Medieval Kingdoms Total War: 1212 AD General Overview

[jules napoléon khan]

Jules, could you update your map with the vassals, please ?

Of course!!! http://postimg.org/image/7y3w8csph/
West Europe:
Light yellow: Kingdom of Bohemia (Holy Roman Empire's vassal) (catholic): Ottokar I
Light Grey: Kingdom of Sicilia: (Holy Roman Empire's vassal) (catholic) Friedrich I. Capital: Lilybaeum
Red: Duchy of Pomerania: (Kingdom of Danemark's vassal) (catholic) Boguslaw II

East Europe:
Light Blue: Banate of Croatia (Kingdom of Hungary's vassal) (catholic) Mihajlo
Orange: Vlachs (Second Bulgarian Empire's vassal) (catholic) Ioachim
Dark red: Kingdom of Thessalonica (Latin empire's vassal) Demetrio. Capital: Pella

East Africa and Near East (except Aithiops):
Red:Emirate of Yemen: (Ayyubid Dynasty's vassal) (sunni) Mas'ud Yusuf
Grey: Kingdom of Shirvan (Kingdom of Georgia's vassal) (sunni) Gushtasb I

Good point and what you put together is very helpful so kudos. I didn't mean to come off as a jerk, so sorry if I did. And the edit was better so yeah.

I'm very happy to read that. I hope that the team will be use my work.

[Lord Giovanni]

The problem that I have with relying too much on vassals in this time period is that the bulk of a kingdoms armed forces actually came from vassals. Therefore, having a lot of temperamental vassals that may or may not join their forces to yours in battle is not a very enjoyable way to play Total War. Therefore, I'm more of a mind for vassals not being present in most kingdoms and a kingdom's control of a region is basically the kingdom making decisions for that region through its vassals. The exception will be in situations in which a large web of vassals led to severe problems, like the Ayyubids.

[jules napoléon khan]

I understand. Tributary State are totally independent (they only give money to their "master") .The Holy Roman Empire is the same as Ayyubid. For Georgia, the kingdom of Shirvan was sunni. So an assistance from other sunni States could be possible.
For others vassals:
It created a "true" game about Medieval wars (with Vassal and suzerain). And it helps the "little states" to fight and to have more territories. For example, Mongol Empire can be very big, and in Bouvines, France won against the Holy Empire and the kingdom of England

[Lord Giovanni]

But that's the thing. To be fully enjoyable, Total War games need to make some sacrifices to "true" historical accuracy in order to enhance the gameplay experience. In the R2 engine, you can't control vassal armies, nor build improvements in their territory. There is also a bit of a problem with the population mechanic. Smaller states don't really have as much of a problem surviving and thriving in the R2 engine, as we've all seen. And in cases like Shirvan, the "cultural traditions" of that specific territory could provide the distinctive nature of Shirvan in the greater Kingdom of Georgia.

Units of knights weren't recruited in real life, but levied down the feudal chain. However, recruiting units is the way a Total War game is played. We, the team members, are committed to providing an enjoyable experience for all players to our mod, with an eye for historical accuracy, but accuracy and enjoyability need to be in balance. We just need to strike the appropriate one. Your points are well-received, Jules, and make sense for a medieval game with a greater emphasis on accuracy.

With that in mind, Warman, I propose a poll for this thread: Should feudal states be comprised mainly of vassals or kept as large, homogenous kingdoms?

[warman222]

Well I've always wanted to do something along the lines of having more kingdoms in the game through that method but I'm not sure how to represent that with unit rosters. The more I think about it, we MIGHT be able to do it and here's how:

I could split certain units into more vassal specific types. Like instead of Pavisiers have it be Foix Pavisiers with shields and emblems based around the Foix CoA. Now to clarify I'm not suggesting that those units would be uniform. I'm saying that when you do see surcoat variants you'll see that one specific one only and similar stuff with the shields. You could do that with several units and that would be the vassal's rosters. Then make all those unit variants AOR to France. France would have some more units than the others of course but you'll need to recruit AOR vassal units in order to bolster your armies. Now in custom battle we can show this by having all the vassal units playable to the big ones like France. If we were to go that route, that's how we could do it. What do you think?

[Lord Giovanni]

That certainly is a possibility; we can already recruit vassal units and vassal territories are still considered player-owned as far as edicts are concerned. What concerns me is that both human and AI players would not be able to effectively control the development of their kingdoms if vassals control large swaths of it. My concerns would be put to rest if it's possible to confederate "same blood" vassals (like Dijon for the French), with increasing likelihood as the game progresses. As knighthood began to be superseded on the field of battle in the 14th and 15th centuries, the relative power of the nobility declined, and royal authority increased. This led to the formation of the great nation-state kingdoms of early modern Europe as old vassal domains were placed under the direct control of that nation's king.

I would also caution against making a different skin of unit for each vassal; that would make things fall into the problem that Empire: Total War had, in which players could recruit 20 units that all did the exact same thing, they just all looked a bit different with minor stat variations. I would just say that a vassal can field the same units as his lord; that would make recruiting from those vassal pools less of a headache.

[MagicCuboid]

With regards to vassal units: it would be possible to simply assign different primary/secondary/tertiary colors to vassal units without creating separate entries. That way, they'd all have the same stats and names, but could be differently represented on the battlefield .

The only downside is lacking unique battle standards ... No! must not fall down the rabbit hole!

[Ltd.]

The problem I see with Lord Giovanni' s proposal of having the same units for vassals as for the master is, that when the vassals set themselves free, which they tend to do sometimes, then e.g in case of hungary , once hungary' s vassals are free, we'll have a few more 'hungarian armies' running around' thou not fighting under hungarian banner. However, you could imagine them as armies turned rogue, so that could make sense as well. just my oughts.
Also, as I said earlier I am not able to work on my units this week and the next, but I have been organising some more stuff for my roster' so I am not entirely cut off from the game.
warman and Lord Giovanni: have you received the 'package' I have sent you? Have you found some game-breaking bugs? let me know, so I can correct them once I get home

[warman222]

Yes I did get it. I did have a crash with two of the Byzantine units because of missing animation tables. The sword emperor guard and the elite archers. I got around the issue for now by changing their tables to vanilla ones.

There's other issues I have with giving the vassals the same units as well. For instance the units that I would be doing this with have emblems from all over France(still going by that example here) and visually it wouldn't make sense. Second many Medieval armies did have the same or similar units and equipment. Besides we're only talking about maybe 4-5 units that will be split this way so it won't be as "bad" as Empire. Also many of the nations will be using the same or similar units anyways because there really isn't that much variation to be found in feudal armies anyway. Now I'm not sure about the same blood vassal thing but I don't know how to check though because I don't play a lot of campaign stuff. So we'll need to check that out soon before we go too far.

[Lord Giovanni]

Ltd., I did get the package you sent, but I haven't had the opportunity to run it yet. I'll send you feedback from my experiences.

Warman and Ltd., I see your points for lord-vassal units. Perhaps a compromise can be reached for vassal units: make the vassal units available in the campaign, but only have non-vassal units recruitable in custom battles. That would ease up clutter on the army selection page, and help us to ship out the first release faster.

[Ltd.]

warman, that is very strange. I tried all units in melee as well in that latest pack, the one I have sent you, and got no crash whatsoever in a dozen custom battles. Did you maybe run your own pack at the same time or any other mods? I ask because I have taken your knights pack animations for my cavalry, to have spear animation and sword - shield animation for those cavalry units so maybe there was some conflict.

[warman222]

Yeah I'll look into it some more because I did narrow it down to that. Also I have a few ideas up my sleeve for the mod that I'm going to see how it looks. If it comes out the way I think it will I will elaborate on it and show a video. Let's just say that this will reduce a lot of the accuracy complaints while still keeping the Total War spirit.

[Mando44]

So has any progress been made on the crossbow units?

[warman222]

Not too much because we've been busy with other elements of the mod.


Okay, so here's an example of something I testing out. This is what I was hinting at yesterday. I deicded to bring it up now. I've seen many sources saying that knights would bring their squire and their retainers/men at arms(?) to battle or at least on their campaign. This ties into the fact that I might adjust the rosters to something a little more accurate types based off what balrog posted in another thread. So anyway here's my idea. Have a retainer unit with the knight and squire as officers. Make the unit like the historical number of retainers, 40 I believe. Than repeat that for all the knight variants instead of a knight unit. So here's what it might look like. I might change the weapons so the knight has a lance not a sword but I want your input. I do believe there's another room on the selection screen for the 15 or so knight variants so I think that'll be fine. Check it out.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

[BalrogOfMorgoth]

Impresive ! But does this type of units will replace what we saw ( group of knight and group of squires ) or is it a new additional unit ?

[warman222]

Well this was just a test of sorts. The more I think about it the more I don't like it. Since this would replace the knight and squire units. So while I can do this I don't think it'll be worth it.

[nikossaiz]

First of all a big Bravo for all your efforts! Hope to see and play this mod in a full scale release! I would like to ask you, shouldnt be an option for the empire of Nicaea or Trebizond to reclaim Konstantinople and the former territory and became the Eastern Roman Empire? After all this was the goal of those factions after the latin conquer of konstantinoupolis in 1204 with the empire of Nicaea to had the advantage ( they took back the City in 1265 with general stratigopoulos and formed again the , diclined till then but by name eastern roman empire ) despotat of epirus is missing from the factions though, these was the prime rival to empire of Nicaea in the race to take over the city of cities. Anyway you are the Artists, you know better! Keep up the good Work!!

[Ltd.]

Regarding the Empire of Nicaea and Trebizind, they will oviously have the option to confederate , however how this confederation will reflect upon conquering Constantinople, I cannot tell you for sure, since not too much has been done, campaign-wise, afaik.
Epirus may or may not make it into the game, probably the latter, though even if they would they' d have more or less the same roster as Nicaea, with more latin influence and / or more mercenaries (latins).
I would love to see a good representation of constantinople, on the battlemap and the campaign map as well, but we'd have to wait for campaign map editing tools, for one, as well as begin factually editing everything that is not unit and custom battle related.
I'm sure we'll come up with a good solution.

[Silius Saurus]

How do you plan to handle the question of succession and family trees, considering that RTW2 did away with the family tree?

[Cavalier]

How do you plan to handle the question of succession and family trees, considering that RTW2 did away with the family tree?

I've been thinking about that.

Shouldn't there be a possibility to add surnames to the regular names in the data files?

So, for example:

Empire of Nicaea, we've got the Laskaris family as the player family. The Komnenos and the Doukas familes are rivalling political families.

Now we add the Laskaris surname to 33% of the possible general names, and Komnenos to 33% and Doukas to 33%.

So when you decide to recruit a new army, and choose a new general, at least one of the generals will have the Laskaris surname. If that general ends up in another political faction, well, just bribe him or adopt him.

BAM, and we've got a family tree. Kind of.