Medieval Kingdoms Total War: General Overview (OLD THREAD)

[Ltd.]

So, here comes an update on the cumans: cuman light horse archers and cuman nobles.
As always, the units are still WIP.
Tell me what you think where to adjust them, what to add or take away.

Credits and a big thank you go to the 1257 mod team and the rus XIII. century mod team (mods for M&B and M&B WB respectively) as well as to the members of the Open Source Projekt for M&B. Thank you for their great models and textures that served as the foundation to build on for these units (as well) .

[calgacus_1314]

Ah no, it's fine. I know you're right. I couldn't bear releasing anything unfinished. It's just me being impatient, I really hope you guys beast this mod so we can play the biggest mod since roma surrectum II

[warman222]

Ltd. We have permission from the 1257 mod now? Or is it just for you units there? If so that will definitely work to out advantage. Also the units look wonderful as always.

[calgacus_1314]

Also question, will we have to buy all the dlc to play this mod when it releases? Like im assuming the mongols/tartars/ukrainians/rus and all that will require the steppe horde dlc.

[Ltd.]

Regarding the 1257 mod permission: I asked for their permission a few weeks ago, got no answer in return, unfortunately. I am not assuming anything ofc, neither yes nor a no, but wanted to keep on working on units anyway and can only hope that the nice people over there wont turn us down. I never asked credit for any of their work in any form, allways stated what belonged to whom, so let´s see. If there wasn´t for these mods, like rus XIII c and 1257 I think my work would be a lot more labour intensive, because creating all these armours, helmets from scratch or even if modifying CA´s assets or OSP assets would take so much more time...
Using only OSP assets won´t be "as convenient" for me as using stuff from other mods as well, cause the OSP does not really have much on cumans or mongols or eastern stuff, as far as I could tell.

[Mortarion]

So, here comes an update on the cumans: cuman light horse archers and cuman nobles.
As always, the units are still WIP.
Tell me what you think where to adjust them, what to add or take away.

Credits and a big thank you go to the 1257 mod team and the rus XIII. century mod team (mods for M&B and M&B WB respectively) as well as to the members of the Open Source Projekt for M&B. Thank you for their great models and textures that served as the foundation to build on for these units (as well) .

Looks great

[warman222]

lol Mortarion I think you quoted his post wrong, XD

Anyways I'm seriously considering making the first release of this mod custom battle only. There are several reasons I want to do this.

1. I want to get something released before I go back to college at the end of August and won't be able to mod too much for a while.
2. We currently don't have anyone doing campaign related manners right now so that would be almost from square one.
3. It's a common thing that mods do for a good reason.

We should be able to get most if not all rosters done by the end of August. Don't think that this will be a small release though, this will include a crap ton of unit work of course plus the new siege weapons and animations. We also plan to rename the factions and icons for it's more than just a unit pack. So anyways this is my plan until I hear a compelling reason to not do it.

[Lord Giovanni]

Ltd., That looks like quite an army list! You have my full support on it! I like your idea about the Varangian Guard. I hope that the campaign limit on units can extend beyond training, and applied to bodyguard unit choices as well.

Regarding the regions: in 1212 the Latin Empire owned the coasts of the Sea of Marmara, while the Empire of Nicaea owned the lands more inland. I think that it would be a good idea for balance to give the Latin Empire Nicomedia while the Empire of Nicaea takes Pergamon (which would give Nicaea a full province to start with). Trapezos was part of the Empire of Trebizond, so no problems there. Sinope was also under the control of Nicaea at that time, though that would leave it territorially isolated from the rest of Nicaea. Alternatively, we could consider giving Sinope to the Empire of Trebizond, which would give them three regions, a fighting chance against Latin Imperial and Turkish aggression, and a chance to make an overland attack on Constantinople themselves. If that route is taken, I can see the Empire of Trebizond being made playable along with Nicaea. I'm sure the Byzantophiles would thank us, with the chance to return the Komnenos dynasty to the imperial throne, rather than the Laskaris dynasty ruling in Nicaea.

Though I'm not sure what you were referring to in your post. Were you saying that you would prefer all Byzantine successor states united, like the Greek States were in R1?

[Mortarion]

lol Mortarion I think you quoted his post wrong, XD

Anyways I'm seriously considering making the first release of this mod custom battle only. There are several reasons I want to do this.

1. I want to get something released before I go back to college at the end of August and won't be able to mod too much for a while.
2. We currently don't have anyone doing campaign related manners right now so that would be almost from square one.
3. It's a common thing that mods do for a good reason.

We should be able to get most if not all rosters done by the end of August. Don't think that this will be a small release though, this will include a crap ton of unit work of course plus the new siege weapons and animations. We also plan to rename the factions and icons for it's more than just a unit pack. So anyways this is my plan until I hear a compelling reason to not do it.

Yea, seems i did

Also, i agree with your current plan. Sounds great, and it would let the community get a taste of the early mod. Aswell as test it, feedback and maybe some form of fan video advertisement for the mod
btw, i really wish i could help you guys. I would love to make some custom medieval buildings, im just very lazy and bussy at the moment i'll be sure to notify you if i get something done, and you can then incoporate it in your mod if you chose to do so

[warman222]

So I'm always looking for new OSP assets to use in Medieval Kingdoms. For the most part I've found nearly all that's out there. What's funny is I nearly missed something right under my own nose. I'm starting to work on the Italians and looked over the kinds of armor I would need for some of the units. As I think Brivime pointed out in the old thread, I needed more padded armors and other armors like that. Even though I had some I needed more in that middle ground. Now my medium tier armors came largely from Pino's FIRST armor pack he released and the light and peasant armors I got from his SECOND pack. I somehow missed that he had medium tier armors in his second pack too. Around 30+ variants that involve new mail armors as well as those padded and other slightly lighter armor types. Now I know 30+ is a big number and I know you might be thinking I'm going to back track again but I'm not. Ever since I've started using the decal system now in a large chunk of my armors, it is incredibly easy for me to implement them. It's already done, and here's a before and after showing a unit with the new variants mixed in and a unit that doesn't yet. The difference is incredible, check it out! (Also note that Steam reduces the quality some what.)

Before:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

After:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

[Ltd.]

warman, those units look really good and with their axes , also quite scary. what units are they again? I am asking because they look almost more armoured than my current varangian guard, currently under development
I plan to show them here in the near future and don' t want them to look less fashionable and "bad - boy"-ish . just kidding.
On the other hand I was thinking how I could implement an "emperor" armour, that only he and he alone should wear, no other officer. so like I give a certain officer type to only two kinds of units , a heavy cavalry and then to the varangian guard, and since there is a campaign cap, iirc, only one general of this kind should be roaming the battlefield, at any one time if this unit cap is 1. we would also have to make sure, that the starting armies have this general unit, and in our
case there would be two "emperor figures" at most, one cavalry and one varangian, so a leader and heir if you like with their special and unique armour.
what do you think guys?
One could do this obviously with any faction to have a so called faction leader, unless I am missing sthg in my calculations.

[warman222]

well it's one of about half a dozen mercenary/generic medieval units that are available to multiple Western European nations. This is the heaviest one called Heavy Infantry(duh). At the moment I have all the generic units available to all Western European Nations. However for balancing reasons I might make it so that only certain generics belong to certain nations to compensate. Like France and HRE would get the "Archers" unit but not England because they get Yeomen Archers, an English exclusive unit. Now I'm largely referring to middle tier units here. Militia and Peasant units will belong to everyone of course.

[Ltd.]

Lord Giovanni, I think we should make both Nicaea and Trebizond as playable, but give Sinope to Nicaea if it belonged to it historically. I am not really concerned about Trebizond being somewhat isolated from Nicaea, as we know that in R2 the AI can survive with one province, even defeat large empires, so that should not be a problem.
So Nicaea would have heavy spearmen, militia spearmen, peltasts, psiloi (very light javelin or militia level archer), light-medium lancer. Trebizond would get he same plus a medium - heavy archer, the trebizond archers, which should be available to Nicaea as AOR as well. Nicaea would get no specialist archer, but for that would get a very heavy cataphract or pronoiaroi cavalry.
Also both should receive as AOR only: skythikoi / cuman HA in Nicaea area , in bulgarian, cuman and georgian territories
They would also get turkopoloi, turkish HA in Anatolia as AOR
Correct me if I'm wrong

[The Wandering Storyteller]

Hey guys, I've found something interesting for you to develop this mod, especially concerning the campagin map. I was checking out the Qin Expansion mod and here's what this Chinese modder did to change the appearance of the city, obviously it isn't all fully done, but here it is:

[warman222]

idk what I'm looking at Marshal. Care to explain?

[Ltd.]

well it looks like he changed some campaign map buildings to Chinese style buildings , which looks good BTW, so if you can bribe him to come over and do some fancy stuff for our mod, too, then it would get us even closer to a total conversion :-)

[Stívarðr Reynitré]

This is looking like some really promising and detailed stuff.

I'm impressed thus far and will be following with great interest!

Thanks for the hard work so far guys!

[pacco]

@Ltd

This mod looks really good...
I'm not active modder anymore, but you can use my shield colection if you need it...
I can send you psd file for these (I resize them to show all of them in few pics - one shield is 512x512):

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

[Stívarðr Reynitré]

Wow.

Some of those kite shields are amazing...!!

[warman222]

Pacco that would be great! Send them my way through a PM and thank you so much!