Anno Regni

[Cainrae]

Anno regni

Evolution of the Total War Series

To me, the Total War series have always been one of my favourite game series. It has the elements that any modern strategy game needs in my eyes. Empire management, large battles and a massive modding community. But games always need “something more”, something new for each new game. For the Total War series it has either been a new era or more diversity and better graphics. But after 5 games and 5 expansion packs, and in which all of the games have build on the same concept, I feel that something new I needed. A broader image of the game setting, my proposal to Creative Assembly, should they be reading this, is Houses.

Not the houses that you see when you look out of you’re window, but royal houses like they existed in real life from almost the beginning of feudalism. In the Total War series you picked a nation and started building you’re empire by expanding and conquering other nations nearby, eventually you would obtain total domination and you are victorious. This is a great concept but I can be expanded even further by adding royal houses into the game. They already started on the concept in Rome Total War, but they quickly trashed the idea again in Medieval 2 Total War.

Lets say we’re at the good old faction selection screen, for you example i’m going to say that the game takes place during the medieval ages. Lets say i pick the Kingdom of England as my nation, but instead of pressing “Start” in the lower right corner of the screen, I press a new button in the named “Next” where the start button was previously. Once I click the button the screen changes to a list of royal houses, one of them being unplayable as they are the current leading house.

- House of Wessex [Ruling House]
- House of Anjou
- House of Lancaster
- House of York
- House of Tudor
- House of Stuart

Let’s say I pick the House of York, now I press the “Start” button and the screen changes to in-game strategic map that we all know so well. But instead of Jolly ol’ England flying their own flags over all the towns and castles, they will be split into the houses. Of course the houses are a part of the Kingdom of Englandand have to abide to the rules of the crown.

The idea of House Wessex, the house of Saxon origin, sitting on the throne might be a bit far-fetched but let’s just play along.

So as the House of York I am of course given the town/castle of York as my fief and a small set of troops under my command. On the lower right of the screen is a new tab, next to the economy and recruitment one, named “The Court” or something alike that. In the tab will be a list of houses that are in the Kingdom of England, but also a list of other houses in other Kingdoms.

In the tab you will be able to contact leaders of the other houses and discuss diplomatic negotiations and get an overview of the global monarchy status. There will also be a percentage of how much influence a certain house has in the different kingdoms. Seeing as I am a English house, it is very unlikely that I should in the future inherit the throne of the Egyptians, and therefore the house’s influence will be limited to only neighbouring nations, such as Scotland, Ireland or France.

As the House of York my relations with the House of Wessex and the House of Lancaster after very low, maybe because of historical or personal grudges. This means that the two houses will do anything to stop me from getting the throne. This really sucks big time seeing asthe House of Wessex is the current ruling house of England. Now to be able to claim the throne, you must make sure that you’re leader is the next in line for the throne. That means if the current King has a son who is old enough to inherit the throne once his old man dies, he most be disposed of.

This is where some good old spy and assassination work comes handy, let’s say that the current King son was killed by a giant rock falling from the sky, I’ll leave the rest to you’re imagination, and this leaves the family tree to the kings cousin, which happens to be a member of the House of York, Yay York. But seeing as the King is still young and healthy there is a chance that before we can inherit the throne, he will gain a new son that can inherit the throne.

And all of the suddent! The Kingdom of France declare war onthe Kingdom of England, oh no. This leads to the part where houses come in handy for the monarch. The king will call all of his vassals, that being the other houses, to gather a large army/force to repel or invade the French. This is where you might get a mission pop up telling you to recruit 10 units and send them to London where they will await the kings command.

Once I have drafted every man in my fief that was able to hold a pitchfork, I send them marching towards London. Once they arrive there, my mission is complete and my reward is 2 % approval in the court, or a reward in gold coins that I can use to expand my little fiefdom. Once all of the houses have gathered their armies, each house will be given a objective to attack a certain town or defend a city. Failure to capture or defend will disgrace you’re house and you will loose popularity in the court, kind of like how it happened in Rome Total War when you played as the Romans and failed to do what the senate asked of you.

But if you succeeded in taking the town, you may be rewarded with a hefty sum of coins, or maybe even be rewarded the conquered town as part of your fiefdom. The more fiefs you obtain, the larger you’re influence is within the court. If you have enough influence in the court and a large population and standing army you will be able to start a civil war! That’s right, if the monarch treated you like his personal mistress you can take you’re revenge on the bastard by claiming that he is not the rightful heir of the throne. If you succeeded in defeating the opposing side in the civil war you can take the throne for you’re self and then become king. If you loose, well then you’re house looses a lot of fief and must pay a large sum of money. Plus your house-leader has to loose his head or spend life in a cell.

The whole idea of the “Houses” is that your house leader can obtain titles, ranks and other remarks in his time of reign, if his influential enough he might even become king. I know that this is all a lot at once, but I thought it could be fun to share my point of view, of a possible future of Total War Gaming

Thank you for reading

- Cain

[Halie Satanus]

You might like to have a gander at this.

[Cainrae]

Ah yes. i saw that at an earlier point. I was refearing to a future total war game, not a modding suggestion

[Augustus Lucifer]

Ah yes. i saw that at an earlier point. I was refearing to a future total war game, not a modding suggestion

Perhaps this should be in the General Discussion then? As this is the General modding discussion and resources.

It's an interesting concept but it wouldn't work with the way the engine seems to be used at current. If CA can adapt to an engine more like that used in Paradox games, it could be plausible.

[SigniferOne]

I think every part of this idea could work.

An entire set of windows could be constructed through the Yes/No interface, allowing you to see the other Houses, the status and the current lineage of the kingdom, etc. You could likewise be ordered to recruit 10 units and send them to London, where they get transferred to the control of the AI. If you don't do as you're told you could incur large disfavor from the king, including the taking of one of your provinces. However if you're sitting on an open recruitment pool and decide to recruit some armies without the king's orders, it could be construed as aggressive action and his armies would come marching into your territory in vast numbers, to put you down. Etc.

[Augustus Lucifer]

I think every part of this idea could work.

An entire set of windows could be constructed through the Yes/No interface, allowing you to see the other Houses, the status and the current lineage of the kingdom, etc. You could likewise be ordered to recruit 10 units and send them to London, where they get transferred to the control of the AI. If you don't do as you're told you could incur large disfavor from the king, including the taking of one of your provinces. However if you're sitting on an open recruitment pool and decide to recruit some armies without the king's orders, it could be construed as aggressive action and his armies would come marching into your territory in vast numbers, to put you down. Etc.

Well, yeah, you could in a roundabout fashion achieve some of it via scripting. But it would be ugly as hell. Accept/Decline scrolls don't let you use parameters or images within the text, or create a new button for them, to my knowledge. So there's no "if the relation is X, insert string X here", "if the relation is Y, insert string Q here", etc. they'd all have to be separate and disambiguated historical events.

So you'd have to have a different historic event for every possible status of every house, triggered by a discrete section of the interface. As well, I'm unsure how you mean to transfer control of player units to the AI, because I've never come across a command which can do that. The closest thing to that would be pretending they transferred by killing off the player units and spawning them for the AI, but it would take a lot of conditions to make sure it precisely works in that instance and spawns all of the correct units(and I'm fairly sure it'd still be impossible to replicate the experience level).

All the rest are possible that you specifically mentioned, but unless all the houses are separate factions(which takes faction slots) the diplomatic relations between sub-factions is unachievable. My understanding of his suggestion is a similar thing to the English houses be enacted for all factions, and technically speaking this is impossible. Now, there's the possibility of "transforming" faction slots and spawning them based on which faction the player chooses alone, and not for all factions, which is something I'm pursuing to an extent; however this is not real but marginal, as there's only so much you can change about a faction once the game has started, one of which you can't being culture.

[SigniferOne]

So you'd have to have a different historic event for every possible status of every house

Very simple. You don't have to combine all House statuses in one window. Only one house could show up at a time, and clicking Ok would allow you to cycle through them. Very neat script as a result As an added bonus you are able to show a different image of the House (happy, dejected) depending on the status of how they are doing.

As well, I'm unsure how you mean to transfer control of player units to the AI, because I've never come across a command which can do that.

One way might be to set up the King as a shadow faction. If you then force your army to rebel, it instantaneously goes over to the king

All the rest are possible that you specifically mentioned, but unless all the houses are separate factions(which takes faction slots) the diplomatic relations between sub-factions is unachievable.

There isn't a good reason why the various Houses would not have their own separate factions. This hypothetical mod would center heavily on Britain, with a vast British map and the Isles occupying most if not all of the mapping space. There simply wouldn't be any need for a lot of factions on the continent (perhaps just a handful to simulate French, Flemish, etc forces, though).


In any case, all ideas are very possible here, a very fresh and creative approach to the subject.

[Augustus Lucifer]

Very simple. You don't have to combine all House statuses in one window. Only one house could show up at a time, and clicking Ok would allow you to cycle through them. Very neat script as a result As an added bonus you are able to show a different image of the House (happy, dejected) depending on the status of how they are doing.

Well yeah, but depending on how complex this system is that's a lot of historic events and a really lame interface for the player. For this idea to work as smoothly as the houses did in Rome, it would need its own interface tailored to displaying the houses and their statuses at all times. Using historic events, if better than nothing, is an extremely ugly solution to the need for such an interface. That is not to say I don't utilize similar systems(I have a somewhat similar system in fact to represent partisans and political parties), but just that it's a real eyesore of a setup.

One way might be to set up the King as a shadow faction. If you then force your army to rebel, it instantaneously goes over to the king

That's another possibility, but it's still a roundabout and crude method which is imprecise as well. I'm not saying it's not possible, just that it's like making a sculpture out of macaroni(scripting engine) as opposed to stone(internal programming).

There isn't a good reason why the various Houses would not have their own separate factions. This hypothetical mod would center heavily on Britain, with a vast British map and the Isles occupying most if not all of the mapping space. There simply wouldn't be any need for a lot of factions on the continent (perhaps just a handful to simulate French, Flemish, etc forces, though).

I don't think he's proposing a mod though. He can correct me if I'm wrong, but when he says:

Lets say we’re at the good old faction selection screen, for you example i’m going to say that the game takes place during the medieval ages. Lets say i pick the Kingdom of England as my nation, but instead of pressing “Start” in the lower right corner of the screen, I press a new button in the named “Next” where the start button was previously. Once I click the button the screen changes to a list of royal houses, one of them being unplayable as they are the current leading house.

That to me says: A) Requires interface changes only CA can make, and B) Choosing England on a first select screen implies there are other factions with the same 'Houses' capability, otherwise the English houses would just be on the first screen as separate factions. So presumably you'd select one of the 31 or however many 'main' factions, and then from there choose one of the noble houses or partisan groups. I'm sure it's possible to get an English houses mod, and Halie linked to one which might be using a similar system, but I don't think that was the intention of this thread.

[SigniferOne]

That's another possibility, but it's still a roundabout and crude method which is imprecise as well. I'm not saying it's not possible, just that it's like making a sculpture out of macaroni(scripting engine) as opposed to stone(internal programming).

Let me clarify something: we are not talking about internal programming at all. At least I'm not. I am talking about the fact that a whole bunch of what he asked for could be done on the current Med2 engine. And it doesn't matter how it gets done, as long as the visible result is the same. Exactly what's wrong with making King a shadow faction and rebelling your armies to him? That is an extremely clean solution, that literally performs everything that could be done in this scenario.

The "Houses" interface window already exists: it's called the Pope window, and the favor of each of the factions is displayed there in quite clear terms. You could add a few Yes/No windows on top of that to flesh it out, and you have a fully functioning Houses system with internal politics.

So presumably you'd select one of the 31 or however many 'main' factions, and then from there choose one of the noble houses or partisan groups.

You can just treat each House as its own faction, and choose them in the faction screen.

Or, you can go for a little bit of an involved system that would be much more fun: You click on England in the faction screen, and press Start. The game then picks a random House faction for you to embody, and gives you that faction with its own provinces, so you never know what sort of game you're going to get.

[Cainrae]

I'm glad to see people joining in on the idea, but my main point was that this is not going to be done as a mod, but by the CA team in a future game. That way they could hopefuly create a proper interface and with scripted houses and so fourth

Of course the chance is very slim that they would acually make it, but it is just a idea i felt like sharing. Also when i spoke of England, i didn't mean that they should be the sole faction with royal houses. France, Spain and other nations could have their own royal courts with houses and so fourth.

[Halie Satanus]

CA don't have the best track record when it comes to picking up ideas from the community.

Think sleeping beauty and a cup of odourless coffee.

[Cainrae]

True, but a man can always hope can he naut?

[SigniferOne]

It's just that my gut reaction to the OP was to instantly see how it could be realized in the current already-existing game. And as I realized, a whole lot of it was quite possible (the shadow faction unit handoff seems an especially neat solution).

As for work to yield ratio, I disagree, I'd personally LOVE to take on a challenge like this. If yield is the amount of fun or exciting and new gameplay that could be gotten, then work which would produce highly Role-Playable, unusual for TW gameplay, would be completely justified. I personally think it would be very exciting to ONLY be responsible for one little plot of land, with little hope for expansion. Or if you tried to expand you'd be quickly slapped down by the much superior forces of the King. When he would need you he'd issue orders such as recruiting soldiers, and they would then disappear into his army and away from your recruitment pool. How awesome is that?

[SigniferOne]

I have to say, an implementation of this idea on the TW engine is one of the most exciting modding ideas I've ever thought about. Imagine the possibility of completely revamping and revitalizing the TW gameplay mechanic. Again, you live on your plot of land, send troops to the command of a superior authority, are periodically put in your place by the overweening king... That's very unusual!

The more I think about it the more the idea grows in my head. You won't have much to do in terms of the old-fashioned recruiting of large armies, trying to capture new pointless provinces, or taking part in big wars (unless in a rare circumstance they manage to reach you from the outside). The game designer will have to have new ways in which to capture the player's audience. Your entire attention will be taken up with looking at and managing your circumspect plot of land (necessitating a very hi-res map, viz:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

), and because of that, there is a ton of micro-level activities that will be completely new and never before seen on a Total War engine. You could send your nobles to a local festival. A whole host of cultural events/ scripts could be assembled to educate and immerse you into your fiefdom's cultural life. You could send your nobles out hunting, and RusichiTW, as usual, are already ahead of us with a model:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Youtube clip:

Imagine sending out your mounted noble, with 2-3 other nobles around him, aided maybe by 4 javelin soldiers, trying to trap down these big beasts -- humorous and unusual take on the normal TW gameplay. A joust could be called in, and a special battlemap would load, with the jousting arena (already in the game). Your noble is mounted on a knight, across the arena is his opponent, and hundreds of onlookers are beholding the spectacle on all sides. You will have no choice but to go forward and try to take down your opponent in one fell swoop, or else he may take you down. Then the map switches and you are now dismounted with a sword in your hand, fighting a 1-on-1 sword battle. You don't control your noble's movements yourself, and only hope that the stats you gave him throughout his life will be sufficient to get him through the fight.

Then the festivities are over, you're back on the campaign map. As you're heading out to one of your villages to attend a festival of peasants, news comes that a gigantic army of the enemy has landed, and you will have to go to war.

Battles in this scenario would be done completely differently: Kingdoms has a completely revolutionary feature which allows friendly AI to control some or all of your forces on the battlefield. In our mod you would have no army, and all of the units would be controlled by the King (AI). All you would have would be just your noble and his retinue of 30 soldiers (1 cavalry unit), so that you would have to work with the King's army to successfully rout the enemy from the battlefield...

[Nakharar]

Stop teasing me Signifier sounds AMAZING i would so like to see it done

[Cainrae]

I love all you're ideas Signifier! But in battles, you should be able to control a few more units than just your general and his body guards. Mabye you could be given a small group of troops who are ither loyal to your family or a group of mercenaries that you have hired?

Keep the idea's coming!