GRAND PREVIEW

[everybody's darling]

Thank you, as an historian I'm well aware of the history of Burgundy. All I meant is, that explicitly in the 11th Century, and in the 12th and 13th too, Burgundy was far away of his later importance under the Valois-Bourgogne.

One of the main reasons, Burgundy became so powerful was, that France and Germany had major problems, which allowed the Valois to chase their own ambitious affairs. But what, if in the game France and Germany are well consolidated? Then there will be no room for a quasi independent Burgundy, and such an event would miss any causal connection. A plausible supposition must be given.

Nevertheless, good look with this modification, there are many nice ideas.

[Bobolini]

Any progress? Updates?

[Hengest]

Thanks 'everybody's darling'. Appreciated. It's difficult with factions in mods, someone is always going to be unhappy. We were happy with the Teutonic Order but we felt that it didn't offer much to the player really, not as a faction. It had no depth. By amalgamising the TOS back into the HRE we have strengthened them, our Baltic factions and the mpa already makes for enough dynamics around that area without a TOS faction.
We felt Burgundy would work as a buffer zone between HRE and France and add some complication and depth to the mod and the in-game politics.

Bobolini: We are working on a first Preview, including the map, some units and a few surprise goodies. No idea when that will be out but I'm sure you'll find out about it.

[Dimitri_Harkov]

Are you creating a 'generic' Burgundy of your own?

Your description sounds like you mixed the french duchy of Burgundy (bourgogne), the Franche Comté (free county) of Burgundy and the Kingdom of Arles (or Burgundy) in one faction. While the last two usually were (an almost independent) part of the HRE, the french duchy was only a part of France with no real impact on anything until it's rise around the hundred years war.

Good luck with your ambitious project!

[SaberHRE]

Hey

Just a few questions I have

1) What is your policy concerning releases? Step by step releases, or one full, which is currently the trend.

2) Why an unstable HRE? I think the myth of the completely anarchic HRE should be put down. People forget that in Early periods the Salian Emperors enjoyed undisputed authority. And the slow decentralisation of HRE was caused by a number of factors such as:
-mediterranean ambitions(i.e my term for "dynastic politics")
-interregnums
WHICH, caused the same problems for every other nation.

3) I also join in the question why Burgundy? As you mentioned Since the Salians, the Kingdom of Burgundy was annexed into the Empire, and by annexed I don't mean just joined. It became a title which came along with other titles during the succession to the Imperial crown. Whereas French Burgundy did see rise only during the reign of it's Burgundian Valois dynasty. The previous "Capetian-Burgund" dynasty did not exercise seperate foreign politics, nor did it emphasis any separatistic tendencies.

Anyways, I really like your idea of a supermod, and wish you goodluck

[boki]

Given that the mod is in its infant stages, will you be using those insane animations (decapitations, realistic horse charges, chopping legs off, horseman dies but horse lives). If I find the link to the thread I`ll post it.

[Hengest]

Cheers Boki! Yeah we probably will...

Everyone else concerning Burgundy, no we are not making a generic Burgundy as such. At least not at the start, we would allow the titles of different areas and powers to be available for accumulation, so that a faction leader might start off as a Count of this and that but end up as a Duke of that and then even rise to King of Burgundy etc... This is how we are looking at factions such as Portugal who would not start out as a kingdom, but as a County. I mean Normandy as a House was a minor Duchy that grew into a kingdom through its conquest of England. What we will do with Burgundy will be similarly to the case with Bohemia (one ruler gained the non-hereditary title of King of Bohemia otherwise they were Dukes), similarly so with Lithuania, (a Duchy that will be able to grow into a Grand Duchy) and this 'growth' will probably be part of the Victory Conditions we will set for each individual case.

Burgundy might well get axed in its turn, we haven't finished discussions, we are in very early days in our development. So don't see this as a measure of the mod. We are wrestling with different options for the last faction slot, and maybe one or two more. As you all know we have not had our first preview yet so still its our perogative to change our minds as and when we want... ... At least until the first preview comes out. Which brings me onto SaberHRE's questions about releases-

Well, to be honest we don't know yet. The mod is going to be big, huge in fact, it is going to be very download heavy so we might break certain aspects into extras e.g. Music Pack, Imagery Pack, Skins pack even... Right now it's too early and too far from our minds.

Finally, HRE: will it be weak and unstable? No. It will (if everything goes to plan) be represented with the political machinery which was it's lifeblood as well as its hindrance. We want HRE to taste like the HRE. As a faction it will be one of the superpowers of the game, with at least one Guild slot dedicated to allowing other factions' settlements to be kind of colonised by the HRE. That's power!

[SaberHRE]

Alright thanks for clearing it up!

Btw, just another question. From what I understand you guys will treat "cities" as representations of provinces rather than mere cities. If so I support your idea wholly!

I'm very curious about the control points. This plan sounds really great for both playability and historical accuracy. But could you expand a little on how it would actually look in-game(I understand that you guys are just starting up the mod, but just some preliminary glimpse of how it will look like).

[Hengest]

Well, keeping in mind that it is early days, as you say...

I think I can say that yes, we are looking at a settlement and region in different terms than before. So, the agricultural levels in the tech tree that you choose will actually change the face of the region on the camp map- which is nothing new, but we are also going to introduce villages into the tech tree in the same way. So that as your settlement becomes a city you can choose to develop villages and towns in the region which are represented as a construction in the tech tree giving you bonuses. The 'villages' wont exist like settlements of course, but will be mere representations and these may be able to feature both on the camp map within the region and also should be able to be seen in the battle map if you fight in the neighbourhood of these 'village' tiles.

Control Points in reality is something we wanted to keep quiet until we knew more, we now know a little more... Basically we are using permanent forts to represent the other important places within a region. We are planning aspects such as garrison scripts for even the forts, as well as a means of penalising the player when his enemies occupy these forts or siege them, via lack of income etc. We have also found a way to not let this scripting slow the turns down, which is a real victory but one which most of you won't know why! :hmmm:

We are aware that the player does not want settlements and forts all over the map so that Siege becomes the only way to fight, we are just trying to be more realistic in how we make our map. We are still working on the map, it will be very big, so the fact that we have 199 settlements plus perhaps 80 or so forts will not make it a siege-fest. You will just feel that each region is in fact a region and not just a pocket around a settlement.

One drawback of the permanent forts is that we are representing some places that were historically settlements, but since we cannot prioritise them in the top 199 we are forced to make them a military base. We are trying to keep the permanent forts to represent what were only military towns but it is not so easy, some people are bound to complain that 'Kalmar in Sweden was not a castle or fort but a town' and indeed these forts which are motte-and-bailey in the 1100s will look okay but in 1490 they will seem out of date, so we still have a lot of loose-ends and detailed research to do. Apart from all these compromises in historical realism and hard calls, we feel that we are still doing our best to represent a supermod.

[beavis]

sounds like a great idea.
i would change some of the factions in the list.
there are 5 italian factions, and three iberian factions.
i would drop sicily and pisa.
norman sicily was independent for only around 100 years and was contested by the HRE, Anjou and Aragon for most of the period. I would make sicily instead a possesion of France at the beginning of the game and a victory condition for the HRE, France, the Byzantines and Aragon, this should make for interesting gameplay and reflect history.

i would consider these factions

the Ordenstaat of the Teutonic knights, thorn in the side of all baltic states and lasted until renaming itself Prussia.

the Ilkhans...the Mongols divided after the death of Genghis khan and the Ilkhans and GoldenHorde fought against each other.

Bohemia

Khwarezm/Persia (you have only 3 muslim factions)...even after the defeat by genghis khan, khwarezmians fought as a free company in the crusades, perhaps because of a lack of slots make the Persian faction a fusion of the khwarezm/ilkhans/timurids, starting off as a islamic style faction with more mongol units later in the game or after certain triggers.

my two cents..

willing to help

[Emperor E]

i got to say this mod no wait SUPERMOD looks good i hope it doesnt die
il watching closely

[alpaca]

Hey,
I was wondering who's doing the scripting for you? If you want I can get on board to give you some tips and ideas, although I would stop short at doing actual implementation (as you maybe know I have my own project to work on)

[SpaceUnion]

Yes, I support having alpaca (he's probably the best scripter on TWC) and could help us a lot since a lot of our features will be script-oriented.

[Hengest]

Sounds Like Killing and Mersk are heading our campaign scripting department. I think they are pretty keen to champion the work themselves, and since you are unable to help with implementation (which as you know is pretty important to getting anything done) we probably will keep things as they are. Thank you for your offer of advice though, you are well-known as an expert on these things so I'm sure that if the lads have any specific questions or need of tips then we will ask you direct. If it's okay, we will PM or email you with any details or outlines of specific plans that could use your keen mind!

Cheers, and good luck with your mod. I really liked Anno Domini, I'm very eager to see how it will develop now since it merged.

[alpaca]

Sounds Like Killing and Mersk are heading our campaign scripting department. I think they are pretty keen to champion the work themselves, and since you are unable to help with implementation (which as you know is pretty important to getting anything done) we probably will keep things as they are. Thank you for your offer of advice though, you are well-known as an expert on these things so I'm sure that if the lads have any specific questions or need of tips then we will ask you direct. If it's okay, we will PM or email you with any details or outlines of specific plans that could use your keen mind!

Cheers, and good luck with your mod. I really liked Anno Domini, I'm very eager to see how it will develop now since it merged.

Yes, PM is ok. Anno Domini is currently on hold as Re Berengario stopped modding and I am working on Italia Invicta. I hope to return to it after finishing that but obviously that's at a point in the not very near future.

[Hengest]

That's a shame, I really liked his work, he had some great ideas.

[alpaca]

That's a shame, I really liked his work, he had some great ideas.

Yeah he was put off by the heavy restraints the game imposes on us unfortunately.
He's modding paradox games now

Edit: Sorry for the totally off-topic stuff.

[Mikel]

That is A LOT to have for Italy. Maybe one can be dropped (Pisa) and the Kingdom of Navarra could be put in instead. It wans't conquered until 1512 by Aragon anyways..

[Ali_the_English]

I'm glad Burgundy have been included. I look forwards to playing this mod. Will culture (from Britannia campaign) be in it?

[Hengest]

So Mikel, you want us to drop Pisa (one of four Italian factions) to make a Spanish faction, which will give us ...four Spanish factions? :-P Italy was the most populated, and most densely populated area of the known world in the Middle Ages.

It's always a difficult call with factions, and we are still discussing it but I think if we do swapa faction it will be in the Balkan or Middle East regions.