I have an idea for a COW Expansion

[WAR monger]

Hello, forum. I have some ideas for Call of Warhammer that I think might influence replay value and if this makes sense to anyone and hopefully some other modders I would love to start this as a side project as somewhat of a supported expansion, but here goes:

First things first. The mod in its current state fills up around 22 of the alleged 30/31 faction slots available in Medieval II. that being said it goes without saying that more factions can be added, almost 10 more, which is more than enough for this scheme of mine. What I want to do, is incorporate, in some form the following factions:

1. Skaven
2. Bretonnia
3. Wood Elves
4. Tilea
5. Estalia
6. Araby
7. Tomb Kings
8. Lizardmen
9. Ogre Kingdoms?

Now I realize that some of the factions listed above are already in development (and that is a good thing), and I feel this would be good opportunity to integrate them into the game somehow in a way that also brings in loads of new content with it at once.

Naturally, I believe the Skavens should be thrown into the Storm campaign somehow as a new faction (thats what everyone wants anyway, but of course when the anims are available). But as for the other factions, I think they should be used in another way.

I wish to build 3 new custom campaigns for Call of Warhammer:

1. Great Crusade Campaign
2. Bretonnian Campaign
3. Lustrian Campaign

Each of these campaigns would feature some of the new factions and also include some of the existing factions and would involve some point in time in Warhammer lore, and I'd like the breaking down the premise of each one to you:

The Crusades Campaign will basically follow the events of the "Great Crusade against Araby" and will include the Empire, Estalia, Bretonnia, Araby, Tomb Kings and of course Orc intervention from the Badlands, just to make things interesting. The goal for each faction seems self-explanatory in terms of the Empire, Bretonnia, Estalia and Araby. The Great Crusade Against Araby was a three year long war, to free Estalia from the Arabyan invaders, and then taking the fight into Araby in retaliation to topple the evil reign of Sultan Jaffar and crush his empire. The Tomb Kings and the Orcs are on no side but their own and pose a threat to all other factions.

The Bretonnian campaign would basically be the original Chaos Storm from the other side of the mountains, involving Bretonnia, Wood Elves, Skaven, Orcs, parts of Estalia and Tilea and Chaos from the North. Bretonnia, Estalia and Tilea should enjoy a good alliance while Bretonnia's alliance with Wood Elves should be shaky but existent, if not neutral. Same going for Estalia and Tilea.

The Lustrian Campaign would involve Old World settlers in Lustria, fighting the likes of the Lizardmen with Estalia and Tilea being major players here (Marco Columbo and all). Dark Elves also invade from the Northern part of the land mass.

I am more that willing to oversee and work on this "expansion" as a seperate project, and I would actually like it if this became included/supported for future versions? Anyhow, I wish to know if anyone is interested in somethng like this and would want to mod the game with me to get this done.

I can do some 3D modeling and 2D art. I need help in most of the other areas. Anyone?

[Reiksfart]

Good initiative. I've always wanted to see a Crusades campaign, which would involve not only the crusading nations, Araby, Tomb kings etc, but also the ever present threat of the greenskins, dwarves in their holds, raiding Druchii and also the lizardmen which are also situated to the south of Araby.

Hardest part overall will be the scripting, unless it was going to be more of a vanilla campaign (yawn). Once Araby are kicked out of Estalia that would trigger invasion scripts/events leading the Crusaders to Araby. Huge amount of work just for that little portion of the campaign.

Something I'd like to help with but I'm still working diligently on my own submod, plus models for the CoW team. I'm hoping to finish the endless (it really is a massive, massive task) work on the campaign script within a week or two before I can start testing the campaign ready for my testers. Eventually I could spare some time to help with your project, but it would mostly be models/textures and some coding.

[WAR monger]

Well, I can't do scripting of any sort, hopefully someone who can will agree to help the project. However it won't hurt to start on the models I suppose which I plan to get around to by this weekend. I know someone who might be able to help me with maps so that is another thing.

For the most part, my goal as of now is to scrape up a team of sorts to complete this task. Your help would be greatly appreciated, but of course when your workload has subsided. But it's good to know you're in support of this.

[T&D]

With maps??Try to ask dannyxxx or Russian gondor.

[Himster]

There's no need to go all the way to Lustria to include Lizardmen.
The true center of the warhammer world is Albion, an Albion campaign has every faction and is small enough to be manageable.

The crusade against Arabay is problematic because almost every faction involved is unofficial, it's difficult to keep the warhammer feel, it inevitably turns into a vague reenactment of a real world event with a tiny tiny bit of magic.
Bretonnia should simply be a faction added to the main campaign, they aren't affected by the Storm of Chaos like the Empire or the Dwarfs, a campaign just for them would be overkill IMO.
Lustria is a good idea though.

[WAR monger]

There's no need to go all the way to Lustria to include Lizardmen.
The true center of the warhammer world is Albion, an Albion campaign has every faction and is small enough to be manageable.

The crusade against Arabay is problematic because almost every faction involved is unofficial, it's difficult to keep the warhammer feel, it inevitably turns into a vague reenactment of a real world event with a tiny tiny bit of magic.
Bretonnia should simply be a faction added to the main campaign, they aren't affected by the Storm of Chaos like the Empire or the Dwarfs, a campaign just for them would be overkill IMO.
Lustria is a good idea though.

The point of the submod is to add a substantial amount new content, not to squeeze it all in one new campaign because that is just counterproductive. Adding Brettonia to the main campaign means changing the map just to make it realistic or giving them a small role (which doesn't do them justice) and if they aren't effected what is the point of adding them. Brettonia needs their own campaign if they are even going to be worth paying attention to, and it allows to add more factions that people are interested in anyway, I don't see the problem here.

Many parts of the Warhammer world are vague reenactments of the real world, and the discovery of Lustria and the Crusades are official lore by Games Workshop obviously inspired by real world events. So they didn't make official armies and gave it no real representation but now its left to our discretion. If we want to use the most popular unofficial army books then so be it. That's what the COW team did, I dunno if you know this or not, but Kislev isn't a official faction either. I appreciate the feedback though and your opinion was duly noted.

[Reiksfart]

I can see this being quite a long term project so might be a good idea to sign up for a free forum somewhere for ideas and development. It will become a little messy and difficult if you only use this topic.

First thing to do is decide on the map, how far north and south it reaches. I did have a huge map of the warhammer world but can't find it now.

[Kahvipannu]

I could propably try to contribute something to this project too if it takes wind under its wings. For the map you could also ask Toho too, he did previously work on CoW map with his submod, and did miracles with the map of Sundering. Atleast last time I checked he was working for the Game of Thrones mod, but I don't know how busy he is now.

[shaun_jedi]

Talking about expansions. Since Call of Warhammer and the mods The Sundering have been made. Maybe the "War of the Beard?" should be made . It's the time where the dwarves and the elves wage war across the old world

[Valiant Champion]

I think an expansion called "Skaven Invasion" would be best.

[Shi Huangdi]

At the very least it would be awesome to have the Skaven behave sort of like the Beastmen, just popping up randomly. But I heard that the reason they aren't officially included is because of animation issues with the models.

[Valiant Champion]

the animation technically is action while the model is the object. So technically the problem mentioned is the death model.

However the issue with the dead rats tails sticking in the air is no more annoying than the death models of daemonette and cold one mount death models.

Also technically only half of the dead models exists on the battlefield per number killed as theoretically only half fall face forward while half fall backward when they die.

So in my opinion there is no significantly game breaking problem with skaven models or animations at all.

[WAR monger]

After some thinking, I've decided to go on with this project.

[The Holy Pilgrim]

Well, if you ever need my help, just pm me and I'll try my best to assist you

[Klierowski]

Nice ideas