Westeros Total War: Lite

[Jak o the Shadows]

Well this is my frist post. OH yeah.

I would love to help in any way I can with this mod. I love playing M2TW and also the kingdoms expansion. Any way, I was wondering if there had been a set unit list for the given factions yet. I know in the origional thread that there were units for the factions. But seeing as this is going to be a lite version I was not sure how much of that thread is going to be used in the mod. Anyway if there is anything I can do I would love to help.

[Gampie]

I do not intend to reskin the units. Making this mod by myself consumes already enough time. I will edit the unit tree though since that's essential. If there is someone who is familiar with that (or willing to learn it) and if he wants to help this mod then he can always send me a PM. I could also use the help of someone who has some basic/average Photoshop skills to edit the battle map banners. I can pull it off but only with meagre results and it prevents me from working on the other things.

[Gampie]

Progress is going well at the moment. The map is nearing completion, faction descriptions are on the way, names have been done, battle map banners are 60% done, buildings have been placed, the non-ASOIAF units have been axed from the unit trees, all family trees are 100% done, character traits roughly 50% done, ...

[DJDonegal]

Have you actually written the descriptions or are you about to write them? I could make an attempt at them for now if you want to concentrate on other things. It's not like it's an immediately integral part of the mod, and something that can be done in a relatively short amount of time.

I'll try and get one done by the end of the week if you want. Greyjoy, in case anybody else wanted to throw their hat into the ring.

[Callum]

That's good to hear. I'd been trying to fiddle around with a map recently, but have no skills on that front, so it was going miserably. What can an unskilled person such as myself do to help you out? Count me in as a tester when it's ready too

[Gampie]

Thanks for the offers. Faction descriptions are not needed anymore. I have somebody who is working on them and I'll let him write them all unless something ill befalls him. However I will need beta testers who can spot errors like spelling mistakes, wrong ages for characters, wrong textures, bad pathfinding areas, flaws in the textures, totally incorrect traits, etc.

Here are some more screenshots:

Stannis near Rook's Rest

Mace Tyrell near Oldtown

Victarion Greyjoy in the North

Lord Balon Greyjoy character

Theon Greyjoy character

Euron Greyjoy character

The game randomly selected some names for a character and this is the result (funny)

Robert Arryn, Harrold Hardyng and the starting generals (update: Lyn Corbray will be included)

Stark banners on the battle map

Greyjoy banners on the campaign map

Stannis banners on the battle map

Overview of the campaign map (Dorne has not been done yet)

Some more information about the mod:

- roughly 60-70 regions

- timespan: right after the execution of Eddard Stark

- 10 factions (Stark, Greyjoy, Arryn, Tully, Joffrey, Renly, Stannis, Tyrell, Lannister and Martell). I don't know yet if Martell will be included in the first release since that faction poses certain difficulties.

- unit tree will be edited but there will be a lot less units than in vanilla (=original game). I can't make new models or skins and you shouldn't expect anything new in this regard.

- converting of settlements to castles and vice versa has been removed to stay true to the books

- upgrading settlements or castles will be removed to stay true to the books. Protect your large settlements and fortresses because the smaller ones will stay as they are!

- new campaign map and battle map banners (but don't expect something beautiful because I'm a novice with Photoshop).

- family trees (there will be some deviations from the book but that is only due to hardcoded game limits).

- several non-family related generals (Yohn Royce, Gregor Clegane, Paxter Redwyne, Jon Umber, etc.) for each faction.

- custom portraits for some key characters

- concise unit descriptions for several renamed units of the vanilla game.

- I plan to include Lusted's AI in this mod to improve the AI behaviour.

I'm developing this mod with M2:TW version 1.2. I do own the Kingdoms expansion but it will not be required to play the mod since I'm not incorporating anything from it.

Also, don't get up high hopes. ;-) I've started reading AGOT for the first time in December 2007 (I'm finished with all the books now since they are immensely addicting) and this is my first mod. I have only begun to learn modding 4 months ago and I have to read tutorials all the time, hehe. But the mod is stable so far and I like to work on it.

[Atreides]

If you release a stable working mod, I think it will be farther than anyone else has gotten. It'll be a great start for sure. I'll help test it for sure.

[Anatole Kuragin]

If you release a stable working mod, I think it will be farther than anyone else has gotten. It'll be a great start for sure. I'll help test it for sure.

ditto

[DJDonegal]

I can do some proof reading. Just send it to my PM box when it's done and I'll give it a read over and check things out.

ETA: Some questions after looking at the screenshots:

1) How are you measuring piety? By those who believe in the 7 or by those who show the most faith in whichever gods it is they have chosen? I would say Stannis deserves more than 1 block for piety if it's the latter because he put the flaming heart on his banner even though he knew it would appear alien to the men of Westeros, and counts Melisandre (a servant to R'hllor) among his chief advisors. Of course, if it's the former...

2) The Euron Greyjoy link appears to be broken.

3) The Greyjoy banner is upside down?

4) Will the barbarians in certain areas be known under a specific name? Brotherhood Without Banners? One of the Mountain Clans?

[Gampie]

1) I measure piety by the religious zeal the characters display in the books. As long as they follow an established god or pantheon they will receive a high piety rating. Thus Victarion has a high piety. The point is most of the characters in the books don't seem to give a damn about the Seven. Tywin pious? Lancel (when he was still bedding Cersei) pious? Mace Tyrell? Nestor Royce? Those who show an honest, non-conformist interest in religion appear to be the Ironmen and the Northmen (Roose Bolton being an exception). But this is something that is up for debate. Once I'll let you test the beta you can read all the character traits and give feedback about them. Also (and this is important) all the ages of the characters have to be corrected. Right now I'm just guessing a bit because I don't want to spend time on researching the books and the web to find information about this. They can be altered easily once the beta testing has begun.

Good point about Stannis, his piety has been increased to 5 now. He now has the "Religiously Minded" and "Religiously Active" traits (for a total of 5 piety). I can't just give him <x> piety. I must give him traits which are added together and this forms his piety/command/... score.

2) Euron link fixed.

3) That banner is not upside down. :-) The banner on the campaign map is the one from this site while the battle map banner is from another site. The second artist drew the kraken with his tentacles upwards. It's still a giant squid and I like it. I hope you can live with it. ;-)

4) At the beginning of the mod Eddard Stark has just been executed. I'm not really sure about the timeline but has Beric Dondarrion been ambushed by Gregor at that time? The BwB is about to be created but in a gradual fashion. I think it would be hard to portray this in M2TW. It would be a passive rebel army standing near Harrenhall causing devastation. It would only annoy the Tully player (Harrenhall is still his when the mod begins).

As for the mountain clans, they won't be in. M2TW lacks the units who look like them.

[Jak o the Shadows]

Everything looks amazing. I would also love to test the mod whenever it is ready. I had a few questions about the skins for some of the units. I was wondering if the Lannister units would have English skins, because the red/gold and lion theme would work well there. And I had a thought for the Stark units as well. If you used the rebel/bandit theme from the scottish units that would give the grey and white theme for the units. Im not sure how easy it would be, but it might work. As for the vale the French scheme would work. The other factions might be harder to match up, but those are just a few ideas I was tossing around in my head.

[Gampie]

I'm using the English as the base for the Lannister faction. Scotland will become Stark. As for the rest it's:

France - Tully

Milan - Tyrell

Venice - Joffrey

Denmark - Stannis

HRE - Greyjoy

Spain - Renly

Portugal - Arryn

Here is another screenshot of the Tyrell banner.

[DJDonegal]

I can live with the Greyjoy banner being that way. Just.

The Tyrell banner is amazing, whoever did it, kudos.

I'm sketchy on the BWB timeline as well, but I think Beric was ambushed before Eddard died.

[Jak o the Shadows]

One question.......Will the Scotts retain the blue theme, or will they be the rebel scott colors. I have no idea how to mod, so I am not sure if that is easily done or not.

Will the North get any more mounted units? Because the Scotts lack much there, and a great deal of the Northern strength was plate and mail horse. Maybe some Norman Knights from Sicily or some others?

And will the Ironmen get a series of axe units/raiders?

Will all factions have acess to longbows? Because they are used my many characters in the series.

Sorry about all the questions but the fact that this mod is happening gets me sooooo damn pumped.

*one minor thing that I noticed on Stannis's profile he is 40, but he was closer to 32-35. He was younger than Ned and Robert, and Robert was roughly 35 when he died I believe, don't have my books handy to double check though.

[Gampie]

One question.......Will the Scotts retain the blue theme, or will they be the rebel scott colors. I have no idea how to mod, so I am not sure if that is easily done or not.

I'm not sure if I this adresses your question but:

- The Scottish faction symbols will be changed to Stark symbols

- The Scottish campaign and battle map banner will be changed to Stark banners

- The empty settlement banner will be changed to a Stark banner

- The battle map units will retain their Scottish skins (Scottish emblems on their shields and clothing)*

- The campaign map models will retain their Scottish skins

* reskinning the shields alone would require the editing of roughly 30+ shields and that's only one faction. It would require weeks of work and I don't have the time for that.

Will the North get any more mounted units? Because the Scotts lack much there, and a great deal of the Northern strength was plate and mail horse. Maybe some Norman Knights from Sicily or some others?

And will the Ironmen get a series of axe units/raiders?

I haven't taken that into consideration but I'm not unwilling to give the Starks an extra cavalry unit. I only need to find one. Right now the Norman Knights and the Imperial Knights (mace-wielders) are unused. Perhaps one of them will suffice. I have yet to check to see if the Norman Knights don't have a too 'southron' look.

About the Ironmen, I have given them three axe units. I have deleted all the cavalry units of the Greyjoy's. I guess that will make that faction harder to play. Of course the family members and generals are still comprised of mounted soldiers.

Will all factions have acess to longbows? Because they are used my many characters in the series.

Yes, most factions will have the longbow unit. I only need to figure out which factions should NOT receive them. Exclude the Greyjoy's and Martells? That's why I will need the beta testers to give me feedback about the unit rosters.

*one minor thing that I noticed on Stannis's profile he is 40, but he was closer to 32-35. He was younger than Ned and Robert, and Robert was roughly 35 when he died I believe, don't have my books handy to double check though.

You're probably right. I'll change that, it takes me only 8 seconds or so to do that. When I was distributing the ages I was using wild estimates because I knew they would be hand-checked in a later stage of the mod. I hope someone who knows the lore well will check all the family trees to make sure that the characters have proper ages.

For today I have been working on the Dornish marches. Mountain ranges are not fun to make.

[Jak o the Shadows]

Sweet. Thanks for the info.

With the Scotts I wasn't suggesting to do the skins, but use the rebel units that spawn during a normal campaign, because of the white/grey coloring. I wasn't sure if there were some way to set the rebel units as the stock units for the North thats all.

Good luck on the Dornish stuff, that seems like alot of work.

[Gampie]

That seems a good idea. I might just grayscale the Scottish textures. It's easy to do and it resembles more the Stark colours than that blue/white stuff.

Two new screenshots:

Robb Stark

Roose Bolton

[Gampie]

Some more:

Lannister familytree

Jaime Lannister

Stark and Tully armies fight a Lannister force

[sToNED_CAT]

Yes, most factions will have the longbow unit. I only need to figure out which factions should NOT receive them. Exclude the Greyjoy's and Martells? That's why I will need the beta testers to give me feedback about the unit rosters.

Greyjoys should definitely have longbowmen. Theon was an excellent archer and I think they use bows quite a lot (for example when they ambushed young Tallhart). Also I think if they have no cavalry they should have at least some good missile unit. Exclude Tyrells and Martells.

[Inda]

Hi everyone. I'd like to say that I'm a big fan a SOIAF and MTW2 (enjoyed a lot ShogunTW too). I'm helping in a SOIAF mod for M&B gathering info and I'm counting the seconds till this gets released. Wish you good luck. Oh, and I'm sorry for my horrible English.

Here come my two cents:

I've read about Dorne that you 're going to use Spanish units and Portuguese ones for Renly (suported by Tyrells) and Arryns. I've read that maybe you aren't going to add longbowmen to Dornish unit tree.

IMO, the Reach has the heaviest cavalry of Westeros (house Arryn has a heavy one too) while Iberian (Spanish and Portuguese) medieval armies hadn't that heavy cavalry. They were more like a mix between arabish and european ones as result of being mixed for around 700 years. So on, the Spanish yellow&red colour pattern of the game would suit good for Dorne banners. However, those Iberian armies used more infantry than cavalry and Dorne should have really few infantrymen.

Dorne is renowned for having their sand-horses and their special recurved bows. This is why Dorne is supposed to use hit'n run tactics with horse archers (the imported the doble curved bow to Westeros) and mounted lancers.

About longbowmen, neither Iberian armies nor arabish ones used it cause there weren't longbows (like english ones) in Iberic Peninsulae, and if they had, longbows hardly could be fired from horseback. Dornish army style (again, light but fast units) needs a good ranged infantry unit (IMO), but crossbows have a slow fire rate. So, would it be possible to create a unit called something like "Dornish archers" with same stats of longbowmen?

Greyjoys should definitely have longbowmen. Theon was an excellent archer and I think they use bows quite a lot (for example when they ambushed young Tallhart). Also I think if they have no cavalry they should have at least some good missile unit. Exclude Tyrells and Martells.

I thought they tend to favor throwing weapons (you know, the have the fingerdancers). So on, the only Ironmen using longbows is Theon and Ironmen say he is no more one of them cause he has turned into a man from the greenlands (due to he uses bow and rides horses).

But I think that a faction without cavalry and bows (even if the had crossbows) would be really hard to fight with only javelineers (even if they were Iberian almogavars). Instead of giving them longbows, you could give them that Danish unit (nordic archers?)... it isn't as good as longbowmen at ranged attacks but still pack a punch for melee.