A review of La Guerre de Cent Ans.
I'm going to write up a few paragraphs presenting my opinion on this mod, because I am left with rather strong ideas about it after having played for a dozen hours or so in three campaigns (not sure if this is enough to truly judge the game, but I think I have played it enough to form a decent viewpoint). I would like to hear from players if they agree or disagree, or have their own reviews to give. I would also like to hear from the modding team (if they are still alive) if they agree or not, and if they have plans for the future which may intersect with some of my points.
On the campaign, advantages and differences from vanilla as well as other mods:
Spoiler Alert, click show to read:
Now, after watching the rather interesting intro video, the first thing you notice about the game is the attention to detail: The menu is very nicely presented, and the campaign menu presents a very satisfying faction choice with nice descriptions, nice presentation, and a delicious-looking campaign map which just makes you want to start straight away. The factions themselves are very interesting, and it's here where the true advantage of this mod presents itself: Where else, for example, can you play as such a faction as Navarre? This is a faction which is deemed insignificant today, but was at the forefront of politics during the Hundred Years War. Historical accuracy seems to have been tied in with a small campaign map which favours detail and immersion over quantity and notions of grandeur. Upon starting a campaign, I note the strung out possessions of all the factions, such as the "Duché d'Alençon", a landlocked province surrounded by France yet owned by Navarre. Playing as this faction, I'm at once immersed, debating how I can keep this small state alive. I have a decent income and a large army, but it is composed mainly of light troops, and my forces in northern France are held down by general unrest amongst the population. Should I attack the French to expand my dispersed French territories and unite them by capturing Caen? Or should I use those lands merely as a bank in order to fund campaigns against the Castilian threat to my west? Lots of decisions to make...I like it!
Similarly, while starting a French campaign, I am stunned by the extent of my domains and the detail invested in creating the Royaume de France's territory. Zooming in as much as possible, you realize that this is how Total War is at its best: It's not one of those ridiculously ambitious mods where the whole of France is perhaps four of five regions (or in Empire, one) in which you don't even care about your lands, where they're just a flat green background for the cities you use to build/spend/recruit. In La Guerre de Cent Ans, however, you truly feel like a medieval French king, ruling over a heterogenous mass of vassals and their provincial lands. Chateaux are hidden away amongst small rivers, valleys and woods, and moving your troops around looks more like something from the Lord of the Rings than an abstract, dull, chess-game you can quite easily get used to playing other TW games/mods.
Interest is easily maintained alone by this immersion: You make plans that seem more realistic than the 'arcade' version of rampaging around Europe with a few stacks. Each small town and fortress you seize, despite being puny in the overall territory of Europe, feels like a step in a Great Game you are playing to slowly expand your land and prestige. No longer will you see 'The Holy Roman Empire being brought to greatness by conquering France, Spain and England' or other silly phenomena. This is a small, focused arena where conquering half of France is a massive achievement in its own right (if you're doing this as the English, you get the accomplishment of recreating the expansion of Henry II or Henry V over a long period of time, unlike in vanilla where it's a matter of winning a couple battles. Feels good man).
There is a greater focus on sieges, which increases the medieval theme of the game, and making campaign plans takes time and effort: You have to take internal stability, the loyalty of the nobility, and the strategic locations of recruiting centres (castles) into greater account while making these lengthy preparations. For example, playing as the French, I wish to destroy the English presence in Aquitaine, and yet rebellion and unrest in the South means that I have to alter my plans: Drawing knights together from various corners of the kingdom and supplementing them with solid numbers of men-at-arms, I commence a lengthy Royal Progress to re-assert royal authority in the rebellious lands of the South. It is a lengthy procedure, rather than just taking a single town and exterminating it before setting off again to fight another nation. Likewise, as the English, I have many affairs to deal with, such as massive unrest in Aquitaine and French soldiers massing at the border, impending Scottish invasion (one of the many welcome scripted events) and rebels at home.
My qualms with the game:
Spoiler Alert, click show to read:
However, there are a few flaws which present themselves even early on in the campaign. Crashes seem to occur frustratingly randomly, occasionally stopping your plans dead in their tracks or forcing you to replay battles. Another issue is the unit roster, which I can outline below:
- Disastrously - and running directly counter to the great pains invested in creating a good atmosphere and historical accuracy - faction colours dominate the game and have a negative effect on those elements. You're forced to go from the 'Duke of Burgundy' to the 'Leader of the bright Purple and yellow guys' and fighting against 'those blue guys' etc. It's a real shame that there isn't an optional download provided for those of us who despise faction colours: This is an arcade feature which decreases the value of your soldiers - partially because of the recruiting system, your knights seem more like anonymous shiny toys than loyal retainers of the various lords under your control.
- Although this isn't a flaw as such, the game does not offer many new units or skins (one of the more notable ones being a rather good jousting helmet for French knights, an anachronism which can be easily forgiven though) so I would just like to point this out to those who may have been expecting some seeing as new skins/units has become something of a staple, or a routine, for mods.
- I was planning on writing an AAR for the Navarrese campaign I started, which would be made from the viewpoint of a man-at-arms, but this met a dead end when I saw that those units were entirely untextured. Basically, half of my army were silver tin-men running around and killing people. I stared at the screen in confusion for a while, then quit.
Something which carries within it some good and some bad is the 'culture' feature. Religion has wisely been replaced with it, thus making holding enemy lands something rather difficult. There are a few problems with this, however: In my aforementioned example of making a 'royal progress' throughout the border regions with Spain, my legion (perhaps six units) of Gendarmes and royal bodyguard easily crushed the rebels when they presented themselves, but these swine didn't seem to give a damn that their king himself had taken to the field and slaughtered those of them who had rebelled, so a village with a population of less than 500 revolted three times. Every time I left it, the town revolted again and again required exterminating: I reached the minimum for a town's population pretty damn fast, and I couldn't build anything or send any agents around to rectify the problem. My question is this: During the middle-ages, did rebels continue to fester once their king himself had come and crushed them, executing the leaders? I can't think of many cases, instead remembering the cases where the treacherous were executed and the disloyal prostrated themselves before their king begging for pardon. Likewise, I think 'cultural differences', a somewhat modern idea, are a little too much of an impeding factor in the path of conquest, and require toning-down. Certainly, it is with difficulty that England held on to its French possessions, but it doesn't seem to resemble the constant slurry of rebellion and destruction you risk getting in LGCA if you remove troops from your land temporarily.
The absence of permanent stone forts is also a shame, seeing as unfortunately this is not a kingdoms mod: Stone forts would be by far most welcome in such a geographically detailed mod. Also, the building/recruitment choices seem rather stale: You can't recruit in towns period, not even militia, crossbowmen or pikemen. I would also have liked to see more of a dichotomy between highly skilled but expensive mercenaries and relatively poor local troops. A welcome addition to atmosphere would have been an increased ability to recruit knights early on in the game albeit with a much greater focus on armour, which would have set a different path from the slow, vertical advancement procedure of vanilla. A final inconvenience is the two turns per year choice, a habitual 'necessary evil' of TW games, although it is much more prominent in this case where it results in a journey across France taking something like five years...
To conclude, I would like to summarize that this mod is top-tier, at least in potential, and provides an honourable campaign which doesn't over-extend itself with ambition. There are many hidden gems to this relatively tucked-away and quiet mod, which are difficult to find in any other mods. Several developer choices, however, as well as the instability of the mod, are what hinder the project from realizing its full potential.
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