XVI -XVII mod

[gugul]

Well... you are right in what you said (and was aware of the state the 2 countries had degraded during that period) since playing new factions is fun but i just don't want other players to think there was nothing there:D.
Anyway... i am looking forward to playing 2.0 and especially curious to seeing the new campaign. I am sure it will be fun since you've done a great job with the mod so far:).
Cheers!

[ElectricEel]

A while ago, I wrote in a thread in the Main Hall that I would try this mod and post my impressions. I have been rather occupied lately, which is the reason for the long delay, but here they are.

I got MTW with the Eras pack and haven't played it much. Not that I've played Rome for quite a while, either (I am currently waiting for EB to get their next release out). I am not a very skilled player.

I started my first serious campaign in this mod as the Livonian Confederacy in the Age of Exploration scenario. A few turns in, Poland and Russia began fighting, and I decided to join in on the side of Poland. The russians were a pushover, only bothering to fight once I had their huge, but poor-quality army cornered in a single province (Lesser Khazar). They did give the poles a beating, though. The first actual battle of the campaign happened when I went to relieve the poles being sieged by Russia in Lithuania - they might have been able to handle it on their own, but I didn't want to take any risks. I believe Poland lost Chernigov and Pereyslavl to Russia, which I then took for myself. Poland was also attacked by Denmark, Sweden and some other factions; they were reduced to only Lithuania, Smolensk and Kiev before they made peace with most of their foes. (Denmark took Prussia, Brandenburg took Poland's other terrorities. Sweden made no gains and got at least one of their kings executed.)

I took all of Russia's provinces. After I took their last province, Lesser Khazar, Georgia foolishly attacked me; they held Khazar, Georgia and Armenia with their relatively weak army. I pushed them to Armenia without a battle; at this point, the AI used an exploit to prevent me from crushing it . With our armies in our respective provinces, we both ordered our armies to attack each other. However, the AI would always cancel the attack, and somehow, this caused my army's attack order to be also cancelled, resulting in a stalemate .

After a few turns of this, I made peace with Georgia, who were later finished off by our neighbours...



...the Knights of St. John, who have conquered the core terrorities of the Ottoman Empire!

They didn't do this alone, of course; they had help from Venice (who called a national levy on Rum at one point) and Egypt, and probably some other factions. Still, pretty impressive for an one-province minor. They appear to have a fairly strong military, but are occupied with Venice at present. They have been excommunicated. I do not think it is prudent to fight so far from my powerbase, so I decided to leave them alone and focus my expansion towards the west. I have garrisoned Georgia with a full stack, led by a 6-star prince, and am expanding the fortress there in case of war, and to discourage the Knights from starting one.

After I made peace with Georgia, I chose weakened Poland-Lithuania (now just Lithuania...) as my next target. I wiped out the royal family in one turn. The fortresses are still holding in rebel hands, but will fall soon. Here is the present state of the world (1518 AD):



Denmark has just gone to war with Sweden. Sweden has less than 300 men in total, so they will be crushed soon; however, I plan to intervere, since Sweden is my ally and I can gain a couple of wealthy provinces in the progress. Another possible target is the Crimean Khanate; I had a long-standing alliance with them, but it is no longer in effect because they are fighting my ally, the Moldovian Principality. Their provinces are moderately wealthy, would give me another port to the Black Sea, and would smooth out my geographical borders.

I've had fun playing this. Some notes:

-England and Scotland have been fighting for a while, England seemingly the stronger of the two, but neither has gained the upper hand. I am not sure what is current balance of power between them, though it seems the scots have a serious loyalty problem (probably because they have lost provinces often, though they have always taken them back).

-France is being gangbanged, and has absolutely no allies. Probably not unusual.

-The centre of trade in Volga-Bulgaria doesn't permit the recruitment of urban militia... Intentional?

-Foot knights may be a little *too* good... They are basically armored landsknetch (sp?) pikemen that cost less than half the price and have the added advantage of being able to use swords and shields, too. There is a serious temptation to recruit only knights as close combat troops (especially as I can only recruit from two provinces at the moment). Then again, I am swimming in money in this campaign due to having conquered Eastern Europe - perhaps the knetchpissen would seem like a more attractive alternative if I had to worry more about money.

[cegorach]

[QUOTE=ElectricEel]

However, the AI would always cancel the attack, and somehow, this caused my army's attack order to be also cancelled, resulting in a stalemate .

Very interesting, but possible. Sometimes when two factions attack at the same time each other the engine cancells both attacks, anyway very interesting to see that.

...the Knights of St. John, who have conquered the core terrorities of the Ottoman Empire!

Good one ! I like the way sometimes the game behaves - completelly impossible to predict for sure.

-The centre of trade in Volga-Bulgaria doesn't permit the recruitment of urban militia... Intentional?

Yes. The only reason why the trade center is here is to give access to some Russian units for the Kazan Khanate - they can't build russian military reform structures for obvious reasons.

-Foot knights may be a little *too* good... They are basically armored landsknetch (sp?) pikemen that cost less than half the price and have the added advantage of being able to use swords and shields, too. There is a serious temptation to recruit only knights as close combat troops (especially as I can only recruit from two provinces at the moment).

Maybe, but have much smaller units - sometimes it is the decisive factor.
Besides try to dismount them you will see something you might find useful

[ElectricEel]

Maybe, but have much smaller units - sometimes it is the decisive factor.
Besides try to dismount them you will see something you might find useful

Yes, I noticed that.

[Icefrisco]

...the Knights of St. John, who have conquered the core terrorities of the Ottoman Empire!

ive had the same complaint for a while! they always seem to form a gigantic empire and navy from just rhodes!

other then that i have very few complaints, since this is by far the best mod i have ever played! ive had just a few mods but this is the best!

[cegorach]

It seems that the AI can handle their fleet better when only one sea area is sufficient to invade something, but the game is different every time - I remember fighting the Turks with my Bavarians in this campaign - they conquered everything up to Switzerland so there is random factor in the campaign.

[SkyElf]

Any news on when you will finish your next patch with ECW included? Great work and enjoying the MOD!

[cegorach]

It won't be a patch, but a full release with one self-installer required to run the mod ( there will be more optional ones, but this is only for adding more stuff such as music, movies etc).


About the ECW soon I should show some screenshots. Besides I am toying with pretty weird idea of 2 campaigns on British Isles - second involving the Spanish Armada... ECW for sure, perhaps Armada as well...

[cegorach]

With the release of the coming PMTW 2.0 you will see a new campaign on the British Isles - English Civil Wars.

Beginning

After the battle at Marston Moor and the start of Montrose's revolt in Scotland.



* Isle of Man will be given to the Cavaliers - the rest will stay this way.

Factions


Cavaliers

Beaten at Marston Moor, but not yet broken. Montrose will distract the Scots and after the army recovers from the last defeat the roundheads will feel the full power of the Cavalier horsemen !


Roundheads

The north is cleared from the enemy, but he is still dangerous. Defeat him and watch out for the Scots and the Irish.


Covenant Scots

You have to beat the rebels and later use the fact the English are fighting each other.

Irish Confederates

Clear Ulster and get rid off the English invaders. Can you dare for more ?

Ulster
- unplayable

Will act as a notable distraction for the Irish




FEATURES

Minimalised techtree.

Recruitment tags - you have a limited number of structures to rise troops - some of those special.
Easy and cheap to build or re-build allow rising soldiers for your cause.

Differences in importance of a province, its wealth, support of the population to your cause and finally the factor who actually rises them - all affect the speed of recruitment and the size of the units you can get.
This means that London acts as a real powerbase for the Roundheads where they can rise large units of infantry much quicker than Cavaliers if they ever grasp the capital.
This means that even if the Cavaliers manage to push them to the south-east corner of England they will still have the ability to recruit large armies.


Recruitment tags are limited to:

- 3 for the Irish (one special),
- 4 for the Scottish (one-two special),
- 7 for the Cavaliers (5 special),
- 9 for the Roundheads (2 special),

see some of them if you like here:

Irish



Scottish





Cavaliers








Roundheads









The system of recruitment points such as those will be used in the main europen campaign for the PMTW 2.0 - to represent nomadic nations.




I will show some screenshots from the ECW campaign later.

[western]

i have seen how random the ottomans are on one of my games were huge!!! but within 10years were only in armenia on one game they were taken out by venice within 8years

[cegorach]

Finally something interesting to show.


Mounted Pikemen

When marching, fighting or standing still they do not use their steeds.




But when they need to move quickly they mount the steeds and re-deploy quickly.



Present in the new campaign Lion of the North and available to all German factions ( Hapsburgs, Bavaria, Brandenburg, Saxony, Palatinate, Munster, Hessen, Pommern, Courland) + for Bohemia and by the German Petty State for those factions which can create one (e.g. Poland or Spain).

The unit will be excellent for those who like cavalry armies - together with musket armed dragoons these dragoon pikemen will be able to create a defensive line wherever necessary.

Their main flaws however will be small numbers (50 men), slightly weaker stats and the inability to fight well in forested areas (have horses which cause such problem).

I am quite proud of this unit - it required some cunning approach to create this hybrid.

More later.

[Icefrisco]

wow! thats a great idea! can you show some other new units?

[cegorach]

Here is something els


The idea is useful for mods using areas of recruitment or homelands so its use might be limited.


Basically I tried to represent the horde from RTW in the older MTW VI engine.


So we have those zones of recruitment limiting the number of provinces which can rise soldiers, but for mobile societies of nomadic nations it seems somehow unfair.

I decided to replace the zones by more sophisticated design - a certain ( e.g. 5) number of UNIQUE (so only one each) buildings.
Each building can rise soldiers, but the number will still be small enough - because there are only 5 such buildings only 5 provinces can rise units of fleet-hoved nomadic cavalry.
Because there are only 5 such places we can ABANDON the restriction of the areas of recruitment and allow recruitment everywhere !

Now there is another thing to remember - the structures should be cheap and easy to build (for example 250 florines and one turn to erect one) so creating one will never be a problem.

So we have a situation when we have 5 provinces, each with one camp , but later our empire conquers more. New provinces in new areas which in would be away from our area of recruitmen, but now it is no problem - simply destroy whatever camp/-s you need and buid it anywhere you like.

This way your recruitment centers follow your army - exactly as a nomadic nation would do. Because you have a limited number of those you will never create oversized army larger than it would be in reality, but also you would have the soldiers where they are necessary.




There are numerous possibilities to explore:
- 2 level camps with the second level as more permanent settlement which would allow recruiting more advanced soldiers,
- mixed recruitment - some units from the camp, some from the original homeland,
- camps can be limited by a certain resource e.g. called grassland so will be possible to create only in certain provinces where the grasslands were more suitable to the nomadic horde's needs,
and many, many more.


So in general the idea has its obvious advantages:
- allows to create mobile empires, nations on move which will never be too large,
- improves looting income because the omads will not need too many buildings on their own and can burn and destroy everything else (if allowed),
- nomadic faction will be harder to eliminate, because it can always re-build its camps somewhere else, it has no real homeland and doesn't need too much to create an army after all,


Of course nothing is without certain flaws:
- the AI never destroyes what it built so they will not benefit from the idea too much,
- the AI might decide to build ALL camps in one place too... Fortunatelly the risk can be lowered by giving CATHEDRAL_INCOME to every single one and the AI has a hardcoded limit of such buildings possible to rise in one province - this way it will never construct too many in one place.
- the camp still needs a sort of a castle in the same province, but one level fort is enough. I suggest to allow building such structures in one turn's time.
- finally it might be a good idea to rise the number of soldiers in nomadic units because the army might be seen as too small by the human player (when he fights against it) - from my experience I can propose 100 men for each unit of cavalry and no changes for infantry (cavalry should be the main power of the army anyway.


Still I assume some of you can find the idea very interesting and useful.

Here are the screenshots of such sructure from the incoming last release of PMTW mod.






Regards Cegorach

[ElectricEel]

Interesting stuff. You're really stretching the old MTW engine to its limits.

[cegorach]

I will just say that even tanks, airplanes or flying dragons which spit fire are possible in MTW VI - the engine is more flexible than most of the modders dare to think.

[cegorach]

Some dragoon units in the lion of the North campaign will use the same steed as the Mounted Pikemen i.e. vanishing when not necessary see some results here




and most bizzare one



those guys were late so took their horses.

[bobbysocks]

Looks great! Been playing v1.5 for a couple of months now
Two questions:
1) Do you have any idea when v.2.0 will be ready?
2) Is it possible to add dead bodies? I feel like somethings missing when there are no dead guys lying around after a fight...

[Deus ret.]

Ceg, this is AWESOME! I knew MTW was superior to RTW and M2TW engines, but what you extract from it seems almost superhuman! can't wait to play 2.0, although I guess it will still take a while given all those new features you're implementing all the time

edit: oh and btw ...only if I got you right, but why are you taking on a M2TW version? I can't play it on my computer but have tested it thoroughly and all I can say it's basically RTW with a different design, but similar limitations. gets somewhat dull after a while, contrary to M1TW....

[cegorach]

Ceg, this is AWESOME! I knew MTW was superior to RTW and M2TW engines, but what you extract from it seems almost superhuman! can't wait to play 2.0, although I guess it will still take a while given all those new features you're implementing all the time

edit: oh and btw ...only if I got you right, but why are you taking on a M2TW version? I can't play it on my computer but have tested it thoroughly and all I can say it's basically RTW with a different design, but similar limitations. gets somewhat dull after a while, contrary to M1TW....

MTW2 despite its numerous flaws has certain advantages. Of course the freaking patches will mean the mod will not really take off for some time, but at least the research will be complete.
I am slowly becoming a kind of authority in this area and I might be able to use that for something more material than just 'fame and glory'...

PMTW for MTW1 will be continued, polished etc - it is a testing ground for some ideas, especialy historical battles.

Besides the guide for the mod must be expanded (and COMPLETED !), perhaps with a historical supplement and a tactical one.




@bobbysocks

Looks great! Been playing v1.5 for a couple of months now
Two questions:
1) Do you have any idea when v.2.0 will be ready?
2) Is it possible to add dead bodies? I feel like somethings missing when there are no dead guys lying around after a fight...

Glad you enjoy it.

1. Not yet. It is a question how efficiently I will use my time. There are things which require really some time - such as reforming the entire castle line - new battlemaps, some castles limited to certain factions etc.

2. To some extend. The size of the mod makes it difficult. PMTW is 15 times larger than STW mod, 4 times than NTW and twice/three times as big as BKB's Supermod and there are limits even to the number of dead bodies, unfortuanatelly.

The price for ambitions, I guess

[bobbysocks]

I don´t think its necessary ro include bodies of all units. But I kinda like to see what damage my cannon inflicts and the overall results off battle. Anyway - suberp effort and I really enjoy your work so far

[Icefrisco]

I will just say that even tanks, airplanes or flying dragons which spit fire are possible in MTW VI - the engine is more flexible than most of the modders dare to think.

im really hoping thats a hint that ur making a ww1 mod! thats the only thing that could be better then pmtw(seriously, the only thing)

[cegorach]

I was thinking about Civil War mod (Russia after 1917 and the numerous wars out there), but it has very low priority.




HOWEVER you might want to check THIS

something interesting to see.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

English Double-armed Men

Yes all those guys are in the same ONE unit.

[cegorach]

The next release is coming.

I can't for sure tell when it will happen, but it is not demanding in time required to make the things work as they are supposed to.

Unfortuanatelly there is no way I can do it without some long hours spent before the computer - it cannot be started one day and continued for a week or so, I need to stay for hours each time to finish things such as new provices and new castle maps.
Many phases of this work are very boring - REALLY boring and complicated with high level of attention necessary all the time (too easy to make a grevious mistake).

I can only add that all the letest additions and ideas were created in short periods of time I could spare for modding activities - so at least the inactivity gives me some fresh approach and allows breaking/bending new rules each time.

If come of you called PMTW the ultimate TW experience you will be shocked by the new additions I will add or already did...

[Deus ret.]

Yeah! Beers up, 2.0's coming....like an ultra edition of MTW I'm really looking forward to the release, ceg. but don't trouble yourself too much....

[Radier]

Hear hear!

Good news Ceg.

[Icefrisco]

i cant wait!

[Wladyslaw IV]

ahh - the main thread. Can I ask for two things? One is let O.E. have access to all areas (Poland) and let Pl. recruit whatever it wants, so long as the area "had" it? Other than that good show. And finish the map, damn it! Just ask VH if you can borrow his from XL.

[Ciaran]

I will just say that even tanks, airplanes or flying dragons which spit fire are possible in MTW VI - the engine is more flexible than most of the modders dare to think.

I suppose it´s making the sprites that´s the main obstacle for a MTW mod. I don´t know, but somehow I imagine that to be more difficult, or at least more work-intensive, than just making the models for RTW & co. and let the engine do the animating, or is it?
That´s the price of the flexibility.

[Wladyslaw IV]

Can I post a request? Allow dead bodies again and let the colored bar next to an army fluctuate according to the army's size? Thanks.

[cegorach]

[QUOTE=Ciaran]

I suppose it´s making the sprites that´s the main obstacle for a MTW mod.

In fact it is relatively easy and allows incredible things with the right approach.
MTW VI is incredible game to mod and very flexible too.
Some imagination and knowledge and you can achieve miracles.





Wladyslaw IV

Can I post a request? Allow dead bodies again and let the colored bar next to an army fluctuate according to the army's size? Thanks.

Dead bodies - damn difficult.

Second thing unlikely because takes hours to correct with much luck and little chance to succeed.

One is let O.E. have access to all areas (Poland) and let Pl. recruit whatever it wants, so long as the area "had" it?

Nope. Not in this mod, but I will change the custom battles slightly in SP install to allow using all kind of units anyone really wants to try first.
Still Custom hurts those units which can change their battle mode...but no pain no gain.

And finish the map, damn it! Just ask VH if you can borrow his from XL.

It is from XL already, always has been....