Basileia - Total War announcement
Game essentials
Basileia – Total War is going to be the historically most correct modification of Medieval – Total War, especially in regard to the map and the historical situation in the year 1099, the starting date of the campaign. The mod is realized under the participation and conceptual guidance of two professional historians well-versed in the gameplay of the Total War series. It is their task to recreate the politic, military and economic situation of the campaign area in 1099 in painstaking research and constant discourse with each other as accurate as possible within the limitations set by the gameplay. In that, balanced starting situations for the factions are assigned only secondary importance, whereas historic authenticity was preferred wherever this ist possible without detraction from the enjoyment of the game. The claim to historicity is at certain points only limited by the game’s engine (at most 199 provinces and 31 factions etc.), which led to the exclusion of potential candidates like Serbia, Portugal, the Pechenegs or additional Turkish factions als playable parties.
Basilei is a Greek term meaning Empire/Kingship, and as the name suggests a main focus will be on the representation of Byzantium, though without neglecting the other factions, as can be seen from the following list:
Factions:
Catholic Factions:
01. Anglo-Normans
02. Normans
03. Siculo-Normans
04. Scotland
05. France
06. Occitanians
07. Castilia-Leon
08. Aragon
09. German Empire
10. Denmark
11. Poland
12. Hungary
13. Patrimonium Petri (Papacy; not playable)
14. Republic of Venice
15. Republic of Genova
16. Jerusalem
17. Antiochia
Orthodox Factions:
18. Byzantium
19. Republic of Novgorod
20. Pricipality of Kiev
21. Georgia
Monophysitic Factions:
22. Lesser Armenia
Sunnitic Islamic Factions:
23. Almoravids
24. Hammadids
25. Great Seljuqs (Abbasids)
26. Seljuqs of Rum
27. Danishmandids
Shiitic Islamic Factions:
28. Fatimids
Pagan Factions:
29. Cumans
+ Rebels and emerging Mongols = 31.
Provinces
Europe in 1099
In drawing up the faction list it was a conceptual concern to confer additional weight to the Muslim factions. With now six, in part very strong, Muslim factions the historic reality of 1099 was given justice; a conquest of the Orient will not be as easy as before and a successful Muslim offensive into Europe has become a possibility even for AI-controlled factions.
The campaign will start in 1099 with the conquest of Jerusalem by the first Crusade and comes to a close in 1453 with the presumptive conquest of Constantinople. Standard will be four game turns per year.
Map and Provinces
The BTW-team’s research led to the design of a completely new campaign map. This map’s regions reflect to a very large degree the real borders of countries and provinces in 1099, are called by their historic names and assigned to those factions that really controlled them in 1099. An additional novity will be the at least partial navigability of major rivers, especially in Russia, where they were the main lines of transport. This measure will of course have new strategic consequences as well.
AI
As the necessity to get the AI to behave both politically and militarily in a more believeable way is a pressing one, all AI-controlled factions will be asigned preferred areas of conquest and wil be made to practice rather a policy of safekeeping their territorial possessions instead of plunging headlong into adventures of senseless conquest at the far periphery. If AI-factions are attacked, they are to abort their own offensives on secondary frontiers in favour of a defense of their core provinces with all available force. For instance: If Byzantium is currently engaged in an offensive north of the lower Danube and is at the same time threatened on the southwestern Balkans by the Siculo-Normans, the Byzantines will have to abort their own operations in (for them) unimportant secondary areas and instead concentrate their efforts on a defense of their vital core provinces on the Balkan. The option for an offensive into other provinces will only be open to the AI once the threat to the more important areas has passed. This measure is to preclude paradox situations like for instance Byzantium conquering the economically useless Russian steppes while at the same time defenselessly yielding more prescious provinces.
In addition the AI is to react very severly to the breaking of vassalage, the cessation of tribute and the violation of its territory by passing foreign armies, topics that were hitherto neglected by all existing mods. It ist the task of the BTW-team to realize these enormous demands on the script in the long run and thus provide a historic gaming experience on a higher level.
Victory Conditions
The victory conditions of all factions will undergo a complete overhaul and will be likened to the factions’ real political interests. Byzantium’s territorial goal will thus be no less than the complete restoration of the Roman Empire, while the Great Seljuqs aim for a recreation of the Caliphate. Venice’s and Genova’s roads to victory do on the oher hand not lead by the way of conquering huge territories, but by destroying their economic rival and erecting maritime empires of far-flung trading posts.
Settlements and Surroundings
Of great importance for approaching the real historic situation of 1099 is a more precise portrayal of the towns. All settlements will not only be assigned their exact grade of development for 1099, complete with in part very advanced buildings, but will also have their true historically population numbers, inasfar that 1 inhabitant in the settlement menu will represent 10 real inhabitants. The starting population numbers will therefore range from a scant few hundred in remote, hardly urbanized regions to 50.000 and more for metropoleis like Baghda, Cairo and Constantinople, which had in areound 1100 500.000 inhabitants and more. Especially these important metropoleis are within the limitations of the editor remodelled copletely anew, which will greatly upvale the battle maps. The towns’ surroundings will now reflect their real-world topography and major port cities will in fact be situated directly on the shore.
Religion
The representation of religion will be thorougly revised; just as Christendom is divided into Catholicism and Orthodoxy, so will Islam be divided into Sunna and Shi’a. The player will have the option to conduct in each of his settlement s acompletely independent an differntiates policy toward the different divergent confessions, which can range from benign tolerance to brutal prosecution and forced conversion. A policy of tolerance would for instance enable a Christian faction to appease a Muslim population majority, if an aggravation of the relations with the Pope is in turn risked and a complete cessation of the conversion of the Muslim populace accepted. Priests and Imams will receive a new area of activity withintheir own nations, whereas any conversion of infidels in foreign countries is completely abolished – no Muslim country would have tolerated Christian missionaries and the other way around.
The Patriarch in Constantinople will be introduced as an Orthodox counterpoint to the Pope. He will be appointed by the Byzantine Emperor out of a number of suitable candidates. Even though the Patriarch’s power will due to the Emperor’s authority not be on par with the Pope’s, he will be an important factor in Byzantine politics, which makes the appointment of a Patriarch to a political concern that is to be well thought through. The appointment of pious individualist might be problematic if he starts to raise his voice against the Emperor or antagonizes the Pope just when the Byzanine Emperor courts the papacy’s goodwill, but a weakling might be equally awkward, should he anger his own flock by giving in to the Pope’s demands.
Economy and Military
Concerning warfare it is a goal of BTW to simulate the economic and demographic repercussions of warfare closer to reality than has been done hitherto. The upkeep of large armies and the development of settlements will preclude each much more than is currently the case, which is in part to be attained by increasing the costs of army upkeep. In between of periods of intense warfare periods of recovery and consolidation will increase in attractiveness also for player-controlled factions, if they do not even become a vital necessity. This will especially be true after the conquest of provinces of foreign faith, as their conversion and thereby appeasement will in BTW be several times slower than in Vanilla.
The devstation caused by foreign armies locates in a faction’s province will be done justice by not only having negative consequences on the inhabitants’ contentment, but also by halving both the yield of both agriculture and commerce, and on top by decreasing the population growth. It will therefore not be possible to ignore even small enemy armies without serious financial repercussions, whichholds also true to rebels. These will be more uncommon, but due to their negative consequences much harder to simply ignore.
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In the next time were going to release continuous the progress of our work at this place. We are a German-speaking modding team so it takes some time to translate it. More is following the next days.
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Originally Posted by Marcus Aurelius
