humor - "Then let us go to Illian now,” Jheran said. “Forget these wetlanders, Rand al’Thor. Already there are nearly two hundred thousand spears gathered here. We can destroy the Illianers before Weiramon Saniago and Semaradrid Maravin can be halfway there.”

Rand sent 5 clans to the Illian border. Those 5 clans have more than 200,000 men. So each clan consists of about 40,000+ men on this side of the Waste. We also see the same consistency of 40,000+ men from the Shaido.

aCoS - Prologue - "They faced a few dozen Aes Sedai, a few hundred wetlander soldiers, yet with the more than forty thousand algai’d’siswai they had insisted on, they still wanted their screens of scouts and their spears in reserve as if they faced other Aiel or a wetlander army. "

So we see that each clan has brought 40,000+ men across the dragonwall. The real number for each clan is probably closer to 50,000 but the battle at the walls of Cairhien took its toll on some of their men before we got an accurate count. Notice each clan still has over 40,000 after they have had big battles and suffered losses from the bleakness.

The Borderlanders left behind enough men to face anything save the Trolloc Wars come again (big hint for what happens in Book 12, but there you go). I'd guess that the 200,000 men in the army represents no less than one-third of their total strength but possibly one-half.

Andor's combined military strength between all the houses would be about 200,000 men according to Knife of Dreams. However, the quality of some of these troops would be lacking. Andor is the largest and most populous Westland nation, so no individual nation should have more troops than Andor. However, I'm guessing Cairhien, Illian and Tarabon would not be far behind (although Cairhien is fairly ravaged by war), with Tear and Arad Doman just behind them. The Borderland nations are difficult to guesstimate, as are Amadicia and Altara (Altara would probably be pretty big if it was unified). Ghealdan and Murandy have the smallest armies from the look of things.

I agree with most of this. Illian and Tear can field about the same amount though. They haven't been able to kill each other off yet. I agree with you about Ghealdan, Altara, and Murandy having the smallest armies. However, we don't know how large an army Tarabon or Arad Doman can field, only that they are about equal because they constantly fight over almoth plain (similar to how Tear and Illian always fight) yet they haven't killed each other off yet. However, I believe that Arad Doman and Tarabon can field almost 200,000 men each. Let me explain...

At the end of KoD, General Galgan gives us a quote that 350,000 men is probably all of Arad Doman's strength (see Remember the Old Saying), but a portion of this is Rand's army that he sent by gateway to Arad Doman. So one of the two armies fighting the Seanchan is Arad Doman's army. If the southern army is Arad Doman's that is 150,000 men plus Ituralde's 20,000 men. That would mena Arad Doman could field 170,000 men. If it happens that the northern army is Arad Doman's, and the southern army is Rand's, then Arad Doman has 200,000 men in the field. Either way, Arad Doman can field at least 170,000 men. They could probably field more if Graendal didn't have Bandar Eban in a mess and if she didn't have them fighting before Ituralde united them together. So Arad Doman can field around 200,000 men. Likewise, Tarabon should be able to field this many as well.

The Wotmania FAQ is pretty interesting but I don't think it has been updated to reflect the events of Knife of Dreams yet. The army size given for Arad Doman (the proper army plus the Dragonsworn, minus what now appears to be Rand's forces, would not far behind Andor in numbers) would indicate that the 'total mobilisation' numbers for the nations are far larger than what has been thought of previously. Previous wars, notably the Whitecloak War, were not 'total mobilisation' conflicts, but were instead fought with small, professional, mobile armies. For standing armies numbering in the hundreds of thousands, you have to go back to Artur Hawkwing's time.

It was updated back in November with the information from Knife of Dreams. And New_Name has been checking them on their facts and I've noticed several corrections thanks to him/her.

I agree with you that the previous line of thought has to be revised because we're seeing several nations raising armies in the hundreds of thousands. I'll concede the point that those are probably total mobilization numbers and not necessarily "trained soldiers".