Night's Watch Preview

[Vigamadr]

Couldn't tell from the screenshot, but will Eastwatch-by-the-Sea have a port? I rather like the idea of the crows helping reduce piracy.

Ah yes, the wilding cannibals of Skagos finally brought to their knees...




And on another note, if Mance Rayder leads the wildings, will he have the Horn of Joramun to use? And if so, how will it play out in the game? In the book it was said that it awoke the giants from the world, and it can topple the Wall with a blow from the Horn.

[Toho]

Mance wanted to get to the other side of the wall to be safe so tearing down the wall would be a pretty self defeating purpose. and mance will be the all powerful retarded rebel AI siting on its butt doing nothing for version 1.0. maybe one day we will make a faction for wildlings.

[Enferfeu]

^Yes, do this. Wildling faction in the expansion pack version 1.5!

[Meshakhad]

I definitely think that the first "expansion pack" submod should deal with the Night's Watch. Here's what I would add:

- Expanding the map further north
- New playable faction: the Wildlings (specifically, Mance Rayder's faction). Unique wildling units would include spearwives, mammoths, and giants.
- Others as "rebels" appearing north of the Wall. They would have two troop types: wights and Others. Wights would be very hard to kill without using dedicated flaming weapons (we'll assume that the regular troops north of the Wall are carrying torches, and can use them). Others are nigh-invincible except against troops that have obsidian weapons (which you can upgrade your troops with). Fortunately, they come in very small units. If the Others win a battle, a unit of wights equal to the number of enemy casualties is created.
- If possible, there should be something to represent casualties from the cold alone.

[Lordinquisitor]

Your suggestions for the others and wights aren`t possible.

[Sgt. Noob]

what i'd personally love to see, would be people actually making submods out of regional campaigns or different eras ...no need for "crazy ideas", just straightforward stuff

-does anyone know what happened to "king pietro" 's expanded map (or even mod, if he ever released it) ???
he had all westeros , summer isles, and the free cities (if not even valyria and mereen etc...can't really remember now) in it...immagine how many great sub-mods or even stand alone mods would come out of that once v.1 is out...

a full dany's quest...nymeria's quest...targaryen's migration from valyria and aegon's landing...war of the ninepenny kings

[Lordinquisitor]

He worked alone on a very ambitious project. Guess what happened.

[Sgt. Noob]

he made it like that guy that made facebook and now is millionaire, tom cruise is gonna play him in films to come etc etc ???

[Enferfeu]

lol... I don't know how I feel about regional campaigns. I think that if you also add the factions into the grand campaign then that would be great!
But is you only bring factions using regional campaigns I will be sad.
And a question, what is the max number of factions you can have?

[Sgt. Noob]

somewhere i read that it can be 31, but not sure if it was reffering to campaign too...the largest i've seen is 21 (rebels included)

anyway...in order to return on topic (the night's watch) ...everybody would like to play as them BUT...honestly it wouldn't make sense if not as in a regional campaign...and set during the events of ADWD (so attention to "spoilers" ahead)

as i see it there would be need for :

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

-an extended map of the north / the Wall's castles / beyond the wall regions
-factions should be...
2-3 Wall factions (NW and stannis...starting as allied, but with an open outcome)

*mance's force could either be on the wall (to be gained as ally for either stannis or the NW , or beyond it)

2-3 beyond the wall factions (lets say tormund's and the weeper's armies...possibly a "rebel" one too)
certain north houses (bolton and karstark for ex. maybe the boltons could receive some frey stacks at times),

the mountain tribes (to be gained through diplomacy)

some ironmen garissons (moat cailin, deepwood motte and torrhen's square)

and that's it...can't think of anything both lore-respecting and fun at the same time..and still the concept is kinna limiting and could pretty well turn up boring

[achudnow]

Really the easiest way to go about it would be to make the Others a Mongol-like nomadic horde. Or maybe the Timurids are a better example, as two or more groups of Timurids spawn at different times during the normal campaign, we could try to do this with the Others as well.

For example:

Say about ten or even twenty turns in the first Other invasion occurs. At first it's just wights, or maybe just one or two squads of Others. Not a very big force, maybe half of a full army, and it tries to take the Wall, or even some northern settlements. Now heres where it gets interesting, Others can recruit wights from northern villages, to represent the wildlings being killed and raised. This gives the Night's Watch incentive to actually do rangings and try to drive Others out of villages.

Now if your playing the NW, every 15 turns or so you get an increase of like 10000 dragons, Americas expansion style. This represents the southern factions sending aid to the Night's Watch. The Other invasions increase in strength as time passes, but so will the Night's Watch. I propose once again using an Americas expansion system, where as time passes you get access to more buildings and units, because as time goes on the Night's Watch is repairing the broken castles and getting Wildlings and more recruits from the South.

I don't think any of this is impossible, but it wouldn't be in 1.0. Maybe a 1.5, like mentioned earlier.

[Lynx54321]

Perhaps the best way would be at some future point to develop a new campaign map that focuses only on the wall and the area beyond it. You could have three factions, Nights Watch, Wildlings and Others.

Nights Watch - Small numbers of determined fighters.
Wildlings - Vast hordes of poor fighters, some good fighters but very poor morale so ambushes, flanking and defending with choke points will help NW defeat the big numbers.
Others - Small numbers of lethal fighters

Whilst this isn't many factions the focus would be on having a very strategic campaign, for example as the NW you would have to think very carefully about every unit you send out beyond the wall and holding any point beyond the wall such as wildling villages or certain landmarks would have to confer some sort of bonus to the NW to make venturing out worthwhile. Diplomacy with the Wildlings would have to be carefully thought through as well, maybe an alliance would give you some Wildling units but feeding these guys would not be easy (represented by upkeep adding a burden to your treasury). Perhaps it could be scripted that if the Wildlings are getting battered by the Others they could be offered sanctuary beyond the wall which could give the NW a big boost in units at the expense of the Wildlings taking over Moles Town, a few forts along the wall and anything else south of it. This would cut off a portion of the NW income from their only town but perhaps give them a chance of beating the Others which would be the ultimate goal of the campaign. Although they would obviously be susceptible to being back stabbed by the Wildlings.

This sort of campaign would require heavy scripting to accomplish the above and make the campaign interesting but for me is a better option than making the NW playable on the main map.

I like some of the ideas in the post above as well, between these and your imagination I am sure you can see how this could work nicely to give a tightly focused but enjoyable campaign.

[Enferfeu]

Such provincial campaigns are worthy of note, and perhaps the best way to the control the watch, but the others and wildlings should be well represented in the grand campaign as well.

[Vigamadr]

Perhaps the best way would be at some future point to develop a new campaign map that focuses only on the wall and the area beyond it. You could have three factions, Nights Watch, Wildlings and Others.

Somehow have the submod focus on the storyline of the books? Have events in accordance to the books, like when Mance attempts to pass the Wall, or when Stannis reinforces it.

[TouchyAndalou]

I'm sure a lot of people disagree, but I just don't envision a Night's Watch campaign being much fun. One of Total War's strengths is having to traverse the gameworld and deal with so many different factions at the same time, either through war or diplomacy, whereas guarding the Wall just seems like a lot of sitting around perhaps peppered with the occasional ranging.

That's not to say that somewhere further down the road they couldn't play a part in the main campaign, but ideally as a non-playable faction imo. It seems like they'd potentially work well as a Papal States type faction who request aid from all the other factions when a massive horde of Wildlings or Others generate and threaten the Wall. If not enough factions respond, the wall could possibly fall and the North would be under attack, followed by the other Southern factions. I don't even know if this is feasible, but I'm sure its already been discussed at any rate.

[Enferfeu]

You make a good point, and it is also something I have been trying to say... well sortof..

A focused campaign could work, don't get me wrong, but it would be better if there were more than one wilding faction and other factions as well, (pirate etc.)

However, the goal should really be integrating the Night's Watch into the grand campaign, and while playing as them is most likely not feasible, playing as Mance's Wildling faction should be. Again, the 1.0 version should be focused on finishing up the seven regions, but 1.5 should be focused on the north/beyond the wall.

[Timur Amir]

aye, I agree that the Wildlings would really be the most fun to play, not necessarily the Watch.

However, I disagree that, if they add the Wildlings, that they should be multiple factions. I mean, the wildlings never march to war with one another, and Mance unifies them pretty well; it seems odd to add a division of them as another faction entirely

[Vigamadr]

There are different factions of Wildlings beyond the wall. The Mountain Men, Crasters (if they would count?), those guys way over at Skagos, the Thenns and so on...
If a submod were created for this scenario, I would suggest adding so many of these groups.

[Meshakhad]

To my knowledge, Mance had the only large, organized wildling faction. I would leave the others as rebels.

Incidentally, what would Mance's coat-of-arms be? I do think that his primary color should be black, with red edging. Maybe a red harp on black?

[achudnow]

Eh, I would definitely prefer the Night's Watch to be playable, remind why you all think it's a bad idea?