Westeros M2:TW mod

[Bazzlebane]

Ah, always glad to see Ran agrees with my conclusion!

So the other remaining question on peasants comes down to appearances...?

Tully, Lannister, Arryn, etc. are farmers so the pitchforks and such work. Crownland peasants are probably drawn from the slums of King's Landing so might work better with daggers and other such small weapons. Can't really think of other telling visual differences between southrons.

Stark peasants and Greyjoy peasants (or thralls?) are more likely to be bearded, as are Wildlings.

[Bazzlebane]

Also, peasants will be the first units skinned. Any concept art for this unit is welcome, as well as written descriptions.

RE: the written descriptions -- is this ala the written info on the unit cards in-game?

[Marcus]

Ah, no. However those will need to be done, eventually. By written descriptions I mean quotes from the book and/or logical assumptions on how they should appear if a concept picture cannot be found.

[Rufats]

So to sum up, the only peasants I'd give an advantage to would be the Iron Islanders, whom I imagine will have plenty of disadvantages (little horse?) to balance this.

That's, exactly, what we're looking for, the balance. And that's why we're asking you. In my opinion, neither faction can have very good heavy cavalry, good heavy infantry, great missiles, excellent pikes and strong fleet all together. We'll have to make sacrifices.

[Marcus]

*coughs* The balance..sort of. Realism first. The armies should be powered a sclose as possible to how they are in Westeros. There are other ways to balance a game. Ie, upkeep, unit costs, starting gold, movement points, etc. Very little of this is dictated in the books, hence why we should make what we know as accurate as possible, then use the unknowns to even everything out.

[Maester Yobjascz]

I agree wholeheartedly. I wouldn't bother trying to make the factions as evenly balanced as possible... but that's me.

There's two different things: games, and sims. And they approach balance *very* differently.

Games tend to opt for closely balanced sides. Equality at the start... each side is finely balanced to have just as good a chance at winning as any other side. If we're trying to make this a 'game' (by this definition), then we need to worry about balancing out the sides, either by unit options, money, etc. This allows multiple players to play with a fair chance at 'winning'. The downside is that sacrifices have to be made: the game may not conform to the books as evenly as we'd like. If the Westerlands need balance, we may not be able to give them access to units Tywin could easily have gotten his hands on.

Sims, on the other hand, go for realism. No worries about equality. If one side is stronger, so be it. If we're making a 'sim' (by this definition), our goal is to give the players access to what the characters in the book would have. If the Iron Islands have few men, few resources, and no horse, too bad for them. If the Lannisters have access to all the units around, all the gold in Casterly Rock, and lots of political influence, good for them. The downside is that it might be next to impossible for weaker factions to 'win'.

Of course, this is a spectrum. I tend to come down on the sim side of things. Likewise, I'd imagine that the 'hardcore' fans likely to play this mod would want as much 'realism' as they could get.

Now, one way to modify a sim to create game balance (and I have no idea if this is possible within M2TW), is to modify the *victory* conditions. You don't change the starting point, only the end line. In ASOIAF, Balon Greyjoy was content with simply taking the North. That was victory enough. For the Lannisters, nothing less than control of the realm was sufficient.

Regardless of what approach is taken, this seems to be a fundamental choice that should be made early... it'll affect how you decide the unit availability, for example.

Also, Good Luck with the mod! I'm really looking forward to it!

[Bazzlebane]

I don't know the code details but I do know different factions can have different winning conditions.

[NakedStark]

Peasants, Levy Spearmen, Spearmen and Crossbowmen probably ought to be available to all factions (save Wildlings)

A thought I just had was that perhaps instead of having Peasants, the Iron Islands should have a unit similar to the Viking Thralls in M:TW in addition to a Peasant Militia unit that is the same as the Peasant Militia of other factions.

After some deliberation, we've decided that we need to organize this in a different way in order to get unit allocation as accurate as possible.

This will likely take a week or two to complete regardless, so we may as well try and be accurate as possible.

Everything posted so far will be kept, your work has not gone to waste, we're just reformatting.

Proposed new structure:

Universal

Militia

Missile

Light Infantry

Infantry

Heavy Infantry

Light cavalry

Cavalry

Heavy Cavalry

Knights

Bodyguards

Specialty Units

Mercenaries

Rebels

Naval forces

This way we can discuss the differences between each house & region and allocate at the same time. Hopefully this will be more effective and lead to less balance issues later. I apologize for not having done this originally.

Also, FAUST is a .pdf file that shows the majority of units in M2, minus mercs and rebels. This will hopefully give everyone a good idea of the untis available. Unfortunetly, FAUST does nto show the image of the unit.

Note: Any unit from any faction can be given to any other faction. As well, ignore gunpowder units as there were none in Westeros.

I believe that covers it.

First, universal units. Peasants. Any others? Suggestions welcome.

Should all houses get the same peasant unit, or are there difference between peasants in different regions?

Also, peasants will be the first units skinned. Any concept art for this unit is welcome, as well as written descriptions.

Once again, I apologize for this, and I appreciate everyone's input.

[Merentha]

Basing the Greyjoys off of the MTW1:VI Vikings seems like a good idea to me. They were a fearsome faction, even with no horse to speak of.

[chewietobbacca]

I agree we should make the game with realism in mind first before balance. The reasons for this are manyfold, however:

1) The game is a mod and as thus single player is the major focus. Thus balance in battle isn't as key as say, M2TW vanilla where multiplayer balance is as important as single player campaign balance (in other words, Aztecs are unrealistically strong when in truth, they would be hard pressed to kill even one Gothic Knight, much less ten).

2) Different victory conditions for each side can enable sides to be unbalanced in campaign from one standpoint but still relatively equal in difficulty to achieve victory. For instance, Stannis may have the goal of eliminating Joffrey and Renly as his only objectives, which would be reasonable. The Lannisters, on the other hand, may have to defeat the Starks, Stannis, as well as Renly, much harder. Dorne may have just one objective: eliminate Lannisters.

I've been working on a campaign map and need some help with locations. Can anyone give me an approximate location of: Stone Hedge, Raventree, Wayfarer's Rest, and Sweetport Sound? They're the only ones not ever mapped but through reading (and maybe Ran's knowledge), we can give an approximate location of where they lie? I know that Stone Hedge touches the Red Fork and that Raventree must be somewhere not too far from Riverrun (infering from Jaime's mentioning of going there soon after the siege of Riverrun).

[Werthead]

Sweetport Sound is likely to be on a bay or inlet, possibly leading to a river. On the maps the only candidate in the area is the mouth of the Wendwater. This would accord with the neighbouring area of Massey's Hook also being sworn to Dragonstone. Of course, it's unclear how far Dragonstone's influence runs, so it could be further north on the Bay of Crabs or down south, perhaps at the base of Massey's Hook on the east coast? There is a reasonably-sized bay there.

Is the map going to be the same scale as the Europe one in Medieval and Rome? If so, than remember that from north to south Westeros is the same size as Europe running east from the coast of Ireland to the vicinity of the Caspian Sea (the entire Rome map turned vertically, in other words).

[Marcus]

WEll, from what I've heard of this map, it has more provinces than the M2 vanilla map. May have to be cut back. Screens will be posted upon completion for you to critique so we can get it as accurate as possible.

[Werthead]

How do you adjust the maps anyway? I always thought there was a map editor programme, but apparently you needed to mess around in Photoshop, which never made much sense to me.

[Rufats]

Wow. Guys, realism is uber alles (never thought somebody would think otherwise or argue about it). Balance comes after that. I'll try to make my posts clear.

[一方通行]

there should be a forum for mod development. then we could get some experinced modders, the mod community for total war is preatty good.

[Marcus]

...Are you implying that my team and I are inexperienced? And, just for the record, we have threads on all major community boards, and I have sent messages to several modders. If you expect this to be the work of Lusted, Horsearcher or the like, they're not interested.

[一方通行]

...Are you implying that my team and I are inexperienced? And, just for the record, we have threads on all major community boards, and I have sent messages to several modders. If you expect this to be the work of Lusted, Horsearcher or the like, they're not interested.

hey hey hey no offense ment. more help is always good right? eek. :|

[Marcus]

Ah, sorry. My apologies. *coughs* I'm aware the team is small (6 people) and our knowledge of Westeros is limited (hence this topic) but Rome has been out for, what? Couple years now. If more experienced modders wanted to make a SOI&F mod, wouldn't you think it'd have happened by now? So we're trying to do the best we can. Sorry once again.

[Bazzlebane]

I think I speak for a lot of people on this board when I say we really appreciate the effort you and your team are throwing into the project and we'd love to see it successful. I am very much looking forward to my conquest of Casterly Rock and clicking the "Sack" button. I'll call it the Revenge of Castemere and write a bloody song about it. So keep up the good work, and I think at least several members of this board will try and help supply some details.

My own time for research is limited right now, but once I'm on paternity leave in a few weeks, I'll have more time to leaf through the books to find relevant text.

Plus, as you may have already discored, the Citadel (and to a lesser extent the Tower of the Hand.com) has a wealth of information on regions, cultures, etc. that provide insight for character and troop composition.

ETA: Come to think of it, I think I look equally forward to sacking Highgarden. Good times.

[Nathanael]

Regarding peasants, my feeling is that the North might have slightly stronger peasants, too. Probably not as strong as the Iron Islanders, but they do have to deal with wildling raids enough that I think they're more likely to have experience than your average Southlander.