The "Art of Medieval: Total War" Mod is recruiting.

[The Stranger]

This mod will be set (roughly) between 1080 and 1280, and is supposed to capture the essence of medieval warfare in that period. It's main objective is to portray as accurately as possible the armies, units and tactics used in that period. So in the first 80 years (1080-1160) the armies of most factions will almost solely consist of heavy cavalry, and infantry will be scarse and overall weak. For some factions ofcourse, like the Scots, Flemish and Italian city-states it will be the opposite. The idea is to get the real feeling of campaigning (making armies quite expensive to maintain but easy to recruit to shot that only few units were actually always maintained.) and the battle on the medieval battlefield (heavy charges followed by awesome melee, all in formation). Most good and reliable infantry will be recruited from expensive mercenaries. After 1160 will come the transition period of around 40 years when good native infantry will see it's rise (Welsh Longbowmen in England, Flemish Pikemen in the Lower Countries, Heavy Spearmen in Italy and Germany). The battlefields will change forever, archers and infantry will be more abundant and above all better skilled. The knights won't be the sole mean of force on the battlefield, and more important they will no longer be invincible. Around 1200 onwards to 1280 the infantry will play a more prominent role on the battlefield. But cavalry will also get heavier, so they are still a force to be reckoned with.

It is supposed to become a bit like EB, though not soo big. But more for the realism factor. The mod will start now with recruiting and doing research, but it won't actually start untill Kingdoms comes out and we can see wether that will bring any useful advantages. Interested read more here

[Furious Mental]

Anglo-Norman knights frequently fought dismounted. Also, the fyrd continued to be called up in that period.

[Incongruous]

Really, I'd always thought that the Early Anglo-Normans prefered to fight on horseback like the rest of their counterparts.

Large armies almost always consisted of large amounts of infantry.

[The Wizard]

Yes, but large armies were a very, very rare occurence throughout the medieval period. Almost all of the warfare consisted of raid and counter-raid.

[Geoffrey S]

Yeah, even major wars such as the Reconquista and the Hundred Years' War consisted largely of raids punctuated by the occasional set-piece battle. It's what most histories focus on, the drama of something like Crécy is easier to write about.

[The Stranger]

i know that, and forts and cities were nearly untakeable, but it also has to stay a playable game, so ill try to capture it as good as posible but it must still remain fun.

I also thought anglo-norman knights fought on horseback.

And armies were small and expensive that will certainly be implemented. the training (time it takes to replenish the recruitmentpool) time for good knights will also be increased.

[Incongruous]

Well its a total war game, people often complain about having to fight against small stacks. Also if cav are easier to producs than inf, then the ai will make more of the cav. resulting in very unhistorical encounters.

[The Stranger]

not true. in "early" medieval battles infantry was present on the battlefield but they were underused and undervalued... most fighting was done by nobles and their retinues on horses. and like hoplite warfare where the elites were fighting casualties were relatively low.

cavalry will be easier to produce than in vanilla, but it will be expensive also...

anyways... the mod is prolly dropped... no interest and no time

[The Wizard]

Infantry made a slow recovery following the introduction of the long-handled axe (a favorite weapon of the Vikings, even known as the "Danish axe" IIRC) and the pike somewhere in the 9th or 10th centuries across Europe, a time when the powerful infantry of the Vikings terrorized Atlantic Europe (but did so mostly by virtue of their mobility at sea, while arguably being out-raided by their contemporaries on land, the Magyars).

It must be said that it took until the renaissance of the city in Europe and the introduction of increasingly potent infantry weapons and tactics that infantry came into its own, with the Burgundian defeats at the hand of Swiss pike formations the proverbial death blow for the medieval knight (who himself experienced a renaissance when he was rehashed and reintroduced as the deadly gendarme of the 16th century).

[The Stranger]

the pikeformations didnt became capable to stop knightcharges until late 12th century, atleast then the first signs started to show, but it wasnt really until battles as stirling, bannockburn, courtrai (groeninghe, guldensporenslag) and the battles the swiss fought, in the early 14th century that the pike formations actually became the better of the 2. this triggered another event, the introduction of large archer armies, like that of the english.

[The Wizard]

As said, it was a slow recovery. And, indeed, the first time any infantry besides those armed with the Danish long-handled axe stood up to a charge by massed European knights was the early 13th century, when Brabantine pikemen held (at least, for a time) the charge of Europe's finest, the knights of France. Bouvines was won by the French, however, leaving Western Europe without a major war for decades to come, illustrating as well the point that major set-piece battles were a rarity in Medieval times.

About massed archer formations: they weren't necessarily better. Well-executed, a cavalry charge could still overpower and crush them, as happened at Patay. It must be said, though, that, in that instance, the English were caught unprepared. They were still too powerful for a simple all-out knightly charge alone to defeat if allowed to prepare a position out in the open.

[The Stranger]

agreed