Princes, Kings and Heroes – work in progress mod for M2TW

This mod is meant as a fun mod set loosely around the events and people in Medieval Britain in the period 1280 to 1330.

So did much happen around then?

Firstly Llewelyn ap Gruffydd the only native Welsh prince of Wales was drawn into a second war with Edward I due to the actions of his brother Dafydd. This resulted in the conquest of Wales and the death of both Llewelyn and Dafydd. However Welsh discontent erupted shortly afterwards with the main revolt being that of Madog ap Llywelyn.

The English had two ruling kings in this period Edward I and Edward II the latter being murdered by his own nobles. Edward III although King in this period didn’t finally get control of his Kingdom until late 1330.

The only other hereditary title in England at this time was that of Earl. There were 9 English Earls at the start of this period plus the Earl of Ulster and Earl of Richmond (Duke of Brittany) who had lands in England.

The 9 Main English Earls were the powerful Earl of Lancaster (and Derby) the Earl of Gloucester, Earl of Oxford, Earl of Hereford (and Essex), Earl of Surrey, Earl of Warwick, Earl of Pembroke, the Earl of Arundel and the Earl of Lincoln. Additionally there was the Earl of Richmond (title held by the Duke of Brittany and the Earl of Ulster.
A further 6 Earls were created in this period during Edward II’s reign.
So were they all staunch supporters of the King… well not exactly. In the period 1322 to 1330 seven English Earls lost their lives as a result of rebellion or conspiracy against the King. The last of the Earls to die was the powerful Marcher lord Roger Mortimer from whom Edward III managed finally to take power back in October 1330.

Scotland of course is well known in this period for the Scottish wars of Independence. It started this period with King Alexander III but he was too anxious to get back to his young wife and died suddenly after falling from his horse. This led to the disputes between the Balliol’s, The Bruce’s and the Comyn’s and of course the rise and fall of the hero William Wallace. Eventually the Bruce’s came out on top in this period although Robert was excommunicated for killling John Comyn in the church of the Friary at Dumfries. He also had 3 of his brothers executed by the English and another brother Edward was killed in Ireland after the Scots invaded.

Well that's the basic setting. I'm not recruiting at the moment but the mod is underway particularly on the mapping side.

Early iteration of part of the map showing rough outline of total map.

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Wow. Please, continue this. I beg of you.

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It's a great idea, very similar to one I was planning (but couldn't quite get the map to work).
I have some questions for you if you have the time to answer!
How will you portray the Welsh- as separate kingdoms or as one entity? Are you having separate factions (Houses or suchlike?) within England and Scotland themselves to keep the variety in the game and avoid battles with rebels and one or two other factions only?
Are you going to add new unique units or keep with just retexturing existing units for the new factions? What are you basing your choice of settlements on?
Do you know how the game runs on the new campaign map without the papal states- is it like in RTW with CTDs when you click on the relevant bits on the UI?

It's looking good, this should be a very enjoyable mod!

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D Wilson
I'll try and answer some of your questions here but I'm still in the planning phase.

Regarding the Welsh - I haven't totally decided but will clearly have Gwynedd, and probably Powys (based on the De la Pole family as they changed their name within the time period). Its likely the southern Welsh areas will only be represented through rebels as the issue is closeness of castles/towns. I am thinking though of having an emergent faction should Gwynedd be wiped out. This may end up just being rebels but possibly as said just an emergent faction.

England (and Scotland will have separate factions based on the main earls and maybe some other families in order to make it more enjoyable. It would be too one sided otherwise and I suspect pretty boring. This is also given that most of the main contenders were at some point trying outright to gain overall control of an area and weren't always that clear whose side they were on. i.e. one of the starting points in the Scottish wars of independence is effectively the Bruce's defending Carlisle for the English against the Scots led by the Comyns. Also, in Edward II's reign there was simply all out civil war between some of the Earls and in effect for the last period of this it was Roger Mortimer who effectively ruled.

For Scotland there will be at least 3 factions depending on how Alexander III is handled. But likely I will let the Balliol's continue as the same 'royal' faction but the Comyn's and Bruce's would certainly be independent factions.

Regarding units I don't have 3D Max so at this point in time its certainly using existing models and reskinning but you can do quite a bit with that and unit stats anyway.

Settlements will be based on 4 criteria 1) Actual main settlements at the time in terms of population, 2) Certain strategic Castles 3) Key places for each of the factions and 4 ) simply balancing out as for example most of the population is in the South East and so is already overcrowded in terms of game play in my map.

Not really sure what you mean regarding the papal states. I've only tried a few goes to check things are basically working and only added back in a few factions although the papal states aren't one of the ones added back in. I haven't seen any UI bits come up that may cause a crash but its early days yet.

Hopefully that addressed most of your questions but any thoughts or suggestions then please fire away.

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You could perhaps have South Welsh regions themselves under the control of the English crown, or at least a faction closely affiliated with it (or even call it the Council of Wales, based in Ludlow), and then use an emergent faction or two there to keep the pressure on and to represent the various rebellions and uprisings of the time. Do you know if it is possible to have re-emergent factions?
I think the problem is also as you say the close proximity of castles to each other in regions like this. One possible solution might be to represent the less major of them as walled towns. Are you going to prevent players from converting their settlements and severely limit the levels to which the vast majority of settlements can be developed? Obviously there weren't a large amount (or even a small amount really) of huge cities in Britain at this time and because such a geographically small region is represented with the map you could end up seeing an almost game breaking amount of huge cities and citadels.
I am really interested in seeing this mod come to fruition, British medieval history is my thing, I have to admit, and I think it is as yet woefully underrepresented in the video games market.

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D Wilson
I need to plot out the various factions to see where things are ending up but Ludlow was held by the De Lacy's and then became a principle power base of the Mortimer's so I doubt I will be centering many of the Welsh around there.

I intend to restrict populations quite a bit and some castles I intend to very severely restrict as they never really grew. I'm not really sure yet what I want to do with castles as in effect a walled town does just as well as a castle in the game as the AI was never much good at sieges in the first place (so making it harder made less sense to me).

I don't think you can have re-emergent factions though it would of been a nice feature. I also need to check you can emerge away from the edge but the scripting of the emergent factors in vanilla for specific locations seems to suggest this is possible.

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