Rusichi: Total World, Introduction (Open Beta Released)

[Tchouk]

Browser problems.

[Slanted]

Ahhhh can't stand it.... to epic.... to awesome.... need release.

[Guiscard]

Breathtaking! I cannot wait for this.

[Rusich]

Great!!!

can't wait to play it!

[Slash5]

Looks like Med 3 .

Awesome work.

[Argus]

Wow, great job till now!
Did you say something about the faction list or am i blind?

[Matthæus]

fascinating

[Argus]

Are these fantastic town-models only on the stratmap or can we fight in them, too?

[Plonkdog]

*drool* for the last couple of days I have been strangely obsessed with russia. I have no idea whay, except that it could be just from seeing this mod... FANTASTIC!

[Ahiga]

Russia and Eastern Europe has always had some of the coolest armor aesthetics. Foremost amongst it is that mixture of West, East and Northern Steppe, with armor and dress drawn from the Germanics, Slavs, Turks, Arabs, Persians, Caucasus Hillmen, Greeks, and even ancient Scythians and Sarmatians. Then there's this beautiful 'personalizing' touch with every guy wearing a different style of metal or cloth armor.

Really cool stuff.

[Tchouk]

Are these fantastic town-models only on the stratmap or can we fight in them, too?

Uh, as much as we'd have liked to, exporting architexture is not something we've solved yet

[KLAssurbanipal]

exellent models!
The best i have ever seen in MTW2!

[Tchouk]

For the first time ever! Never before seen!

Not 4 (pfft, that's allowed by the engine), not 3, not 2...

One-on-One fighting in the MTW2 engine!

Remember the movie Troy? The testing of mettle before battle between heroes is something that happened quite often in Rus' in those days.

Made by Vint.

[uanime5]

So if you want to capture the capital do you first have to siege and conquer the city in front of it, then siege and conquer the castle; or do you fight both on the battle map at the same time?

Also do the small villages in bigger regions count as a region in the map_regions.tga?

[Nakharar]

the 1 vs 1 is cool but why would anyone ever want to do 1 vs 1 battle, its like the sword animation why would you want flying swords on the battlefield

[Tchouk]

I'd like to post some more details about our mod, but about the actual game-play and how it works/plays this time. The graphics are great, but our actual goal wasn't to make a prettier MTW2. Whereas vanilla MTW2 is built upon the principle of uniform factions, we tried to make our factions as unique as possible while still keeping them balanced.

Preamble: The mod takes place between 1157 and 1350 and features the following factions:
Playable:
Novgorod
Kiev
Suzdal'

+On map:
Seljuk Sultanate of Rûm
ByzantineEmpire
Hungary
Poland
Sweden
Cumans
(and Lithuania if we can get the units)

+Emergent
Mongols
Teutonic knights

The reason only 3 factions are (as of yet) playable: it's very hard to balance when you add unique elements and we just did not have the time. You can make them playable, but it's just not very interesting. Adding more playable factions is something that would actually require a complete AI rewrite for proper balance - and that is now our primary goal.

The map

1) Economics
Building structure
The in-game economy was completely remade. The three playable factions have a varied income and building structure. There are three types of governments - Monarchy, Democracy, Aristocracy - and buildings (level 1-5) that correspond to those types. (For example Veche level 1-5 for democracy)
-Suzdal's economy is accented on agriculture and monarchy. That means that a lot of agricultural improvements (which bring population + money) and a level 4-5 monarchy building can only be built by Suzdal'.
-Novgorod is based on trade and Democracy. You simply can't survive playing Novgorod without building and managing lots of merchants, for example.
-Kiev is sort of half-and-half (they can build a few high level agricultural and a few high-level trade improvements) and based on Aristocracy + they are the only ones who can build a level 5 church improvement.

Cities are less free to develop. This makes the map more scripted, but also breaks uniformity in that you can't just make any old town a major capital. There is only one capital (huge city) for each faction, that's it.

The map is thus less uniform - it is built behind the idea that there are population centers close to the capitals. Most, if not all, of the larger towns are concentrated close to the capitals as are lots of villages (see the first post). In far regions between population centers most towns that go up to level 2-3 maximum.

Resources have also been changed - the connections between building improvements and resource income, as well as the income itself is no longer so flat and linear - they jump.

2) War

First off, all units, even the ones that are shared between factions (like the most basic militia - it's the same name and model for all 3) actually differ in their parameters. This is done to reflect the socio-economic differences listed above.

Units are divided into three categories: -Cheap, "mass" units - this is typically militia. Available for hire almost anywhere, they come in large numbers and make up the brunt of your armies.

-Regional units. These are units unique to certain regions and/or factions. Better then the cheap units in that they have very special unique talents (for example much higher morale.)

-Elite units. These professional warriors are available only through top-level building upgrades - you only just get them more than half-way through the game. Very expensive and very rare (the top unit takes 20 turns to regenerate). The very best of elite units are available only in the capital - so in order to bring your regiment back up to full strength and replace the killed members, you have to go back home.

All this makes the battle very different: you have your cannon-fodder, they play pretty much like MTW2 units. You have your special talent units, which have to be placed and used very carefully to maximize your advantage. Then there is the metal core of your army - the general and his elite. These are very few in number, but very very effective if used right, so you always have think and micromanage these guys. They are the pivot on which the battle turns.

3) Game-play We've created a lot of new scripts and scripted events that effect game-play directly. It divides the game into four stages.
1)You start with your "regular" expansion stage. Except for the fact that going all out at this stage will doom you.
-the game is balanced in a way so that you can't fight and build your economy at the same time.
-fast expansion/large territories lead to civil war (see my first post)
2)Attack scripts kick in. These scripts periodically send Cuman/Swede/Teutonic/Etc armies with the express purpose of nuking your economy, not capturing cities.
3)The Mongols invade (about half-way through). Massive scripted event. They don't care about taking cities - they just want to, and probably will, destroy you, your armies and your cities. If you've done a bad job upgrading your units up to this point, well, you're doomed.
4)The Mongols take over the Cumans and set up their Golden horde. By this time, the player should have built most of the upgrades and now has one goal - unite Russia before 1350 while avoiding civil war and periodic Mongol invasion. Capturing other cities is largely futile - victory conditions specifically state that in order to win you have to unify all three beginning factions, and this is best done both at once since capturing one russian faction at a time takes a long time and will probably end in civil-war.

Script wise, each faction also has 2 missions which help give a crucial boost to the economy at a crucial time if completed successfully; and a historical battle, which shows off elite units, and the reason for having them, before they are available.

[gogo t]

It only for the show, they wont make such units in the game, this is onlye like movie

[Tchouk]

So if you want to capture the capital do you first have to siege and conquer the city in front of it, then siege and conquer the castle; or do you fight both on the battle map at the same time?

Also do the small villages in bigger regions count as a region in the map_regions.tga?

You have to siege and conquer the city, then siege and conquer the castle. The castle is, in fact, accessible only through the city.

And yes they do count as regions.

[Tchouk]

the 1 vs 1 is cool but why would anyone ever want to do 1 vs 1 battle, its like the sword animation why would you want flying swords on the battlefield

1 vs. 1 fights before battles is historically something that happened in those days (at least in Russia) and it makes a great beginning for a scripted historical battle.

So we wanted to put it in there for historical reasons, but it's not something you can do directly with the engine; so it also became somewhat of a challenge

[Tchouk]

It only for the show, they wont make such units in the game, this is onlye like movie

Not exactly. We want to make historical battles, and we want to make them, well, as close as possible to the actual history.

So this will be in game, but only as a script before a historical battle.