Stainless Steel 7.0 Preview I: Gameplay Features

[Judeman266]

@Duck of Death

Lol! Hilarious!

[Branzo]

thanks for showing us.

[Zenithar]

Thanks for the preview! Looks really sexy... can't wait for it.

[Jonlion]

This looks amazing and am looking to download. Is it a Mod to Kingdoms but basically the normal Total War game, ie playing as France/England etc?

Hope that makes sense?!

[Paragon]

Thanks for the preview! Looks really sexy... can't wait for it.

[Ferdiad]

No need for that, SS has a great body.

[Paragon]

No need for that, SS has a great body.

Oh, wathever think that's subjective pal. I don't like ponytails, they remember me of my sister and that's a deal breaker here.

[I Am Herenow]

Really nice preview, guys , although I do have one query. I'm a little unsure about this 'followers of Allah' business, especially having Christian factions differentiate between different non-Christian religions through your use of the phrase 'Pagans or followers of Allah'. It smacks of modern comparative religious studies to me and so strikes me as anachronistic.


The OED (which, of course, mostly useful as a record only of English-language word usage; but still) does not record any usages of the word 'Allah' in English before 1702;¹ a more chronologically apt term may be 'Saracen' (attested to from the ninth well into the eighteenth century)² or, a rather worse fit chronologically, 'Mohammedan' (1663).³ Whilst this post mostly addresses the contents of the bullet points of the OP itself, I do notice that you use 'Moor' in the in-game screenshot. However, I might suggest (from the OED, again)^{4 a} that this is a somewhat riskier strategy, since, although it is written in that dictionary entry that use of 'moro' in the sense of 'Muslim' can be attested to in Spanish from 1091, for some other European languages (English and Portuguese, for example), it cannot be said to have acquired that definition until the sixteenth century.

Note also that Medieval accounts* seem to indicate a lack of clear division between – indeed, even an interchangeability of – racial and religious terms, especially when talking about foreign religions. Accounts of Urban II's speech at Clermont have him talking about 'Christianity' quite happily.^{5; 6, p. 6} However, when it comes to the other faith, he uses phrases such as 'Turks and Arabs', 'this vile people'/'that vile race' and 'pagans', but not 'Muslims'/'followers of Allah' per se.^{5; 6, pp. 6–7} On the other side of the divide, whilst writers like al-Sulami and Usama Munqidh do write of 'Muslims',^{6, p. 9} they use 'Franks' as a metonym for 'Christians'^{6, p. 4} – again, suggesting to me a lack of conceptual distinction between religion and ethnicity. They write also of 'blasphemers', 'enemies of God' and the 'forsaken' – but, in a mirror image of Urban's chroniclers, not of 'Christians'.^{6, p. 7} This might lead you to question my dismissal of 'Moor', above, but note that in the 1588 quote the author feels the need to clarify that by Moors he means Muslims,^{4 b} suggesting that this usage of the word was not well-established yet.

So perhaps it would be more historically accurate for your mod to adopt a "shallow focus", to use a photography analogy, with factions' accounts of alien belief systems manifestly not coinciding with believers' accounts of their own religions – quite unlike the neutrality strived for by modern comparative religion.

*Although N.B. I've just done a cursory scan of the OED and a few sources/articles on the First Crusade for this (so, as a caveat, speeches designed to stir people up to wage holy war may well be unrepresentative, although probably not wholly so), and your historians will know far more than I do. I just want to make the small point that couching religion in the mod in modern religious-studies terminology may be misleading.


Anyway, hope that helps you somewhat.

I Am Herenow

[Ferdiad]

I doubt most would care over the little details in a mod like SS, which is gameplay and not accuracy oriented.

[Wiskers]

Awesome! these are some really great ideas! I especially like the one about being rewarded for heroic victories.

[ceretic]

Some thoughts on royalty...

1) Will we be able to rename royal children? - or failing that - can the character names for royal children be restricted to names that feature historically. E.g. in England the only names children would be born with would be (in order of frequency); Edward, Henry, Richard, William, Stephen and John.... can there be a system where a second king named the same as a previous king would be, for example, "Edward II" following "Edward". I say this, because when playing as England and I get a prince BARNABY who inevitably becomes king (unless I arrange for him to fight a losing battle and wait for him to die)... it saps my will to carry on...

2) Will we be able to elevate an heroic captain to general but not incorporate them into our royal family?

3) Will we be able to disinherit crown-princes?

[Ferdiad]

You can already do all of those besides the naming which is impossible.

[Heskey]

...I say this, because when playing as England and I get a prince BARNABY who inevitably becomes king (unless I arrange for him to fight a losing battle and wait for him to die)... it saps my will to carry on...

What about King DCI Barnaby? He'd be badass.

Mid-ieval Murders, doooOOOooOOOooooooooooOOOOoooooOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO...

[Ferdiad]

God no.

[Jackie Chan's Brother Wang...]

You can already do all of those besides the naming which is impossible.

You can? I've been unable to promote Captains to Generals without adopting them into the Royal Family.

As for being able to disinherit Crown Princes, I'm assuming you mean doing it with mods?

[Ferdiad]

Ya.

[lequintal69]

Could u please give a link to that submod ?

[Ferdiad]

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=381796

[kretian]

Do you know about the release date of 7.0? Atl east an estimation ?

[Dwarven Berserker]

Do you know about the release date of 7.0? Atl east an estimation ?

You really have to be careful about asking something like that on these forums. People tend to get mad when they hear the words "Release Date"

But seriously though, there is, and there will never be a set release date. Maybe the team has a personal deadline, but we'll probably never get to know about it.