Planetos total war

[astarkchoice]

Dunnon if this fits here but if they developed a total.war for planetos what sort of units  would you want to see for  each region?

For example

The north: all northern cavalry will be almost x2 regular cavalry for scouting due to the vastness they regulalry scout far north. 

Defeat king in the north unlock wargs, direwolves,wildlings  and giants+ mammoths

Crannogmen , clansmen + wildlings have weak defence but  high scout/ambush and high attacks stats.

 

You could set it up that you can pick an easy state to end up dominating the globe with (the reach,bravos, volantis)  vs hard (lys,ironborn) or super hard (lorath) etc 

[astarkchoice]

Ok so looking at various strengths starting far east

Yunkai: has supposedly 5k  slave troops  probably lifelong professionals , walls  covered with slingers and crossbowmen (probably 1k or so of the 5k) and the 2nd sieges of meereen hints they can bulk theb5k or so profesdionals up to 8k-20k ish with recently raised former labour slaves.

Given yunkai specalizes in bed slaves we can.assume they could if wanted develop littlefinger style network of whore informants and if pushed mix in their whores with assasins. 

Astopor : fampus for unullied.but it does say it produces other troops types too..the unsullied being the cream of whst they produce. Like yinkai then they can probably bulk up the 7.k unsullied with say 3-20ishk salve troops but a lot more of them will be defent quality as astopor is more geared towards producing infantry. We.know they have elephants wandering the streets too so they can probably be added at a push

Main weakess is no serious walls

 

Mereen: largest of the 3 probably able to produce larger slave troops say 7k professionals and bulk it with conscripted labour slaves lile yunkai did to say 25kish.

We know some of its nobles still train in armour wih horse and lance so it can probably produce very verysmall batchws of heavy cavalry say a few hundred at most.

Finaly it has gladiators .....historicaly  poor but if heavily armoured and armed enough could.make excellent light infantry and a training  force to rapidly improve the hastily raised slave infantry!

[Alester Florent]

My problem with this sort of thing is always that the demands of a battle game, whether tabletop or video format, tend to conflict with the “realistic” portrayal of the armies in question.

In practice, most armies from mainland Westeros (outside Dorne) will feature the same troop types equipped in almost exactly the same way as each other, with the differences coming in the numbers (both relatively and absolutely) that they’re able to field.

Visually, though, these armies will superficially look extremely internally diverse, because what uniforms there are (and there won’t be many) will be associated with whichever lord has brought the troops.

This is the opposite of what you want in a gaming situation: you want there to be a wide variety of available units which provide diversity of choice for players at the factional level, while at the same time being generally balanced against a central point system, and you also want those armies to be visually cohesive, generally by colour scheme, despite the variety in unit type.

Even where unit types are nominally different, this may be a distinction without a difference. We know, for instance, that the North doesn’t have a lot of knights. But we also know, per Maester Luwin, and borne out by the campaigns of both Robb Stark and (previously) Roddy Ruin, that the North is still capable of fielding heavy cavalry effectively equivalent to knights, in sufficient numbers that the actual units will be functionally identical in gaming terms.

Even the Iron Islands, with a different force composition to the mainland, is still going to have what is effectively the same heavy infantry as the mainland, just in greater proportions, with fewer cavalry.

This isn’t to say that you might not get the odd specialist unit: crannogmen or mountain clansmen or whatever. But these would just be small units to add a bit of colour, not major force components.

This is indeed my main issue with the ASOIAF game by CMON. Some of the miniatures are quite attractive, but (in my view) focus way too much on “thematic” units, without the bulk of everyday soldiery that will comprise the majority of the army.

What’s more, the “thematic” units often seem to be chosen on a fairly flimsy basis: for instance, the Baratheons have a theme of using large warhammers. Now we all know where that comes from, but there’s no reason to suppose that hammers are any more common among the rank and file of Baratheon troops than anywhere else just because one guy was famous for using one. Indeed none of the actual Baratheon commanders in the WotFK (who the game represents on the tabletop) are known for using hammers. The Boltons have a flail unit, presumably in part because the Boltons are evil and flails are a nasty weapon. If we actually wanted to represent Westerosi warfare, I think we’d have units largely comprised of men with polearms and swords with the occasional hammer or flail, and that choice wouldn’t be faction-dependent.

Sure, in a TW game there’d be a place for the Gold Cloaks as a substantial basis for a King’s Landing army, but these should be, in TW terms, garrison units rather than parts of field armies; likewise the Night’s Watch would only operate in the Gift and north of the Wall, not across the whole North. TW isn’t always very good at representing that kind of thing.  

 

[astarkchoice]

38 minutes ago, Alester Florent said:

My problem with this sort of thing is always that the demands of a battle game, whether tabletop or video format, tend to conflict with the “realistic” portrayal of the armies in question.

In practice, most armies from mainland Westeros (outside Dorne) will feature the same troop types equipped in almost exactly the same way as each other, with the differences coming in the numbers (both relatively and absolutely) that they’re able to field.

Visually, though, these armies will superficially look extremely internally diverse, because what uniforms there are (and there won’t be many) will be associated with whichever lord has brought the troops.

This is the opposite of what you want in a gaming situation: you want there to be a wide variety of available units which provide diversity of choice for players at the factional level, while at the same time being generally balanced against a central point system, and you also want those armies to be visually cohesive, generally by colour scheme, despite the variety in unit type.

Even where unit types are nominally different, this may be a distinction without a difference. We know, for instance, that the North doesn’t have a lot of knights. But we also know, per Maester Luwin, and borne out by the campaigns of both Robb Stark and (previously) Roddy Ruin, that the North is still capable of fielding heavy cavalry effectively equivalent to knights, in sufficient numbers that the actual units will be functionally identical in gaming terms.

Even the Iron Islands, with a different force composition to the mainland, is still going to have what is effectively the same heavy infantry as the mainland, just in greater proportions, with fewer cavalry.

This isn’t to say that you might not get the odd specialist unit: crannogmen or mountain clansmen or whatever. But these would just be small units to add a bit of colour, not major force components.

This is indeed my main issue with the ASOIAF game by CMON. Some of the miniatures are quite attractive, but (in my view) focus way too much on “thematic” units, without the bulk of everyday soldiery that will comprise the majority of the army.

What’s more, the “thematic” units often seem to be chosen on a fairly flimsy basis: for instance, the Baratheons have a theme of using large warhammers. Now we all know where that comes from, but there’s no reason to suppose that hammers are any more common among the rank and file of Baratheon troops than anywhere else just because one guy was famous for using one. Indeed none of the actual Baratheon commanders in the WotFK (who the game represents on the tabletop) are known for using hammers. The Boltons have a flail unit, presumably in part because the Boltons are evil and flails are a nasty weapon. If we actually wanted to represent Westerosi warfare, I think we’d have units largely comprised of men with polearms and swords with the occasional hammer or flail, and that choice wouldn’t be faction-dependent.

Sure, in a TW game there’d be a place for the Gold Cloaks as a substantial basis for a King’s Landing army, but these should be, in TW terms, garrison units rather than parts of field armies; likewise the Night’s Watch would only operate in the Gift and north of the Wall, not across the whole North. TW isn’t always very good at representing that kind of thing.  

 

Well id say there will be some variation and at least in banners and colours. 

Unit wise yeah a knight will be a knight/heavy cavalry type with little variation BUT thats not to say you couldnt have regional variations etc.

Dorne we know employ horse archers, the ironborn could for example form shield wall with the  use of throwing axes  they are so fond of at close range , northern giants etc...essos of course provides a bit more exotic variety but westeros has some.too.

Plus for the strstegyheads of cpirse each region even one without any specialist units will have its own stremgths and weaknesses for example it goes without saying hpuse lannister would start and keep immense gold supplies, the riverlands the use of their rivers for mills and fast transport etc