Das Heilige Römische Reich (Holy Roman Empire)

**Serious Spamurai** · May 02, 2007, 01:00 PM

What are our plans for this faction, in my opinion their unit roster needs a lot of work, mainly the implementation of the Landsknechts. They also need to focus on crossbows and handguns combined with pole-weapons (halberds, pikes, maces and flails) in the ealy era, moving on to pikes, halberds and swords later on. Names also need to be changed. It'd be great if we could find a way of implementing wagon circles, after fighting the Hussites the HRE adopted this formation with great enthusiasm and it was used for many decades, just adapted to include more artillery.

**Cadmium77** · May 02, 2007, 01:38 PM

Originally Posted by Serious samurai

What are our plans for this faction, in my opinion their unit roster needs a lot of work, mainly the implementation of the Landsknechts. They also need to focus on crossbows and handguns combined with pole-weapons (halberds, pikes, maces and flails) in the ealy era, moving on to pikes, halberds and swords later on. Names also need to be changed. It'd be great if we could find a way of implementing wagon circles, after fighting the Hussites the HRE adopted this formation with great enthusiasm and it was used for many decades, just adapted to include more artillery.

Perhaps the wagon circles could be implemented by playing with the missile units' ability to set stakes...you could replace the stakes with wagons?

**Serious Spamurai** · May 02, 2007, 01:43 PM

I was already planning to replace stakes with an earthwork and whickerwork type structure, it was more common during the renaissance than wagon circles as almost everyone used earthworks (well almost), however Wagoncircles were only used by a few groups, although using wagons as a barricade was not that uncommon, poitiers is an example of this.

**Town Watch** · May 02, 2007, 01:48 PM

aha the title is filled with mistakes! Reich is a "Das" word, the whole thing is in nominative and follows the specific conjugation rules.

So it becomes: Das Heilige Römische Reich.

alternatively it could be Heiliges Römisches Reich. without the "das", but now the sex has to be apparent in the suffix -es, like heiliges.

**Serious Spamurai** · May 02, 2007, 01:57 PM

Entschuldigen, lol my knowledge of german is questionable at best, thanks for pointing the mistake(s).

**justme** · May 02, 2007, 03:05 PM

Originally Posted by Serious samurai

What are our plans for this faction, in my opinion their unit roster needs a lot of work, mainly the implementation of the Landsknechts. They also need to focus on crossbows and handguns combined with pole-weapons (halberds, pikes, maces and flails) in the ealy era, moving on to pikes, halberds and swords later on. Names also need to be changed. It'd be great if we could find a way of implementing wagon circles, after fighting the Hussites the HRE adopted this formation with great enthusiasm and it was used for many decades, just adapted to include more artillery.

Ok, some quick answers for you Serious Samurai 1) In general I think we should wait for Yggdrasil's research to make a final decision on the matter of unit rosters per faction (plus of course the faction specific research for Ottomans, Scots, etc) 2) As far as the Landsknechts are concerned, my idea was to have a large selection of them (eg landsknecht zweihanders, landsknecht pikemen, landsknecht arquebusiers, landsknecht artillery, etc) and make them available only as mercenaries (ie not recruitable by any one faction, not even the HRE). Of course there should be an ample supply of them around, especially in the German and Flemish areas - just as there should be an ample supply of Swiss mercs in Switzerland 3) The HRE and most major western european factions should be somehow forced to rely to a great extent on these mercs (Swiss or Landsknechts) and have handful elite core units (ie professionals and quasi-professionals, such as gendarmes, super-heavy artillery, etc) and bunches of low-quality levies (in them I'd include various unarmored/lightly-armored militias armed with swords, crossbows, even pitchforks, pikes or arquebuses - the latter more rare). This is especially true for the early part of the game - later on those low-quality levies will be replaced by better armed and trained swordsmen, pikemen, halberdiers and arquebusiers and the trend will have to be reversed somehow Most of this system has already been implemented in the latest campaign beta (the army reform system I've tried to create), except for the fluctuation in mercs numbers - still I think I know how to reduce the available mercs after a certain date 4) I think the wagons would be too much work to do right now and we have more pressing issues to deal with first - maybe at a later date we can reconsider this option

**Serious Spamurai** · May 02, 2007, 03:13 PM

Well the landknechts differed from most mercenaries as they had to fight for the reich in times of war, the rest of the time they were mercenaries. When they were called to fight most went, the black legion/band being an exception to this, but, in general, they went to fight for the empire when they were called upon (probably because of the great amount of loot available in large scale, inter-country conflict). In my opinion they should be an AORed HRE unit group recruitable in Alscace(sp) and the rhineland along with southern germany. They should also be availabe in small numbers as mercs in the areas around those regions.

**justme** · May 03, 2007, 03:19 AM

hmmm.... this may require some extra thought, not only landsknecht-history-wise, but also campaign-history-wise

What I mean is that I chose to have landsknechts only as mercenaries (hopefully with a load of other mercenary units), because I wanted to somehow "force" both players and AI to rely heavily on them and less on recruited levies.

Especially in the early stages of our mod, these merc forces must make the difference in battle and only after the appearance of better trained/armed/armored units later in the game their importance will drop

I don't know if this is possible if we allow landsknecht recruitment for HRE and limited merc pools only around germany...

**Dimitri_Harkov** · May 04, 2007, 04:00 PM

The most important thing to represent the holy roman empire correctly is:
Split it in as much factions as you can achive / as the mapsize can afford!

If one could find a way to represent the factions belonging loosely to one empire, this would even be better (something like the papal election to find out who becomes the emperor; something like "crusades" representing the "imperial army", senate-like stuff as in RTW, ...?).

Concerning the Landsknechte... They were mercenaries "by definition", so they should only be available as mercs. BUT: One should provide the option to recruit a similar equiped unit. This would represent trying to equip the peasants and turn them into soldiers (This was, historically, attempted by some minor lords). The building of the necessary infrastructure should cost horrendous sums of course, but this units should only need relatively low upkeep. The should have better morale as well.

Just my 2 cents.

BTW: Good mod! Even in this early stage!

**Serious Spamurai** · May 04, 2007, 04:08 PM

Well ideally if we were to split the HRE we'd need one faction for every german city, but, of course, that is completely impossible. We could, however, split it into one faction for each of the imperial circles like in this map, this would allow for plenty of infighting, the HRE wasn't really united, having one faction isn't the best way of representing it.

**Dimitri_Harkov** · May 04, 2007, 04:30 PM

Well, splitting the empire in the circles your map shows would be good enough, I think.

The central issue (for me, at least) is: If you represent the empire by just one faction, you would need to make its provinces poorer, or their units crappier, in a very a-historic way to keep the campaign ballance. A truly united empire would have (quite sure) steamrollered half of europe.
And: I love diplomacy! If it works after the 5th patch, this would be a scenario I have always dreamed of, especially in multiplayer!

**justme** · May 05, 2007, 04:48 AM

My two bits:

What I wanted to do in the campaign (and may still do it if I see it's necessary to keep campaign balance) was to scrap the HRE per-se and replace it with the Emperor's own hereditary lands, ie the duchies of Upper/Lower Austria, Carinthia, Tyrol...

However, that would cause some hard to handle situations.

First: in theory, by 1494 Emperor Maximilian had to agree to his son taking over the Duchy of Burgundy, relinquishing direct control over Flanders and the Franche Comte. So, I would also have to make an independent low countries faction, which should also be a vassal to the emperor - however, you can't vassalize factions through scripts or the descr_strat and there might be a possibility that father and son would go to war against each other (thanks to the stupid AI

)

Secondly: such an arrangement wouldn't take into consideration Maximilian's efforts to centralize some of the Reich's functions - the political reforms he tried to institute were pretty much aimed at enhancing the unity of the empire

Thirdly: this arrangement would work a lot better if we could have protestantism as a religion AND if we had a better diplomacy AI system... I'm not sure if that will be possible with the next patch

These aren't insurmountable obstacles, but they'll prolly need to be considered carefully with regards to engine/AI limitations and campaign balancing

PS: oh and the reichskreise aren't a good idea to implement in campaign as they contained a number of principalities/duchies/counties/etc which in fact waged war against each other - especially when the Reformation took Germany by storm... My proposal would be to have the major duchies, ie Bavaria, Saxony, etc, and the Hanseatic League in the north

**Dimitri_Harkov** · May 06, 2007, 12:19 PM

Originally Posted by justme

PS: oh and the reichskreise aren't a good idea to implement in campaign as they contained a number of principalities/duchies/counties/etc which in fact waged war against each other - especially when the Reformation took Germany by storm... My proposal would be to have the major duchies, ie Bavaria, Saxony, etc, and the Hanseatic League in the north

As long as the empire is not represented by just one faction, I will be glad.
I see that it will be a hard thing to achieve campaign balance. But you will make it

.
I´m really looking forward to your next release!