Blood and Roses - a Wars of the Roses campaign for SS6.4

**Gorrrrrn** · June 02, 2010, 09:38 AM

Thanks to Corbeau we now have a proper name for the Mod - Blood and Roses

The details below are probably a little out of date by now but it'll give you an idea of what the mod is about.

To be playable I suggest starting the day after the English have lost Gascony as that saves a lot of bother trying to work out how France should be played.

I have some ideas (that are still being worked on) for

Factions:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read:

Archbishops and bishops
------------------------

Spoiler Alert, click show to read:

Offices of State

Spoiler Alert, click show to read:

Cities, towns and castles (still being worked on so list NOT definitive)

Spoiler Alert, click show to read:

and possible list of units:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read:

might also include some monasteries, abbeys, priories

all subject to discussion, revision etc.

Main thing lacking is a good detailed map.
PKH and Kingdom of the Isles both have the sort of map required but it would probably be best to construct our own - which could take time. (I have no idea how to do it.)

Game play would be similar to the old Kingmaker board game

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingmaker_%28board_game%29

in as much players would control a noble faction (but not Henry VI who was non compos mentis a lot of the time and who is the non-playable faction with same role as the Pope), and attempt to get their bod in charge of the whole realm. Sort of.

Haven't begun to work out the details of how it would play in practice, but envisage each playable noble would need to either declare themselves loyalist or rebel (sort of Baron's Alliance if you like).

King starts with all the Royal castles with local constables in charge. And everybody neutral. Towns are for the king too at the start. Noble factions will generally not have the manpower to capture major (defended) towns and attacking them will get you "ex-communicated" immediately (hopefully), rather you need to spread the influence of your faction so that towns declare for you and send you support. (Ditto other baronial factions - hopefully we can work the diplomacy to do this.) Warfare will be limited to open-field battles and attacks on rebel settlements and castles or defending attacks. We will need to balance the game so rebellion in settlements is much easier to achieve.

Well that's how I see it.

--

I see someone's done a more historical version of the Kingmaker board here:
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/filepag...kingmaker-map?

(you'll need to zoom in on the gif to see the details.)
--

If you have Google Earth (or want to install it)
there's this plug-in
http://bbs.keyhole.com/ubb/ubbthread...&Number=827021

that allows you to zoom right in to relevant castles - also with historical data, pix etc.

**talknight2** · June 02, 2010, 10:10 AM

Absolutely!
Though the large amount of factions will probably make for long AI turns, such as is the case with SS6.2 RR\RC.

**AClockworkOrange** · June 02, 2010, 03:22 PM

I would very much be interested. Will you have all towns like your other mod will there be castles?

**knight_12** · June 02, 2010, 04:01 PM

Sounds like a great idea.

**Gorrrrrn** · June 02, 2010, 05:26 PM

Towns and castles as per vanilla SS 6.3 - there needs to be a clear difference between the castles held by nobles and towns (normally held by (or loyal to) crown.
Might use fortresses and citadels for welsh towns where there was a planned bastide.
Minor nobles will get basic stone castle - be nice if we can replace the wooden wall motte and bailey castles with a couple of stone forts, or a fortified house.

It's unlikely there'd be many PSFs - only if the number of regions is insufficient for all the towns and noble castles.

A lot depends on the map - and without one there's not going to be much of a mod.

(It's possible we might be able to borrow some other mod's map but for now I'm just trying to get clear in my head how the game will work
and what resources need to be created for it.)

BTW English Names: http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...54#post1551754
a list of women's names wouldn't take very long to do.

----

update: list of women's names is done.

----
heraldry: the 2 vols of the Parliament history for the period have a fine selection of CoA - I can probably scan them.

Titles - we'd need to redo the SS traits and ancilliaries to suit the period.

Castles - might be worth trying to see if we can create brick built castles using the teutonic order textures?
Also amend the EDB so castles can have markets and towns can have archery ranges

The EDU can be trimmed down to just the necessary units - which should speed things up a bit as less info will need to be cached.

Perhaps 12 turns per year? (If I can work out how to do it - there's tutorials for it.)

English finally lost Gascony in 1453 making it the ideal date to start the game (as the makers of Kingmaker also decided.)
Probably finish in 1488 - making it 35 years @ 12 TPY = 420 turns - which looks reasonable.

The RozMod 4 governmental buildings can be included - I'm inclined to make the Chancellor the actual Pope (if that can be made to work.)
Bishops vote in Grand Council to elect chancellor - Chancellors were often bishops anyway so that sort of works out OK.

Roads - probably just dirt tracks, certainly no highways!

**hippacrocafish** · June 03, 2010, 04:55 AM

I don't know about that, wouldn't it pretty much be England v. England v. England? There would be no variation in tactics, plus the Irish and Scottish rosters suck and are easily defeated by the English.

What I would like to see int terms of an England-centric campaign is (Keep in mind that I don't play RR/RC) is a Hundred Years War campaign. France, England, Burgundy, etc. I think that would be fun on various different kinds of buns.

That or an Italian City-states campaign (Genoa, Milan, Venice, Pisa, Florence, HRE, etc.) but alas, I play 6.1 and not much modding is going on for 6.1 save for Caesar Clivus' BftB.

**Gorrrrrn** · June 03, 2010, 05:41 AM

yes the armies would be similar - but the emphasis wouldn't be so much on just fighting battles.

(assuming we can get it work that way.)

there's already a map for the 100 years war
(and by the end of the 100 years war England, France and Burgundy were converging in terms of units deployed.)

So this campaign would look to achieve something different in game play by emphasising diplomacy, and the deployment of meagre resources
to maximum effect.

Various issues need sorting out - like:

how best to have multiple marriages which can combine various factions?

how to have regions /castles allocated to titles, so that if the title is re-allocated the regions get given to new owners
(there is a script that can transfer regions, but you'd need to make it possible to transfer between any two of 25 factions.
(that's a lot of campaign script)

exact role of bishops given we don't need religious conversion.

wealth came from the accumulation of estates and sometimes offices. without wealth you can't recruit armies.
the Crown controls all towns at start of game and a mass of castles - players can switch from Lancaster to York and back
but what is the best way to work it so it makes for interesting game play?
(I'm thinking making bribery much easier for both settlements and generals and characters?)

Early days yet - at the moment I'm concentrating on getting the people right

**Peteriscoolz** · June 03, 2010, 12:09 PM

Great idea and please Add Ireland plz!!

**Gorrrrrn** · June 03, 2010, 04:57 PM

I'm pretty sure that geographically ireland needs to be but not as a proper faction

There was a mini-wars of the roses that took place in Ireland and the area under english control tended to shrink.

However ireland doesn't have any strategic importance to the english factions - but was useful as a place from where mercenaries could be recruited.

**adecoy95** · June 03, 2010, 10:45 PM

sounds ambitious

**Gorrrrrn** · June 04, 2010, 04:02 AM

hmm - probably too ambitious!!

still trying to work out the bishops role in all this.
If we keep their religious role, we'll need lots of witches and heretics to encourage the AI factions to continue to produce priests.
(plenty of Lollards around at the time so reasonable.)

we might need to script the appearance of bishops once they die?
I have the names of all the extant bishops in 1453 so we can create them without a problem - although assigning them to factions might be interesting
(although there were Percy, Nevill, Bourchier and Beauchamp bishops. I suppose unless indicated otherwise they'll be of the king's party. (lancastrian)

We only need the one religion in the game, so that means differentiation has to be by culture
ie Scottish, Welsh, Irish, are straightforward but should there be 2 English _ Lancastrian and Yorkist or one?
--
If we start in October 1453 then henry VI has already gone bonkers but his son Edward has been born, making the lancastrians a viable faction.
(but not playable?) with Edward as prince of Wales etc but all lands in the control of the King.
--
I'm slowly putting together the families of named characters for the main factions.
Have a look at ralph neville's brood - 23 children!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ralph_d...of_Westmorland
at least a dozen of whom need representing - even as wives.

we'll need 2 neville factions - one will be the 2nd earl of westmoreland http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ralph_N...of_Westmorland
a staunch Lancastrian (luckily he had no children who survived him.)

we'll have to see how all the dynastic interweaving works out in the game.

**Caesar Clivus** · June 04, 2010, 04:26 AM

Roz this is starting to sound more like a whole mod of it's own rather than a submod

**Gorrrrrn** · June 04, 2010, 02:12 PM

well it's intended to be campaign for SS6.3 - like the late era, the 100 years war etc.

until SS6.3 is finalised we'll have to see exactly how much extra work is required.

whether you consider it a mod or a campaign I dunno.

**Prince Valiant** · June 04, 2010, 04:58 PM

Oh, that would be so cool! Please do it! It deserves to be done, I’m surprised no one has tackled this subject before…
If you go trough with this I will instruct villagers to build a monument in your honor!

**Gorrrrrn** · June 05, 2010, 09:38 AM

Still working out which factions should be represented, which castles need to be in.

One problem is that many of the important players were relative newcomers to the aristocracy, who hadn't inherited proper castles.
Or they were sufficiently wealthy to build non-defensible structures as their main homes.
Or they were career soldiers who hadn't put down roots anywhere.

We have plenty of nobles (lesser and greater) who do have castles - and I expect people will want the factions to control at least one major castle at the start of the game.

A few can be removed as they played no significant role in the wars of the roses.
Others are at best marginal and occupied insignificant homes.

We can place a few in towns at the start if they are really necessary.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read:

further castles can be added where we are certain that they were still in use, were defensible structures and can be reliably assigned to a noble family. However until we have a map there's no way of knowing which can be included, so the list above is more a list of possibles than definites.

One further point some castles belonged to bishops, eg Durham and Norham belonged to the Bishop of Durham
and others came with the job, so to speak: eg. Carlisle was used by the warden of the western march

not sure how to represent those.
-----------------------------------------------

Flags, banners, liveries etc

You can download some very nice wargaming flags here which I presume one could use for faction leaders.

http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/vexillia/...FlagSheet3.zip

I need to assemble all the bits and pieces I've gleaned for badges and liveries.
each faction will need to be reskinned (?) in livery colours for retinue troops and possibly a badge for other troops. It's possible that town militia and county levies would have used their own colours - but had a badge attached just before battle.

**Gorrrrrn** · June 05, 2010, 04:31 PM

Just a note - I don't have any graphic tools like Photoshop, milkshape 3D or any of that stuff.

And given my RSI I'm not going to get involved in any graphical editing - so this mod don't move until -
1 we get a map
2 we get someone who can do all the faction symbols, banners
3 we get someone who can reskin the factions (at least the retinues) with faction colours

**Live2sculpt** · June 14, 2010, 01:48 AM

I'm a concept artist in the game/film biz in SF/CA.. It just so happens I began working on a WotR campaign map files set last week for the fun of it. Wrapping my head around proportional scaling of the terrain to simulate the best aspects of the territory in question when in combat.

**Gorrrrrn** · June 14, 2010, 04:29 AM

L2S - sounds interesting!

here's a map of england in mid 15th century
(from history of parliament book from 1930s.)
Attachment 94316

not all of the towns need be represented.
Here's the latest list of locations / regions at the moment.

Attachment 94437

- I also have a map of wales which adds a lot of detail there.
Attachment 94418

need some (all of) Ireland and a chunk of French coast for calais and a bit of France below and Flanders above.

**Live2sculpt** · June 14, 2010, 08:46 PM

All that we have right now is a basic breakdown based upon the classic shire borders, with some experimentations with navagable rivers and independent chartered towns. A four hour experiment. So there are many changes to go through. I'm busy sculpting robot and sea monster concepts lately so time's been tight.

I will take the oportunity to say this however; I feel the use of orbital imaging to create maps for such a game as this is regrettably amature and in poor taste. I have planned to rely on pre-20th c. cartography wherever possible, and to adjust land elevations to best reflect the scale of each sample region when viewed on the Battle Map. Example; Rather than modelling a generally accurate impression of the full Snowdon Range, select an exemplary valley within the Snowdon Range, and model those particular dimensions (to Battle Map scale) to best represent the region. This approach should offer much more attractive battles as well as a more dynamic Strategy Map.

**Live2sculpt** · June 14, 2010, 09:03 PM

Originally Posted by Rozanov

L2S - sounds interesting!

here's a map of england in mid 15th century
(from history of parliament book from 1930s.)
Attachment 94316

not all of the towns need be represented.
Here's the latest list of locations / regions at the moment.

Attachment 94437

- I also have a map of wales which adds a lot of detail there.
Attachment 94418

need some (all of) Ireland and a chunk of French coast for calais and a bit of France below and Flanders above.

Thank you. The LIST of locations was the most interesting to me at this time.
Applying it to the map at this juncture is good timing. As a Yank unfamilliar with the WotR details, I was having difficulty choosing.
Say now, if the chartered townships idea presents any new interest before the next time I cut into this thing.
Re. Ireland and Flanders. I have an Ireland map seperate. This current England/Wales is 250 X 270 tiles, so we have room to spread.

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