RTW/BI: Viking Invasion (will be Viking: Total War)

[max_minimod]

Ever wanted to lay siege on paris with 20.000 norsemen?
Like to start a russian empire with your varangars?
Like to overrun the british isles with the pagan danes? Become the new Friedrich Barbarossa, or defend the christendom of
of the ' unbelievers '?
Its the end time of darkage Europe, European kingdoms have not fully established yet,
the vikings spread fear to all where their dragon-boats appear and in the east and orient new big powers are on the rise.

-Because MediII is too slow for a lot of people with slow computers and some dont like the gameplay in MediII, also I guess not only me would like to play a MediI-vikinginvasion mod in 3d.
Sadly all the RTW mods covering that time seems dead, so lets do it!

I think the mod should start 840AC, with the collapsing frankish empire, gives space for interesting factions in the age of Viking-raids.

Please sign if you are interested and would like to help!

[max_minimod]

factions (so far):

*3 Viking factions**
Vikings from Harugaland (Norway)
Gotland-/Sverige-Tribes (Sveden)
the Danes

**4 factions of collapsing Frankish Empire**
Francia
Lotharingien
Ostfanken
Italian Cities


**6 factions for the British Islands**
Saxons
Mercia
Welsh
Scots
Picts
Celts/Eire

**the Iberia Conquest**
Azurian/Galician Kingdoms
Al Andalus

**the East factions**
Byzantian Empire
Magyars
the Polish
the Golden Khanate
Abissids Caliphate

[max_minimod]

some screens of new units to come:
highland clansmen, woodsmen, viking landsmenn

[Dr. Croccer]

Nice! I always wanted a TW game set in the Dark Ages.

Is there a picture of the campaign map as well?

[Publius]

Nice! I always wanted a TW game set in the Dark Ages.

What about Arthurian: Total War?

[monkeyman]

arthurian total war is really nice but the downloading dilema on it always seems so frustrating and i can't find the winrar 30 day free download or what ever.

this mod seems very promising. keep up the great work Max_Minimod and i hope you are able to finish it soon.

[max_minimod]

You are right Publius, Arthurian: Total War is nice, but this idea is different, it should not only cover the British islands, it shall cover a much bigger map, including all the countries where the vikings got to.
And the Normans did travel a lot that times .

To speed up the development process map will be based of the great WarmapII by IceTorque.
Here is a WIP of the gamemap Dr. Croccer (some borders/countries will still change):


I still hope to find some people who like to help, especial the east-european and middle-east/moslem factions I have not much knowledge of, so this parts will kept unmodded BI without help.

[SwiftBlade]

Here It is

[max_minimod]

I think I write a bit tut: More modders here in forum would be good.

Tutorial: howto edit borders, cities, ports for your mod.
in 8 simple steps:

1. Dont be afraid, modding is not that difficult like it sounds first.

2. download, install an image tool like photoshop or GIMP http://www.gimp.org/downloads/
(Gimp is FREE (open source) and without advertising, or other hooks)



3. best is to do your first step on an existing map, so you dont get lost:
download IceTorque's BI-WarMap II (5.94 MB) http://www.twcenter.net/forums/downl...do=file&id=844
(you can install it, but its not needed now)

4. open the regions file with your image tool (simply drag it on Gimp bar):
BI-WarMap II/data/world/maps/campaign/BI_WarMap_II/map_regions.tga

you should see now a very colored map (the countries) with little black dots (they are the cities) and white dots (the ports). Blue color is reserved for water. (screenshot is from simple paint tool, but it will be nearly the same)



You can now paint on that map, try to change the borders of the countries:
Use the color pick tool of your image-program to get the color of a country, click on pen tool then, change to one pixel brush. You can freely 'paint' new borders. You can relocate the cities (dont put it too near to a border) and ports (they need to be on a coast).
Remainder: Check if you really use ONE pixel brush as paint tool, no 'fuzzy' borders tools. The cities and ports must have only one pixel, no interpolation borders allowed, or map will CTD in game.

5. if you done, save map as .tga file (uncompressed!)
If you have installed the warmap, you can test it now by exchanging the orginal map_regions.tga (dont forget to make always backup)

6. trying to get a map work in game can sometimes be hard, cause if you made mistakes on cities or ports game will CTD, so do it by little steps, test often and dont forget to make backups!

7. you need always to delete map.rwm to make changes get in game, dont forget it!

8. Congrats! If you changed borders and in game it works, you have finished your first lesson Luke!

Max

[max_minimod]

Norge:

Daner:

[monkeyman]

not to be a pest but could you enlarge that picture and tell us where the factions are.

[Publius]

@max_minimod - I was not implying they were the same, only that they were set in roughly the same time period (the Dark Ages) which was the statement I was addressing.

@Monkeyman - well, winrar is completely free (no trial period), but whether or not you want to play it is obviously a completely personal decision. Just saying it's there.

[Dr. Croccer]

Why do the Welsh have holdings in Bretagne?
And the Golden Khanate? I don't recall the Golden Horde in 798 AD.

[monkeyman]

well the welsh are in bretagne onlt because he is probably trying to put all of the celts into one faction which includes bretagne.

and i agree. there were no khanates in this period, not for at least another 400- 500 years.

[max_minimod]

Thanx Dr. Croccer, you have good eyes! I hope monkeyman found a way to zoom into the map (use www.GIMP.org , a free graphic image program)?
Yes a mistake, that was why I did not want to bring a bigger map-image yet: Its a WIP(work in progress) :lots of things to fix and to develop still.
Sorry I'm doing that alone yet, so things might go slow

Right too monkeyman, its a known problem that BI can do only 22 factions, so I'm often unsure and hard to decide which factions should be playable: Should we give Bretagne to Celts/Eire, or better make it an white(independent) faction? What about 'Rollo'(a Viking leader) in Normandy?

On two of my maps I use for reference, there is a faction named 'Khanate of the Khazars' in 800 and 900, and I guess to remember Mongols-sort faction in Medi-I. Is the maps not right?
http://www.euratlas.com/big/big0800.htm
http://www.euratlas.com/big/big0900.htm

I also wondering when the Scots flag was invented: Medi-I uses a Celtic cross instead in Vikinginvasion, so do I yet...

[DaVinci]

Interesting and tempting project

For British Isles, there should be Northumbria, they were in particular the most powerful of the Angle-Saxon tribes. Also Kent (Jutish) could be an extra faction, besides East-Anglia. However, there were some changes in the dominant ownerships, so it depends on the actual start-date.

My proposal would be to start the campaign at circa 790, so one can play it after the MTW VI style, with the first initial Viking landings at Lindisfarne at 793.
Further, i would crop the map to British Isles, Scandinavia, Parts of Russia and Baltics, Middle and West Europe plus eventually North-Middle Italy - and then put the focus on these regions with a most possible historical accuracy.

However,just make it after you liking, anyway, wish you the best of luck, and that you can catch the exiting Dark Age flavor, like ATW has already.

Btw., if you are in need of units, and you would find some fitting in ChivTW, you can list them (also for re-skinning), and pm me about that, then we can come to a permission-agreement.

@Pub, this mod here starts, when ATW ends, so it is in principle a nice kind of continuation of the late Dark Age for the RTW engine, i like it.

[Ataegina]

hmmm sounds interesting, if this comes true, ill wonder install rtw-bi again

[max_minimod]

Thank you very much DaVinci and Ataegina!
That is a very interesting offer DaVinci, it would speed things up, if I can use some of the early medieval models of the Chivalry-mod, especial if I'm allowed to reskin them, to fit the cold, dirty darkages.
In fact, this mod could be seen in the timespan between the ATW and Chivalry.
I will PM you!

I must think if it makes sense to put time back to ca. 790, but if so, I need to write a script that would need to break the big frankish empire into 4 factions in 840...
Also I need to do some tests of a fort-script:
'
...ideas about the fort probs in RTW (they are nearly useless in game)

a fort (=castle) in medieval was normally the main place of the landlord which was respondsible to the king of recruiting troops.

If a land was invaded by enemies the landlords would call their peasants to defend it and raise (few) better troops also.

These could be emulated maybe by a script if its possible to detect enemies in a province by scripts?
Lets say a script could detect the number of forts built in a country (should have a maximum number, so nobody will stack a little country full of forts), now if an enemy army lay siege on the city, the forts (script) could begin to spawn troops.

This would have some benefits: it makes forts more important and that way it could raise the number of places of the map (:200 provinces/city limit).
It also might have the good behavior like in MediI where it was harder to conquer a land cause in the first years the people are not happy with their goverment-change and riots of unhappy people appear.
'

Also Im thinking how to emulate the monastary-plunder thing of MTW-I/VI

[Lord Of The Knights]

i think this map is better for your mod,i think you can divide france to more than one faction.
dont put 6 factions in british island.



there is a big defference between khazars and the golden horde (khanate of mongols) khazars are not mongols.

jerusalem,baghdad,cairo are for the abbasid empire

[DaVinci]

Here is, on what i would circa focusing this mod:



Well, i would lay the real focus on British Isles+Vikings, Frankish Empire, plus just everything that happened on the Italian peninsula, plus Byzanthium. Even the conflict with the Moors In Spain can come into account, and in the east the Baltic room. Well, in my view, the most interesting areas are Britannia and the Carolingian affairs in the regarded timeframe between ArthurianTW and ChivTW's Early Era.

Regarding the division of the Frankish Empire, there could be just the 2 BI West-Roman factions, Franks, Alemanni or what ever. Three of them must be scripted emergent factions, similar to original BI?

Well, only my 2 cents. Wish you luck, and eventually pm me, if it is finished, that i can playtest it

Edit: More, i would prefer it cropped to circa this, as a kind of a real MTW VI successor



But the former would offer the Norman conquest of Sicily ...

Oh, regarding the siege script, i recommend make a search about the garrison-scripting, that would mean, that the AI, in case of the first siege turn, is getting spawned units within the besieged settlement ... this is much work, as you have take eventually every region into account, or you would alternative limit this script to certain key settlements.