Westeros M2:TW mod- Alpha Map

[Inactive User]

Question?

How are you going to simulate the proper bloodlines and stuff? Unless you make everyone not in the royal family generals. But then you can have someone like Ramsay Snow adopt Roose Bolton. Unless you can have more than one family tree for each faction...

[Marcus]

I'm afraid I don't understand this question. Your post is very garbled. Each faction has the house members in the line of succession. Minor house lords appear as generals and are not in the line of succession. Here's a rough example:

Stark faction:

Family Members:

Caitlyn

Robb

Sansa

Arya

Bran

Rickon

Only the male members above can ever become the Lord. However the faction as a whole also has a list of military generals:

Bolton

Mormont

Reed

etc. There's list of generals on the previous pages.

Also, has anyone heard from bowman recently? After he sent me examples of his work, I havent heard from him since...

[aeoleron9]

Bloodline traits through the BBB mod can be directly implemented in (for the major houses) with some tweaking, as I've been advertising relentlessly. And I think Marc disabled adoption so it won't be an issue.

Bowman...last time here was April 29 so I think he's still around.

[Inactive User]

What I meant was can the generals (like Roose for example) have a bloodline. I would love to see more than one bloodline for each faction. (so The North would have House Stark as the ruling bloodline, but have the rest - Boltons, Glovers, Mormonts, Reeds etc. as family members, but unconnected to the Starks). Or is that sort of thing hardcoded?

BTW, sorry for the garbled post, was up really late all this week, so I was really tired.

[aeoleron9]

Forgot to bring this up earlier but how is Petyr Baelish aka Littlefinger going to be in the mod? He's not in any big houses so I suppose he'll become a retinue? Or are we marrying him off the Lysa right away?

[Marcus]

Okay, a few things to be clarified. What was decided with Jaime and Tyrion? Tyrion as a general for King's Landing and Jaime with the Lannisters but no succession because of Kingsguard? Were there any other questionable placements for family members?

[Maester Yobjascz]

Marcus -

I think that depends on how flexible the vassalage system is in M2TW. I've never managed to get another faction to be my vassal, so I don't know how much control there is (nor if a vassal state can 'rebel' and regain non-vassal status).

That aside, I thought it should be the reverse, with Jaime as a Crownlands general (as a member of the Kignsguard, he considers himself ineligible for Casterly Rock, and by AFfC, is leading the King's armies, not Lannister ones), and Tyrion as a Lannister general. If you can control a vassal's armies, then Jaime as a Crownlands general could lead (or at least be grouped with) Lannister troops... though we must recall that, at the time of the siege of Riverrun, King Robert was dead, Tywin had been named Hand of the King, and Jaime's troops were, nominally at least, fighting for King Joffrey. Under the BBB rules, it appears that 'Hand of the King' may be a assignable title, which might (?) be assignable to a general in a different faction (or at least to a vassal's general?).

No other questionable loyalties come to mind... except Theon Greyjoy... begins as a general for Robb Stark, then goes over to fight for his father. Though, I suppose it's arguable that Theon never actually commanded troops for Robb, so that could resolve that issue.

[Marcus]

Most countries won't submit as vassals to the player, but I've seen them become vassals to other factions. And yes, you can break vassalage by attacking the non-vassal faction.

[aeoleron9]

Nah, you can't lead or control vassal armies. That part of gameplay is rather lacking, I've been hoping for a mod to change this, but it seems waiting for CA to code a new system is the only feasible solution.

That said, would'd have to take the old conclusion: Tyrion starts out as a crownland general (preferably given the Hand office already) and Jaime as a Lannister general leading his host before invading Riverlands.

Theon Greyjoy was another issue I wanted to bring up, he's not exactly Greyjoy at the time we start no? Here's guessing we make him a Northern general(or captain?) but manually give him the Greyjoy bloodline trait, and low loyalty and so on.

[Marcus]

As I said in the other topic, if we start when Balon enters the fray, Theon's already with the Greyjoys. The other option with Lannister is to give both Tyrion and Jaime to the Crownlands... Tyrion never has anything at all to do with Lannister troops, just depends on what you want done with Jaime I suppose.

[Maester Yobjascz]

My view on Jaime Lannister is that, aside from his very first involvement in the war, he acts as a member of the Kingsguard, and is consciously separate from Lannister intrigues and intentions. His only goal is to serve the King. As such, he should *not* be a member of the Lannister Faction.

Tyrion, on the other hand, has a bit more flexibility. He could be Crownlands, if we start *after* AGoT, but would be Lannister if we start any time before that.

I suppose what needs to be nailed down is: when are we starting, chronologically, and what is the aim of the game?

If the goal is to recreate the events that happened in the book, then we're going to have a lot of headaches. If, on the other hand, we're trying to set the stage with the same situation, the same characters, and the same environment, and let the players/AI make their own choices, then in my mind we've got a good game. We can't expect everything to play out the way the books did... One, that's just a recreation and not a game. Two, it's very limiting in what choices players can make. Three, the restrictions of the model we're working with limits us as to what we can do.

My vote, personally, would be to start, even perhaps a bit before the actual war broke out, during AGoT. Let the players decide who to ally with, or who to go to war with. Certainly there are animosities between Stark and Lannister, but let the player decide whether to respond with war or politics... whether to begin by fighting, or to delay combat while shoring up alliances. I think the game should begin with Robert's death... Eddard's beheading is a political event which may (or may not) occur a few turns down the road... other options (randomly determined) may be Eddard being 'created' as a Nights' Watch general, or created as a "Winterfell General', ideally with Robb as an 'heir presumptive' title if we can swing that mechanically (with Eddard to become "Lord of Winterfell" if released).

[Marcus]

The idea of the mod is to set the stage and allow the players to continue from what the books have set up. The two most feasible starting positions would be either Robert's death, or Balon's crowning, depending if we want to have any similarities to the novels. The option of Eddard's beheading isn't really an option. There's not way to set it up for the player to click "Release, execute or send to Wall" to determine Eddard's fate. We either slot him in as Night's watch, as the continued Lord Stark, or dead. I suppose we should really dicuss and decide where the mod starts. We can't feasibly drag out the decision much longer without having to redo some work if we change our minds.

[aeoleron9]

Robert's (and Eddard's) death would be closer to the neutral stage we want to set, since after that the Lannisters starts pillaging Tully in vengeance and then there's no turning back. However, the important key members are already in place, Robb would have summoned the banners and could already be named King, Renly and Stannis are in their respective turfs, Balon...well he'll have to be crowned too. Basically it's a sort of mixture between two timelines I'd think.

Although we'd want to give players the freedom of changing Westeros history, We should try to add some diplomacy effects to reflect the historical relationship between the families. So Lannisters and Starks probably can't mix without a lot of money, and even then the alliance would be shaky. Some of the diplomatic choices can also be scripted, like Ultimate AI has Russians and Byzantines start out as pals.

[Marcus]

I suppose that would be one way. Use diplomacy scripts to set up the field. Night's Watch would be at war with wildlings, everyone else neutral with the Night's Watch. Stark and Lannister would have Terrible relations. Tully's would be strong with Stark. Arryn would be neutral with maybe a small tip towards Stark. Stannis would be slightly towards Stark and neutral with everyone but Lannisters, Greyjoy, Iron Throne and Renly. Renly would be the same, with strong ties to Tyrell. Martell would be all-neutral with maybe a few grudges against Lannister and Tyrell. Greyjoy would be against Stark and Tyrell, I think. Tyrell would start off with grudges against Lannister and Martell. Lannister would be against Stark, Tully, Renly, Stannis, well...everyone except Arryn, I think. Has that covered most of it?

As for the start position...*shrugs* But I do think all five Kings should be in place. The War of Five Kings is the setting this mod is semi-based around. I suppose you could opt to have just Joff as king, and do GOT Total War.... *shrug*

[The Adequate Jon]

I think Greyjoy was against everyone. The reason Balon attacked the north was because it was relatively undefended. Balon didn't think they would have a good chance fighting against Tywin. Arryn was isolationist. With Littlefinger influencing Lysa, Arryn was going to sit out the war until they could join with the clear winner.

As far as starting point, what would be the effect of starting with Eddard alive, but located in Kingslanding? Is there a way for Joffrey's faction to keep him as a hostage? From previous posts, it looks like if you can have hostages, you can't kill them. If you can't have hostages, you might as well start after Eddard is killed. It's too bad you can't send people to the Wall.

Regardless of the starting point, I think Jaime should be a Crownlands general because, as a KG, he's not in the Lannister line of succession. Using the same logic, you could put Tyrion with either the Crownlands or the Lannisters, but not in the Lannister line of succession since Tywin was not going to let Tyrion inherate anything.

[Maester Yobjascz]

It really depends on how strong a political model we can build into the game. If there's no political model, then we might as well stick with the War of the Five Kings, and leave it at that. However, if we can make strong marriage alliances work, and build some better resolution into the victory conditions, then I think we can start a bit earlier, and have the parties jockey for position.

My suggestion regarding Eddard was to increase political variability. I didn't imagine that we'd have it as an actual *choice* for the Lannister player, rather that it's a 'event' dictated by an internal randomizer. The player gets a message that Eddard was either beheaded, released to the Starks, released to the Night's Watch, or, perhaps, remains imprisoned and no message is sent, with an internal re-roll at a later time. If Eddard is released to the Starks (or even to the Night's Watch), it would improve Stark/Lannister relations, and allow for more political possibilities.

[Marcus]

Depends what you want for a political model. We can't do better than the features the diplomats have. The best we can do is change how factions respond to interactions with the diplomats.

As for Eddard, like I said, he has to be slotted somewhere. There's no way to have an Eddard in both Stark and Night's Watch factions. There's certainly no way for him to be alive, then just die if it's randomly decided, as if he dies, or if he goes to either Stark or Night's Watch, the other Eddard would have to die. In theory. Like I said, depends on what exactly you define as a "strong" model. Strong as in, as strong as the game can get, or strong as in a model that could parallel the books. The latter is impossible, but for a Total War game, M2 1.2 is the strongest model yet, except maybe the original TW games. Dip went to crap in Rome.. Anyways. I think we should just decide on relations to start the game off, set victory conditions, and let it fly. But *shrugs*

Edit: About the hostages. The only time when you can have hostages, is directly after a battle if your men take prisoners. You get the option to ransom, execute or release. But that's the only way. You can't hold characters hostage or anything.

As for transferring characters between factions, the only way to do that is through bribes and marriage. So, in effect, to get Eddard over to Night's Watch, you'd either have to bribe him over, but we'd have to give him low loyalty, which doesn't fit with the character. Marriage isn't an option, as whoever we married him to in NW's would be transferred to his faction, not him to theirs.

[Maester Yobjascz]

Marcus -

My suggestion was for Eddard not to exist as a general until (and unless) released to either Night's Watch or Starks... in which case a new General named Eddard Stark would be created for that faction. If he's beheaded, then there's no General created, and loyalties are simply adjusted as necessary. There's no transferring of an actual general, as Eddard wouldn't exist prior to the event.

ETA - Gotcha...

[Marcus]

If you read my other response, I don't think what you're suggesting is possible.

[aeoleron9]

I'm not familiar with the scripts from DLV, but they seem to have modded in dynamic events that would draw from or affect the game, very neat stuff. Dunno if it's possible --basing on their scripts-- to have what MY suggested, different outcomes of Eddard pop up as random events and have different effect in the game. To simulate the effect of hostage, we can let Ned start as the Stark faction leader, but stranded in the Crownlands with a retinue/trait "taken hostage", that cuts all his movement points. But once an event happens like say, Eddard was released, we could script remove_ancillary to remove the retinue and he'll be free to move around. The problem here is, I think there are problems killing characters by script so we can't have a Eddard beheaded event that kills him outright. Sent to the wall would have to kill him and create a new general for the nightswatch, so we meet the same problem. But we'll have to test it because 1.2 might have changed the triggers...