The future of The Long Road - Medieval Total World...

**Condottiere SOG** · January 19, 2010, 07:40 AM

I hope to add many other features to this game...as someone had mentioned before...simply placing this mod into the Kingdoms mod folder allows this mod to used by Kingdoms...AWESOME!

I will begin looking into new factions, perhaps a subtle change in a few territories and new features...I hope to take this mod into Kingdoms with ease, while also leaving the M2 version intact...so that all may enjoy this wonderful mod.

I am also interested in finding some modelers/unit creators/coordinators that will help me finish my early, middle, late Medieval, Renaissance, High Renaissance and Early Modern building and troop rosters. I am wondering if using the Marian reforms feature can be used to distinguish Medieval and Renaissance periods so that two rosters may be had. I would like to take this mod right up to the point where vanilla Empire begins. That's the plan.

So the Reformation period will have to modded in, Perhaps a duplicate papal power can be used for HRE. A separate or expansion might be called The Long Road - Discovery; taking the mod into the New World. I plan to ask KLA for his advice in implementing future ideas. As ever fans of this mod are always asked to contribute in any way.

I will of course update this thread and I will leave it open for others to post their ideas. For now enjoy TLR 2.4

Erasmo

**Solam** · January 19, 2010, 02:39 PM

Hello Erasmo ...
Good thing when you get new thing for TLR ..
right now, I did not imagen a new idea
but I will come back soon with some ideas

anywey, if you want any help just tell me ..
I hope I can help you ..

Regards to you ...

**Condottiere SOG** · January 20, 2010, 02:25 PM

Thanks, TheKiller, I will let you know.

**Gray Beard** · January 26, 2010, 01:20 AM

Some simple things

1. Add Horses as a commodity and a commodity that you MUST have access too in order to build cavalry. By access I mean by either having a province where horses are, having a merchant stand on horses and taading for them or by some sort of treaty.

2. Some places, Switzerland, Scottland, Denmark and some German areas were famous for mercenaries. How about being able to send a merchant to stand on an "Armoured Swiss Pikeman" and have them appear in your force pool at your capital?

3. A diplomatic "Trade Rights" function that allows merchants to come into your provinces and stand on your resources.

4. With the discovery of the sea route to East Asia the old spice road withered and died. When the sea routes are "Discovered" the provinces like Antioch, Constantinople, Venice and Alexandria should generate far less wealth.

5. Other factions should not be able to move armies through your territory without either a Military Access agreement or declairing war. This includes Crusades and Jihads. A Jihad should not be able to walk past other Byzantine province on it's way to Constantinople without declaring war.

6. The Protestant Reformation should reduce the Pope's power and influence and should also be added as a religion option and the Islamic factions should be divided into Sunni and Shite factions as well. This would make them less monolithic and mutually supportive. Indeed, some of the areas on the Eastern edge of the map were actually Buddhist or Hindu maybe those could be added as well. (Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant, Jewish, Pagan, Sunni, Shite, Buddhist, Zoroastrian?, Hindu?)

7. Simply remove pirates from the game.

8. Quadruple the movement of ships

9. If a ruler has a trait like "Insane" or "mad" or "Evil" then there should be some consequence. Maybe a much greater chance of rebellion or civil war. Maybe armies don't always move where you want them too. Maybe taxes are not collected.

10. When taking a city hose population is not of your nation's predominant religion you should automatically sack it and kill the population, no choice. All buildings should be converted to cash like they were destroyed because they are destroyed.

**Brewing In Brooklyn** · February 10, 2010, 11:10 PM

Hello, I've been playing 2.4 as the french now for about 65 turns. Let me start by saying that I think this mod is great and has the most potential out of any of the MTWII mods.

With that said I think there are some things that you can improve to make the game more challenging and more realistic.

-Merchants should be reworked a little bit. Right now merchants are really over powered. In the beginning of the game if you just keep pumping out 5 merchants per turn from your capital city you can pretty easily win the game with no real challenge. I'm about 65 turns deep into my campaign and currently my finances are more than all the other factions combined. I'm making 45k each turn from merchants alone. I think a good way to fix this is to make a few modifications to how merchants work

1 .Make it so that merchants operating in other factions territories are subjected to taxes. That is, say I've got a merchant from France operating in a Spanish (or any other faction) territory and say the tax rate at the Spanish city is very high. Then my merchants goods are taxed at the same rate, with the money being taken out going to the spanish faction.

2. Having a lot of merchants in another factions territories should worsen your relations with them. This should be a function of the amount of profit your making off their lands, not simply the number of merchants. So if you have like 3 merchants in spain but they are only trading cheap goods like timber, maybe spain doesn't get upset. On the other hand if you have one merchant in spain and he's trading silver that by right belongs to them... well you might have a little problem on your hands...

3. Merchants and armies should be able to stack together. Merchants operating in other faction's territories can be forced to turn their profits over to that faction if that faction moves an army into the merchant's square. In medieval times merchants were often not allowed to freely operate in a territory unless lord, count duke, etc... was seeing the lion's share of profit. Put rather simply, if you had land with a gold mine in it and the neighboring king sponsored someone to set up shop and trade the gold that was on your land and make all the profit would you stand idly by while it happened? Or would you ask one of your loyal warriors to go out to the gold mine and "convince" the merchant that he was working for you?

Also, to protect your merchant from such attacks you could send him in with an army, but you should also make it so that you can't move armies into a factions territory without declaring war. In addition if you are at war with a faction you can move armies onto their merchants in their territories to get them to work for you. This way wars can now be fought over resources and not just capital cities. I could control Cordoba for instance, but if the Moors still have all their merchants on all the resources with armies to protect them.. well then who really controls the territory?

I think these changes to merchants, if possible, would make the game more challenging by adding another layer of strategy. It would nerf the current system, which the AI doesn't seem to really exploit, while also adding more depth to the game. Its almost like empire total war in that now you have "towns" (e.g. merchants) outside your castle walls that you have to protect with armies.

This post is long I know, but I have a few other suggestions.

-Public order. It seems way too high. I have all my cities constantly running with very high tax rates. I can do this because my population growth is still like 8% and my public order is still like 195% despite having really high taxes. Nerfing that a bit might make the game more challenging.

-Independents. They should be stronger. I like what you've done with them, because in vanilla they were basically just fodder for my armies, but I still think they're too weak. They should be more aggressive about building strong defenses and attempting to sack your cities.

-Other faction's AI and diplomacy. I like the diplomacy in this game, it's much smoother than vanilla and seems more realistic. With that said, I think the AI could be a little bit more shrewd on the diplomatic front and aggressive on the conquest front. Now, that's not to say they should be attacking everything in site with reckless abandon, but they seem a little too passive in this version. Right now, I'm 65 turns in and a lot of the independent territories are still just lingering. Between Hungary and Poland there's like 8 independent territories. Neither faction seems to care about expanding into those territories. Also, England still hasn't captured any of the independent territories in the Brittish isles. This to me seems a bit too passive.

Ok, with all that said I have one last thing. I like most of the above suggestions by Gray Beard, especially the horse commodity. However, I don't think you should remove pirates from the game. In medieval times pirates and raiders were rampant and were a constant nuisance to rulers and wealthy merchants. Sometimes they were even real threats (check out siege of paris 885-886). If anything you should ramp up the amount of pirates in the game. It would add another challenge.

All in all, I really like this mod. It has gotten me back into MTWII after playing Empire for a while. Even if you take none of my suggestions I'll still be playing. However, I would like you to make the game more challenging right now, because its too easy. The reason why: Merchants are overpowered...

Thanks for the great mod!

**greatlordd** · February 11, 2010, 08:52 AM

In my 2.4.1 game the AI is not passive the English found themselves at war with me(scotland), HRE, France, Denmark and Spain.

At the beginning of these wars England was strong enough, It was the one that decided to move against me in an attempt to keep themselves flowing in cash, but that ended with me protecting my welsh territories and taking York in one of the best battles where I was outnumbered two to one but still one due to smart use of the terrain (I love fighting in mountainous terrain).

What has killed the English more is that while it may have the military strength to go toe to toe with me and occasionally give me a bloody nose. It then weakened to the point that the other factions can take them apart.

I not sure if this is because the other AI recognise that England can't fight all of us and they are hoping to grab the loot when England is destroyed or if it due to the fact that Most of Western Europe has weakened themselves against each other, to the point that I'm the super power (economically and military) and I'm either allied or at peace with them so that the only external threats are the Moors and the Papal states.

I think the economics in this version are tweaked to much in allowing the player to amass a fortune.

Also I think the map needs to divided up a bit more. Like maybe make Wales two regions, and split York's region into Cumbria and Northumberland. Just think that some cuntries like France seem really small.

But all in all The Long Road is a brilliant mod.