Shieldwall - General Information and Goals
Update: Just wanted to give a brief update on the project as Petty Kingdoms name has changed to Shieldwall. The team has also had three new additions with Johnyyy, DrunkFlamingo, and TheZuma joining the project, all of whom bring a tremendous amount of talent to the table. If you guys could see some things that has been going on behind the scenes I think it would knock your socks off, I'm really excited about the prospects and possibles the Shieldwall team can accomplish going forward.
The aim of the mod is to basically scale things back like the economy and to give the game a more grittier look when it comes to unit design. The goal is to have each faction you play feel more like a fledgling Kingdom rather then an overpowered behemoth and a more of a Europa Universalis approach when it comes to the economy. Things will start off slow and small and wars can become disastrous if you are reckless. While armies will have more of peasant feel about them they will look sexy as hell with more variants and armor will be rare and expensive. Vikings will be dangerous and a force to be reckoned with no matter what faction you play as. Armies in Shieldwall will be smaller and poorly equipped in comparison to vanilla to better reflect the period. In addition the environment will be harsher with the weather having more of an impact on the battle map. As far as historical accuracy goes we hope to achieve a higher level, but still aim to have a mod that is fun and not a chore to play.
- Improve the political systems, world interaction, and mechanics of the campaign using Lua scripting
- Reduce or eliminate background income (no more free money!)
- A complete re-balance of the trait system
- Make Influence a more important feature where reach 10 is much harder to achive
- Increase the importance of trade income so that you have to pick your wars more carefully
- Increase raiding and ransom income and negative effect (Don't get raided!)
- Re-balanced the economy to adjust for those changes
- Reduce the amount of traits character have and the rate at which they trigger (less is more
)
- Food system reworked to stress importance
This is what is planned for the first release, but will be expanded on for sure to achieve the grand aim of the mod.
- Battle time will be increased with adjustments to movement speed and unit stats
- Morale will be tweaked to better reflect the nature of peasant armies (if the general dies they go home)
- Adjust unit spacing and number of ranks to give a less organized look for some units while tightening for others.
- New unit balancing with the focus on shield wall tactics and balancing.
- More realistic weapon balancing where spears will be focuszed on defense and weapons like the Dane axe will be damage
- Some re-balancing of unit stats to reflect the formation changes and reduced armor (remember what happened to Harald Hardrada!)
- More interesting skirmishes with the addition of more throwing weapons and the sling
- Each culture will have a more distinctive fighting style on the battle map
- Lots of new shield patterns to make the shield walls look amazing
- More varied unit designs with more unit parts per unit for all factions
- New units types like slingers and two handed spears
- Reduce amount of armor used overall to give units a less organized look
- Some new units include Pict Long Spears, Irish slingers, peasant levies, and Norse Warrior Archers
- Sexy unit commands to fit the unit type with the General's and King's bodyguard getting 2!
- Added medium round shields for Gaelic factions so they don't look like Vikings
- Foot bodyguards for starting generals with some factions having the option to upgrade to mounted generals later on as horse will be expensive
- Heavy throwing spears for some Viking and Saxon units
- Irish darts added to some infantry units to reflect the nature of warfare in Ireland
As for each faction they will have a more unique feel on the battle map, for example the Irish won't have any archers. The archers will be replaced with slingers and some of their infantry will get a limited amount of darts/light javelins. The Irish will be light and fast with lots of short and mid range projectiles at their disposal, but if they get pinned down in a drawn out fight they will have issues hence where the Gallowglasses come in to try limit that weakness latter on. Each culture will have their own unique battle map strengths and weakness to give each a more defined personality. Some units you will learn to fear, gone are the days of levies going toe to toe with heavy armored troops. That said levy troop will have their uses as fatigue will play a more important role in long battles. These are just the initial goals, but these will be expanded on after the core features are integrated and working as intended.
We will actively post updates and mod progress, if you have any questions feel free to ask them.
The Shieldwall Team:
Kinjo - Mod Design
Johnyyy - Art Design
Drunkflamingo - Scripting and Campaign Features Design
TheZuma - Campaign Design and Traits
Sinulf - Research and old Norse language
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at the enemy! With the addition of slingers and darts the aim is to make the Irish fast and agile with lots of pesky projectiles, with their weakness being lack of armor and durability in prolonged combat. 
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