The High Road: The Jacobite Era [25-1: added list of regiments to first post]

[dmcraanen]

Can you come on steam? Im not sure what you're saying.

[dmcraanen]

Also, Happy Burns' Day from the whole team to everyone! Enjoy your haggis and whisky tonight, or just enjoy a normal evening if you don't celebrate!

[smoesville]

I don't know what this is

[dmcraanen]

It's the birthday of Robert Burns, one of Scotland's most cherished national heroes. He was a poet.
Also, I added a full list of regiments that we aim to include in the first post just above the unit screenshots. Enjoy!

[dmcraanen]

Gentlemen, I want to pose a question:

due to the huge number of regiments and the differences in uniforms I'm facing a problem. You now have an option on how I will proceed:

1. I will shorten the timeframe of the campaign from 1689-1746 to 1714-1746. In addition, I will switch from 6 turns per year to 12 turns per year. Regiments from the '15, '19 and '45 risings will be accurate and complete. On the downside, the 1690 'rising' (which is by most historians not considered a rising in itself) will be skipped, but will be mentioned at the start when the player is explained what the situation is. Furthermore, the Irish will no longer be featured (but will be present in the form of mercenaries) and Great Britain will not be playable due to the fact that they will feature as the pope. As a compensation, I wish to add some more regions (possibly by using parish boundaries rather than shire boundaries. I could easily make 199 regions in that way and if I would make the models in-game smaller, it still wouldn't be clustered due to the huge map) and PSF's to the map (amongst others, Fort Augustus, Fort George and Fort William)

2. I can leave the situation as it is now (6 tpy, 1689-1746) but in this case the uniforms will not be historically accurate nor will the troops be complete.

Please voice your opinions.

[baneofnewbs]

Hmm this is quite a dilemma because on one hand I love historical accuracy however on the other this means no risings in Ireland. However this mod seems to focus mainly on the risings in Scotland and the more famous ones are considered the '15 and '45. Unfortunately this destroys the chance to have great britain which I view as a loss. Overall this is really a tough decision however I would like to say that to me at least option 1 remains the best because it seems like it will deliver more history and enjoyment as a whole.

[Hengest]

12 tpy is going to play havoc with your characters ageing, worst idea ever

[dmcraanen]

How do you mean havoc? Afaik this here works just fine:

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=175383

So besides the aging which I think will work, what do you think?

[Hengest]

There is a reason that mods like TATW don't use that. You can't just take pieces of mods from here and there and bundle them altogether. If you are basing your entire premise on this, and then that script doesn't work- what are you going to do then? I suggest testing each piece of the pie instead of deciding on something which assumes several things will work.

[dmcraanen]

Yes well, I'd still need a plan. If things don't work, I ll see about that when it happens. Which general idea do you think you'd like most though, presuming everything works and aging is all good and all that.

[Gigantus]

12tpy works just as fine as 6tpy or 4tpy for that matter (no problem in our 1648 mod). The scripts they are based on all use the same aging principle. An increase in turns per year, however, needs some adjustments like increase in building times and decrease in income basic figures (via settlement_mechanics) to stay realistic.
If you have script parts that are based on turn numbers then those will need adjustments as well.

[Heart of Madness]

I've got to say option 1.

[Celtoi]

I think I like option 2 more, as leaving the Irish & English out of the playable factions list would be a severe loss (imo) for replayability.
( you might get some kind of Shogun 2 feeling: now not with only samurai but with only Scottish warriors ?! )

[dmcraanen]

edit: Celtoi, remeber that most irish professional units will be featured in the jacobite armies. In addition, the english / british units will be featured in the government armies, so the unit variety stays the same, except focussed on a shorter (and later) time period!

I've actually picked option one, which for now seems best. It just seems silly to make a roster for a faction that's destined to be wiped out in 20 turns. Instead, I am redoing the regions map. We're going from around 85 regions to 140 regions, perhaps more. This is because I am now basing it on parish maps. In addition, I now have so much space that I can add the following clans if I want to without effort (since all units are regional anyway)

Clan Sinclair
Clan Keith
House of Hamilton
Clan Hay
Clan Erskine

My next question is: would you people prefer more rebel territory, or more factions?

[Col. Tartleton]

For the sake of game play one makes more sense, obviously the individual clans can't stand against the United Kingdom. A solidified Jacobite faction could and did have great successes and defeat, but that's a different matter.

However that kind of confuses the whole point for me. At some point this simply becomes a Scottish vs Scottish thing because you've mostly removed the other players, but then that completely undermines the concept of a Scottish Rebellion when the Jacobite objective was to take over the entire UK with French backing, not that the Stuarts wouldn't be satisfied with just taking back Scotland, that was not their goal.

It's a real quandary. While everything looks top notch the story as I see it is kind of missing.

You've got this 9 years war to Austrian Succession era with massive battles taking place on the continent and arguably around the globe and the Jacobites were part of that larger kerfuffle of France acting completely out of line and pissing everyone off.

As an American this is akin to my making a mod concerning the New England Indian Wars. Although frankly that's actually far clearer thing because you have a number of British colonies, French colonies, and Spanish colonies and Indians are gunning for each other. The English colonies in particular having the non aligned quality of the Highlanders as the various colonies were fairly sovereign until later.

I'm not suggesting you change to the big picture, but I'm not sure how this wouldn't become a fairly extensive amount of work for a very narrow and somewhat repetitive Shogun styled game as Celtoi cautioned. Highlanders are very cool naturally, but can you make a whole game about them? Samurai are cool, and I'd argue more diverse looking than the Scotch. At the end of the day it's a bunch of guys with blue bonnets and plaid hacking each other to death with targes, basket hilted swords, lochaber axes and the occasional musket. All the factions are almost entirely shock troops and I'm not sure how that'd impact game play.

[dmcraanen]

I can see your point, and I agree it is somewhat narrow. However, I focussed on Scotland only because 1. I wanted a little more depth than For King or Country (which by the way is a really good mod), and also because Scotland was very divided at that point while England was not. The jacobite rebellions really caused the end of an era and saw a completely ''unified'' scotland for the first time. Also, as said, the scripting will eventually allign factions with each other in the event of a rising, so that you actually DO get two fronts (jacobite vs government). However, by doing this with more than one faction it shows the power struggle that existed between lowlands and highlands and clans and houses in general. As for the units, I understand your concerns about them being repetitive, but I think that'll work out. I have more variation than Napoleon: Total War in terms of regiments and Der Dreissigjährige Krieg (A mod by gigantus and infracta, also feckin awesome) has fewer units and that mod is thorougly enjoyable. What it comes down to I should think is whether or not you find it an interesting period and an interesting part of the world. There's a lot of mods focussing on a bigger picture, but I appreciate the way medieval II can show the details, too, as well as get really involved with your respective family and feuds, rather than just throwing the Duke of Hamilton in front of a cannon because he's just another general and replacable.

Hope that sort of makes sense. Anyway, thanks for your input - it's always much appreciated!

[Col. Tartleton]

True you would have the governmental regulars and mercenaries. All highlanders all the time is a stretch on my part.

I think it might be useful to include (later perhaps) some outside British or Continental factions in the extra faction slots under the 30 cap for custom battles at least if you're going to center the campaign entirely on Scottish interests. I think that's the best compromise between it.

England, France, Spain, Netherlands, Hanover, or something.

[Celtoi]

After reading the above I guess I'll stick with option 1 as I always like to head for the English with Scots (after 1st powering up by extending land in Eire) or do the same retaliation-thing with the Irish.

But you already chose for option 2, so to answer your last question:
I don't know how active the rebels are in your mod(?), but if they are as "agressive" as normal than I vote for more clans rather than more rebel territory.
Cheers guys !

[dmcraanen]

Yeah, well the regiments will include a lot of hanoverian troops, as well as a few dutch regiments. the jacobites will have some french and irish too, so I suppose we could expand on that later if we wanted. The issue with the rebels is a bit of an annoying one, I can see that people want rebels so they can actually attack at random, but on the other hand I think it very nice to be able to marry into all important families and have relations with them under the discretion of government, since that's more historical. that also means that as soon as you attack them, you're in some serious . I would personally not mind that as it would make the game much more difficult (and you're actually supposed to do things through politics and minor force until a rising anyway), but of course I wouldn't want to disappoint.

[dmcraanen]

As a bit of an example: these are the provisional new regions and the options we have second map includes the five other factions I was mentioning. Don't mind the box in the upper left hand corner, the regions as you see them are all according to old parish maps.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: