Looking for collaborators on a feudalism project...

[Sargon_of_Akkad]

Dear reader...

I am concerned that we are not doing the medieval world justice with our collection of mods.

Before I explain my plans, I'd just like to outline why it is I feel compelled to make any changes at all.

SS is a fantastic mod. I love the map, I love the units, and I love the feel of the whole thing.

I have nothing but the greatest respect for the modders who have created the panoply of submods that deal with various aspects of the main mod that weren't included in the initial release, and I'm not personally saying I could better them on their technical expertise.

However.

I am a designer. I see things, I analyse them, and I can't help but wonder how I can make them better. It's not my fault, but it is my curse.

There are a few things that I feel do not represent the medieval world, and combat, fairly. I realise it's about balancing the aspects of realism and entertainment, but I think we can do this without sacrificing the fun of the game.

So, if you're still with me, I have a number of concerns that I don't feel any of the other mods address in quite the right ways.

1. Unit recruitment and availability
2. Cavalry
3. Equipment

1. Recruitment

I'm aware of Tsarsies' Recruitment Limitations mod, and would like to poach some of the features from it, especially the idea of losing population from a settlement when recruiting from cities (aka levies) and restoring it when you disband a unit.

I don't have the Real Recruitment mod installed, because I simply do not like the "historical" restrictions on unit recruitment. I find it wildly silly that an arbitrary "historical" date is when I can start recruiting units like longbowmen, rather than when I build the building to make them available. It does not reward a player's good planning and administrative skills. We aren't writing a history book here, we're playing a game. It doesn't have to follow the course of history 100%.

Most armies were levy armies. Usually only a small core of men actually made up the professional fighting force. I don't know about you guys, but my armies consist of six units of mounted knights, four dismounted knights, four armoured sergeants and a bunch of high-grade archers.

This isn't very realistic, and would be considered most unusual. Most armies were comprised of a small percentage of knights, combined with levied militia-grade men-at-arms and archers of some form. This is because professional soldiers and knights cost a lot of money to keep, but semi-professional levies were quite abundant and cheap.

Now, I think the best way to solve this is by giving cities the ability to recruit a large number of units in one turn, and by making castle units require multiple turns to recruit.

City units should also be quite cheap in comparison, and have larger numbers per-squad, but naturally have a marked difference in quality.

2. Cavalry

Good grief, what is going on with cavalry? Charging through massed ranks of braced, spear-wielding infantry like they are made of butter?

It didn't happen.

If infantry stood their ground, they could quite easily repel a cavalry charge because of a horse's natural instinct not to charge blindly into a wall of shields, or sharp points.

But this was the problem - getting your infantry to stand their ground. Massed cavalry charges are a formidable sight that fills the air with thunder and makes the ground rumble underfoot.

It was this fear that made infantrymen lose cohesion and allow the cavalry to take them apart, not the tank-like nature of a horse.

Medium and heavy cavalry should have the "frightens infantry" trait, and light cavalry should have the "fast moving" trait, and all should have their ungodly charge bonuses reined in a bit.

3. Equipment

There are a few issues I have with equipment, in no particular order.

I don't believe the two-handed weapons were as slow as they are depicted, hence the reason you used two hands to wield them. You sacrificed the protection of a shield, in exchange for a higher attack value, but this does not seem to be fairly represented.

After playing a long campaign with the Templars, I noticed that their zweihander infantry could barely stand up to anything, even if they were charging. After a few battles where they came off badly against spear militia, I decided to watch them. The problem was they attacked so infrequently as to make them pretty vulnerable.

I can't think of a dismounted archer unit that doesn't have the "long range missiles" trait. This, IMO, makes it pretty worthless. I feel there should be three types of bow that had this trait: the composite bow, the longbow and the crossbow. Every other type of bowman should definitely not have long range missiles. I'm unsure about peasant archers having access to flaming missiles, too.

There are probably more, but I'm at work at the moment and so I don't have the game infront of me to remind myself with. When I get home, I'll have a dig around and see what else could use tweaking.

Thanks for reading.

[dacrazymofo]

Sounds good, but I think any dumb peasant can dip his arrow in pitch and light it aflame.

The only thing I can think of is an even worse amount of accuracy due to the crappy arrows/bows.

[dacrazymofo]

Lol im sorry I cant really collaborate anymore, but about horses, you have to bear to mind that even if horses reined, some would undoubtedly not see the spears because they would be kicked and whipped madly, so they would go onto their deaths. And yes, maybe they didnt make it through the spear wall, but 1500 lbs of horse flesh can crush a man quite easily, not counting the barding and the armored knight which would undoubtedly turn into a living projectile that weighs around 300 ish lbs.... so yeah >.>

[ShockBlast]

Interesting ideas mate.
I want to ask you how will the upkeep be,reflecting the fighting capabilities of the unit or RR style very high for feudal type units.
I would like to add that knights dismounted very rare so the pool for dismounted knights should be reduced,only the germans dismounted more often then the others as far as i know but it was still very rare.
An armoured men-at-arms unit can be placed in to fill the need for heavy infantry.The unit sould not look to knightish so the models form the first upgrade of Sword Brothers and the normal English Swordsmen can be used.
Cavalry is not used in much quantity and with the reduces pool for dismounted knights an army will have less feudal units and more semi-professional units in(armoured spearmen,bilmen,zweihanders etc..)
I don't think you need to give cities more recrutement slots,that will make the castle less useful,you could lower the pool for the mid and high tier units and add militia units to the castle,this will force people to fill the ranks of their armies with them.
All armies will have peasant/militia type units,semi professional,feudal and professional units.
I don't know about you but only the hand cannon seem to fit in a medieval era game the rest of the firearms gives a strange feel to the game,full plated knights and renaissance looking units don't go hand in hand.


Just a few thoughts i hope it helps.

[Alexios Komnenos]

Militia units should be free to raise, but hard to maintain. Levies were made by feudal right, and so levy warriors went to war with what they had at hand. Of course, different tipes of levies should be availiable:
- Spearmen
- Swordsmen
- Archers
- Elite Levy, both Spearmen and Swordsmen, and this represents rich urban troops.

Of course, when you raise a lecy unit from a province, population should decrease.

And concerning sieges, you should be able to raise an army of levies just before a siege, because I don't believe that citizens would stand there doing nothing. If Constantinople standed almost two months against the Ottomans in 1453 was because of the help pf the people, who repared the damaged walls during night. An example of how important people's support was.

I don't see the point of this division between castles and cities. I think that you should be able to fortify a city to the greatest level of a citadel, and what is more, you should be able to recruit every castel's unit in the cities. But slowly. Feudal knioghts were the vassals and men-at-arms that went with a noble vassal of the king, so they were not very usual. Even rarer were professional troops.

However, some countries worked other ways. Muslim armies were principally mercenaries and payed soldiers (professional), and Byzantine armies worked in a similar way, but having the point of the old themes organization and the pronoia, which sould allow you to raise an army of levies in a little time and also maintain some mobile armys of professional soldiers.

And cavalry should "frighten infantry" only when charging, I believe.

It can be a very hard mod, but you have all my support.