Avlonia: Total war

[Sandermann]

Well...I started modding MTW2 out of curiosity and boredom, but I kinda got hooked and ive decided to create a mod if only for my own entertainment.

Avlonia: Total War

Blurb
The Isle of Avlonia, isolated from the mainland by rugged coast and wide sea. A land of Chivalry, honour, bright penants and noble pursuits. If you are at the top of the pile that is. A deeply fuedal land, of rolling hills, deep dark forests and snow topped peaks where for decades the feudal houses of Avlonia have been united by one king and one religion. The kings law and the priests of The Nine ruled over a land at peace. But the king is dead without an heir and a new power is rising...

To the south and north, three houses have forsaken the Nine and turned to the flame lord. Orcs stir once again their deep valleys. Tales abound amongst the small folk of wolves that walk as men, of the dead rising and of worse terrors still that haunt the dead of night.

Knights more used to tourney's and poetry must turn their skills once more to war, Peasants pull long forgotten swords and armour from barns and thatch rooves, The guilds hire men from across the world to protect their trades and once again the priests of the Nine call for the faith to arm.

Will you lead a noble house to the throne? Or will you plunge Avlonia into darkness and despair?

Technical Aims

Choice: You have control over what troops you recruit and where. Almost all units are ZoR style in their recruitment, with few units unique to any one faction. Troops are separated into 4 "tiers", Commoners, Men at Arms, Retainers and Nobles. Each Tier has access to a wide range of troops types. You choose wether to arm your men at arms as pikemen or archers, wether your peasants go to war with farming tools or wether you give them crossbows. Capture rich horselands to equip your knights with mighty Destriers or make do with whatever ponies are to hand.

Feudalism:
True fuedal feel. The map is divided into regions, each with one castle and a few non-catle settlements. Castles have very small regions (one tile all around) but the towns around them are un-walled. You must control the castle to ensure you can keep the villages around it protected and recruit higher end troops there, and you cant change a settlement between a castle and a town.

Each Region has its own livery, troops dont suddenly put on your uniform, they where the heraldry of the region they come from, this heraldry is the "quartered" with the liver of the faction the troops are currently serving. You might very well see troops with the golden eagle of Serat quartered with the cross of Lionesse fighting those with the Golden eagle quartered with the yellow sun of D'Arc.

Fantasy:
Yes, its a fantasy mod. There will be orcs and likely undead, and yes im well on my way to getting them done, I'll post screens as soon as ive got textures im not so embarassed about . And they will be playable.
The pseudo-historical period is late medieval.

Detail:
no LoD levels, troops use their full detail model out to the limit of vision. Unit sizes are small to cover the extra load, but trust me...it is well worth the occasional framerate drop to be able to zoom out and see the battle in full gory magnificence rather than a few pixels rubbing against each other.

Battles:
While its a fantasy mod, I am going for a balanced feel. There are no super units. A charge by heavy knights might be devastating but they will die if they get bogged down by even low end infantry.

Unit speeds are reduced a little to make the game more manageable.

All infantry can plant stakes.

A wide choice of troops types. Choose the right troops for the job, go for the sheer numbers of a peasant spear levy or the disciplined might of a block of retainer halberdiers.

Factions:
(I'll expand this when im back from work )
The Loyal Houses:
Lionesse
D'Arc
Darkcrow
Essenter
Passle
Proudwing
Fox

Classical medieval chivalric houses, they have their differences but all rely on a noble elite backed up by levies of smallfolk

Freemen:
The Riverlands Alliance
A Alliance of free towns and villages, they dont have access to the noble units of the loyal houses, but they do have much more reliable citizen militia and a heavy reliance on longbowmen

The Traitor Houses:
Kaffatun
Bozar
Yor
The three houses that have turned from the nine to dark pacts with the flame lord. Kaffatun and Yor are southerly, and can call one a wide range of beasts and exotic troops. Bozar comes from the embittered and cold islands to the north, and have a reputation as barbaric and ruthless viking-esque raiders.

Orcs:
Blackclaw
Redfang
Yelloweye
The three orc factions. low in number but very agressive, with access to some viscious assault troops, trolls and ogres.

Undead:
The Dark
not sure if they'll be playable yet, or appear as sporadic scripted spawns. Expect zobies, skeletons, wights, ghosts, vampires, lycanthropes and more
(no, its not a pipe dream, I really am well on the way to getting them in and WILL post screens when I can)

[Murfios]

Can I help?

[Sandermann]

I hadnt expected any offers of help...what can you do?

I was just putting it together in my free time, I suppose what I could really use is images for load screens and unit cards putting together at a later date as doing that is fairly important for a finished mod but doesnt really appeal to me.

[Floren d'Asteneuz]

Wooow ! Good project I think !

Hope to see your work soon... It looks like background of Trillogy of Gondor, to me !

I like your imagination here.

[Murfios]

Im a 2D specialist.

[Sandermann]

I suppose id best post some screens and a bit mroe info.

These are all of troops in the livery of House Lionesse proper. i.e; what they look like when House Lionesse recruits them from its own lands.


A Men at arms halberd line formed behind a stake wall


Men at arms pikemen bracing, showing the various armour upgrade levels.

Peasant Billmen at the highest armour upgrade available to them

peasant billmen at the second upgrade level

Im sure you'll note the sergeants and standard bearers attached to each unit.

Most of the work for this mod is in the re-texturing, as I need 13 textures for every unit (one for each faction) as normal, but also 13 more textures for every single region (a region will comprise 3-5 game provinces, and I have around 20 planned). This seems a huge number, but ive made it managble by mapping all the models parts which display heraldry to the same texture file, meaning I only actually need 260 different texture files, and im making these in a template format which makes the process fairly fast.

[Sandermann]

Lionesse Peasant Billmen fighting orc light spears

[Sandermann]

New menu screen

Some shots of the WiP campaign map

[iudas]

I like what you've done. Congrats.

[Murfios]

nice!@

[B. Ward]

nice progress man +rep

[Velocitas]

Wow, this is one hell of a mod!
I would love to help if I had better experience in modding but I only know how to create a dismounted unit and how to put a faction's unit to another. Anyway, you have my full support!

[Sandermann]

ive sorted out how to add a lot more randomness to equipment loadouts for the units now, so most units now carry a random selection of one of 10 weapons..this means ive cut down on the number of variations available. (ie now a unit of "peasant billmen" actually are armed with a variety of axes, halberds, bills, pitchforcks, glaives, voulges, hammers, sickles, bills and gaffs..and so on)

each of the first three "grades" of troops (commoners, men at arms, retainers) now has one or more of the following types of troops:
Spearmen or pikemen (good vs cavalry/weak vs infantry)
halberdiers/billmen(strong attack, weak if bogged down)
Heavies(Swords/maces/axes/picks/etc and shields - good in prolonged melee)
Archers
Crossbowmen

Peasants/Men at arms provide your light cavalry, retainers your regular cavalry

Nobles almost exclusivley fight as heavy cavalry.

The maps is almost done, Ive got 35 regions which represent one of the heraldric areas each, as I go I'll divide these up into a further 3-5 regions each. So that means 35 castles and their feifdoms in game, each with its own unique heraldry for each faction

Because its a fantasy mod and ive got freedom in the way I do the terrain, ive tried to make it so that theres lots of narrow gaps, river crossings and valleys to force field battles on the AI, and try to break the cycle of siege and counter siege of vanilla a bit. Ive altered the settlement mechanics so that settlement growth will be quite rare, basically you can expect far more motte and bailey's/villages to persist far later into the game than in vanilla. Im also setting it up so the building tree isnt dependant on the size of the town (ie, a motte and bailey can still have a lvl 6 armourer, a village can still have a merchants wharf, etc). Im not going to get into changing the building tree beyond that as I cant be bothered

[Sandermann]

Bit of an update on the unit graphics.
Lionesse men at arms halberds at the lowest armour level.
Note specifically the "patch" on the tunic that displays the heraldry for the unit and the variation in the weapons they are carrying.

for statisticians amogst you, the probablitiy of any two men in this unit appearing identical is 2592:1, as opposed to 72:1 in vanilla MTW2, or 1:1 in RTW/BI

[iudas]

Bit of an update on the unit graphics.
Lionesse men at arms halberds at the lowest armour level.
Note specifically the "patch" on the tunic that displays the heraldry for the unit and the variation in the weapons they are carrying.

for statisticians amogst you, the probablitiy of any two men in this unit appearing identical is 2592:1, as opposed to 72:1 in vanilla MTW2, or 1:1 in RTW/BI

I don't quite like how they just pop in there. Smoothing their edges and lowering the opacity would look tons better.
But still. There is some quality in your work.

[Kiki52]

That looks like a good interesting mod. It looks similar to how Tyronia is from the Custom Campaign map.

[Cabsav]

This looks very interesting. So as far as i can see is it more low tech soughta game with little growth and more low tech combat?

[onefistedboxer]

A very exiting mod, i'm impressed by the number of new ideas your experimenting with, can i suggest an AOR style of recruitment to some degree, to compliment the regional heraldry. As you can prevent certain factions from being able to recruit certain AOR troops you could prevent the Undead fighting for human factions ect.

I noticed you wanted to create a "feudal" feel, one method to recreate the feudal army system would be to replace the merc system with conscription. This would allow you to recruit cheap low level militia to bolster a defense force quickly when in your own lands - at the expense of high upkeep. This could be improved further by causing the recruit pool to shrink whilst enemy armies are in your lands - forcing you to come out for field battles, whilst enabling over-conscription to increase squalor.

I hope you make good progress and have a successful first release! (how long do you think that will be...)

EDIT

Have you seen the Warhammer mod?, i hope you are able to recreate their success with manipulating the skeletons to create huge and small units - giants perhaps...

-I noticed you put ZOR recruitment on your first post, woops.

[Sandermann]

This looks very interesting. So as far as i can see is it more low tech soughta game with little growth and more low tech combat?

Essentially yes, its unlikely that towns and castles will "grow" much, in size at least. The building tree wont be so tied to settlement size though. As for low tech, im basing it late medieval minus gunpowder, so there is fairly advanced armour, pike blocks, crossbows, etc.

A very exiting mod, i'm impressed by the number of new ideas your experimenting with,

Thanks

I am representing levies with the lowest "tier" of troops, these troops have the "free upkeep" ability, and are the only troops to have it, so you can raise lots of them quickly and cheaply, but only if you keep them in your towns. The idea is that even the troops are "raised" in game terms, in reality they would still be going about their daily lives..being "raised" more represents the ability of a settlement to quickly call up armed men.

As for a first I release, I dunno as ive said im potering through it in my free time rather than an all out project.

[onefistedboxer]

Any progress reports, or are you letting this one die...