Hi all,
After trying out all the major mods of this game I've finally decided on The Sicilian Vespers as my favourite mod, mainly because of the generals script and the garrison script. Making a field army cost more is a great way of introducing basic logistics into the game, and helping the AI with free upkeep levied units is another great idea.
This AAR will focus on gameplay and historical realism; if you want an immersive storyline I will disappoint you.
The campaign is played in the Late Era, Byzantine Empire, on VH/VH.
To improve realism, give the AI a fighting chance and to hopefully create conditions in which a blitz campaign will be difficult, I'm playing with the following house rules:
1. King's Purse edited to zero. This makes early expansion a bit harder, since it will be harder to field a large army immediately.
2. Projected Treasury Total must always be positive. This is to stop you from taking advantage of your large initial army, and to reflect the fact that your troops, some of whom are mercenaries, will need regurlar pay or desert. Together with a King's Purse set at zero, this rule will force you to disband a large part of your initial army, as well as think ahead if you take your armies to the field.
3. Disband all levied units at first opportunity. This fine feature of The Sicilian Vespers mod gives the AI a much-needed helping hand in resisting sieges. As a human being with a functioning brain, you should have no need for free-upkeep units to keep your AI opponents at bay.
4. No priests. The process of converting a populace to another religion should take several decades, sometimes centuries. Not using priests will force you to build churches to slowly convert the population, and in the meantime you'll have to deal with religious unrest the hard way.
5. All eiege engines except ballistae are treated as immobile units after positioning on the battle map. With their current movement rate, their tactical use in sieges as well as in pitched battles is unrealistic. Fighting street battles with catapults or bombards is great fun, but has little to do with reality. Most siege engines like catapults and trebuchets were assembled on site, and were bolted to the ground, not mounted on wheeled carriages.
Next post will detail my opening moves. Wish me luck!