A bit of modding

[konny]

I have made some personal changes to FKoC, may be you'll like them to:

Mounted Dragoons

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I always find the dragoons somewhat obsolete having so much musketeers running around. That way I gave them their "other role", that is providing mounted support and being able to travel large distances much faster than infantry.

Custom protraits for random characters

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I am using the FCoK custom protraits for random characters too. That way you might have a royalist random character looking like Cromwell, but that's still better than having random characters appearing in 15th Century tournament armour.

Regimental Recruitment

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Regiments would have been considered private property of their colonels (also called the "owner"). That way only the owner would be able to raise men for his regiment. But he would do so anywhere on the map.

It works that way:

When there is no regimental owner inside a city you cannot recruit anything save artillery and militias.

When the owner of a regiment enters the town he can recruit men for his regiment(s). You still need a regimental recruitment hall, but are not bound to the AORs. Vacant regiment will be acquired by new characters entering the game.

Because that way you would usually not be able to recruit anything in most towns, milita is made available from the regimental recruitment hall as well. Recruitment for the AI is unchanged.

Special Regiments:

• The King's Guards (both horse and foot) will always be held by the Royalists' faction leader and cannot be acquired by other characters. The Horse Guards are held at game start by Prince Rupert additionally.
• Tillier's Regiment is not available to other characters than him
• Tower Hamlets and Scots are still AOR bound and not held as personal regiments.

Royalist Regiments of Horse:

1. Royalist Lifeguard (King)
2. Royalist Lifeguard (Rupert)
3. Royalist Cavaliers (Lord Astley)
4. Royalist Cavaliers (Lord Byron)
5. Royalist Harquebusier (Bevil Grenville)
6. Royalist Harquebusier (Earl of Forth)

Parlamentarian Regiments of Horse:

1. Roundhead Lifeguard (Earl of Essex)
2. Roundhead Ironsides (Oliver Cromwell)
3. Roundhead Troopers (William Waller)
4. Roundhead Troopers (Edward Massie)
5. Roundhead Cuirassiers (Arthur Haselrig)

NMA Recruitment
The regimental recruitment remains in effect also when the NMA is created, but then all commanders of infantry regiments and dragoons can recruit the respective NMA units instead of their old regiments.


Limitations

• The local recruitment panel is updated whenever you select a settlement. That way you need to click somewhere else and then select the settlement (again) when having moved a new character inside in order to update local recruitment.
• Only the governor of a settlement can recruit men for his regiment. That way, when you have several characters inside a settlement, you can only recruit for the regiment(s) the governor is holding.
• To avoid an exploit the recruitment is not updated when you are already recruiting inside the settlement in question. Wait for the recruitment to complete or empty the queue and then select the settlement a second time if you wish to update local recruitment.

Changes in descr_strat

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I have removed most of the regiments ready for war. You now start the game with mostly militia and need to raise regiments at the first.

The local governors have been removed together with their names to avoid names like "The Government of Devon" to be held by randomly adopted characters.

All characters are now given random traits at the beginning of the campaign to not have them all the same everytime you play. When you start a second campaign during an ongoing FCoK session you'll have a bunch of "Trait Acquired" messages for that reason (don't know why M2TW is unable to bundle them unless you start a new session).

At the bottom of the file you'll find these lines:

faction_relationships     england, at_war_with     slave
;faction_relationships     england, at_war_with     denmark
faction_relationships     denmark, at_war_with     slave
;faction_relationships     denmark, at_war_with     england

faction_relationships     slave, at_war_with     england, denmark

When you remove the two ";" both factions start the game already at war. That way the AI would be knowing what's going on.

Misc

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I have removed the torches for night battles (is there anything more stupid than to start a night attack with every man swinging a torch?).

I have removed "fire by rank" for the musketeers. This wasn't done anymore at the time of the 30YW, instead musketeers fired full slavos or, more likely, "free for all". It also makes me nervous to see me men doing square dance while being under fire

http://rapidshare.com/files/365833778/FKoC_Konny.rar

Installation: Extract into your FCoK data-folder.

[alexandre dumas]

excellent, i will add that new features in the battle maps,thanks a lot

[leonn]

it looks very good,but have you been able to get musketeers to fire full salvo's? volly fire is more accurate for the ecw than fire by rank,introduction and extroduction.but im sure a.d said he'd tried to do salvo's and the game wouldnt let him.i really like your recruitment idea as its much closer to what happened,but wont you need more regiments? i can see a general ending up with a full stack of only one regt if a named colonel stays too long in one settlement.none of this is meant as critisism by the by. i think if all this works it'll make a brilliant mod even better. and i agree about night battles,nothing more stupid than musketeers festooned with apostles running around with flaming torches!

[Clarendon]

Very impressive!

Not sure about the dragoons, though. The ideal would obviously have been to have them able to fight mounted or dismounted, but as I understand it this isn't possible and as they were for the most part basically mounted infantry (Colonel Okey notwithstanding) I think it makes sense for them to appear on the battlefield on foot. Unless you've found some way to make them dismountable????

[konny]

it looks very good,but have you been able to get musketeers to fire full salvo's? volly fire is more accurate for the ecw than fire by rank,introduction and extroduction.but im sure a.d said he'd tried to do salvo's and the game wouldnt let him.

No, they still fire when ready (this was called "Plackerfeuer" on the battlefields of Germany in that periode, and was the most common kind of firing in the chaos of battle). It looks a bit like salvos because men of the first rank fire, then knee down while men of the second rank start firing, but it isn't realy it.

i really like your recruitment idea as its much closer to what happened,but wont you need more regiments? i can see a general ending up with a full stack of only one regt if a named colonel stays too long in one settlement.

The idea is that the colonel stays with his regiment and is not tied to a certain region. For example, Rawdon might be sent north to support the Earl of Newcastle. In this case he would take with him all his regiment (because no one else would be able to retrain them it wouldn't make much sense to leave the men in the south).

Having arrived in the north he would recruit men for his regiment, not for that of the Earl of Newcastle. In this way, he should also be able to retrain his companies whereever he is.

Armies, that way, are composed of several colonels with their regiments (in the scale of the game we would rather consider them "Tercias"). Characters are considered first of all commanders and not governors.

The ideal would obviously have been to have them able to fight mounted or dismounted, but as I understand it this isn't possible

That's impossible (hardcoded), what is rather odd for a Middle Ages game, where knights should be able to fight mounted or dismounted, whatever the situation required. So, dargoons would either be mounted (for strategical reasons) or dismounted (for tactical reasons). I found that I as good as never recruited the dismounted dragoons, but now find the mounted variant extremly usefull in game.

[leonn]

thanks for the answer.i think your slant will make the game mechanics more interesting,and i agree that not being able to dismount cavalry makes no sense as ordinary cavalry fought dismounted on many occasions in the ecw. how about being able to recruit either mounted or dismounted dragoons?either type in the end is in essence an infantry or a cavalry unit when you deploy them,so wouldnt that cover it or is that not possible?

[AlphaDelta]

I can't tell you how happy it makes me to see people still playing and modding my little mod.

I really like the new recruitment system. It means that keeping your generals alive is more important than ever. It'll keep managing your stacks much easier too.

The special regiments is a really nice touch.

The local governors have been removed together with their names to avoid names like "The Government of Devon" to be held by randomly adopted characters.

You have to be a bit careful here. Removing governors from settlements will probably cause all of the AI's field generals to retire to settlements.

Keep up the good work!

[leonn]

what ho alpha old bean! good to see you alive and kicking still.may i call to your attention the stirling work in the historic battle being done by alexandre dumas.

[konny]

how about being able to recruit either mounted or dismounted dragoons?either type in the end is in essence an infantry or a cavalry unit when you deploy them,so wouldnt that cover it or is that not possible?

This would require a second unit, this time dismounted (i.e. the original one from FCoK). Nothing particullary difficult to do.

I can't tell you how happy it makes me to see people still playing and modding my little mod.

It'll keep managing your stacks much easier too.

It certainly does.

You have to be a bit careful here. Removing governors from settlements will probably cause all of the AI's field generals to retire to settlements.

No problems so far: About 1/3 to 1/2 of the AI armies are commanded by generals. This is an excellent ratio.

[Saddletank]

Some interesting ideas here but as others have said the concept of mounted dragoons, apart from one instance in the New Model Army was for them to be used tactically as 'light infantry'. If you wanted to represent their faster mounted movement I think the best option would be to allow them to move at cavalry speed on the strategic map but show them as infantry in battle. Of course an improvement would be to disallow close order troops to pass through woods, which would give dragoons another use, plus the MIITW battlemap never has walls, hedges and sunken lanes so much favoured by these sorts of infantry. Shame really.

The problem with allowing a player to recruit mounted dragoons is he will do so and so end up with them mounted on the battle field which for the ECW is a complete fiction. If you have no battlefield use for dismounted dragoons you can always put them into garrisons.

I think your idea with regimental recruiting is interesting but misses a big point in the ECW, that being that until the New Model came along the armies were essentially amateur and parochial and colonels would only recruit for their own units in fairly narrow geographic confines. The Earl of Newcastle for example was given a commission by the King to raise men for his regiment of whitecoats in the Newcastle region as a part of his civic duties. He wouldn't be legally empowered to raise men elsewhere. He might well raise a few, pressing them into the ranks in extremis but not in any formal sense. This system gave local commanders strong powers to raise forces and govern areas but was a weak concept for a professional military. I think the original mod system of only allowing a regiment to be recruited in a narrow location is a more correct way to represent the way the war was (mis)managed.

Perhaps something between the two systems would be best? To allow any unit to replace losses anywhere but to limit the locations fresh companies could be raised to the starting region?

The New Model changed all that, among other things, the New Model being the forerunner of the professional British army.

Having been a member of all three major UK-based ECW re-enactment groups I think the fire by rank and extraduction or intraduction system is the more correct for the ECW. Other systems may have been in use in Europe but that does not mean they were in use in the UK.

[konny]

If you wanted to represent their faster mounted movement I think the best option would be to allow them to move at cavalry speed on the strategic map but show them as infantry in battle.

It can either be "cavalry" and move at the speed of cavalry or "infantry" and move at the speed of infantry.

The problem with allowing a player to recruit mounted dragoons is he will do so and so end up with them mounted on the battle field which for the ECW is a complete fiction.

Save for Okey's.

The Earl of Newcastle for example was given a commission by the King to raise men for his regiment of whitecoats in the Newcastle region as a part of his civic duties.

But this was because he was present in the region. If he had fallen off his horse the second day and Gerad would have been sent to the north, he would have recruited men of his regiment not for that of the dead Earl of Newcastle?

And if the King and Rupert would have reteated west to make a last stand in Wales they would have recruited men for the King's Regiment and the Bluecoats, not for Gerad's or Northampton's Regiments?


That's the idea behind Regimental Recruitment: It limits the different regiments by certain key characters present in a region. This is on the one hand very dynamical because the player can set hotspots of defence by moving several colonels into one region. On the other hand it seriously limits his abilities to raise professional units because unless there is colonel in a region, you wouldn't get anything save some militias.

That is, you are depedent on your colonels to get an army into field. If that's ahistorical in ECW I am wrong, and recruitment in 17th Century England worked completly different than anywhere else in Europe.

Having been a member of all three major UK-based ECW re-enactment groups I think the fire by rank and extraduction or intraduction system is the more correct for the ECW. Other systems may have been in use in Europe but that does not mean they were in use in the UK.

I am not an expert on ECW combat. My limited researches have given me the impression that the English armies used Swedish tactics; and this would have included fire by generaldecharge (as the ideal, in reality it was "free for all"), not by rotation or by ranks.

[SirHiggins]

Great ideas, but when i want to attach a cavalry unit for my regiment -which commanded by a colonel without rights to build up cavalry units (who not listed at your first post)- i have to recruit by another general and transfer to where i want the cavalry units if it's at the other corner of England?

[konny]

To get a full army you need a cavalry and an infantry colonel. Only Charles, Rupert and Essex can recruit cavalry and infantry; plus Newcastle if you count his dragoons as cavalry.

You should (at game start) have enough cavalry colonels available. For the Royalists, for example, Astley and Forth can be sent north and south to support Newcastle and Rawdon.

Hopton's Foote and Grenville's Harquebusiers would form the army of the SW, while Gerad, Northampton and Byron's Horse would be the army of the West. The King's Regiment of Foote, the Lifeguards, Rupert's Bluecoats and Maurice's Dragoons would be the main army.

[SirHiggins]

Well OK, but i like the mixed armies, not one stack cavalry one another infantry, nor a mixed one with two generals occupying two slots from the 20.

[konny]

10? It's 20 slots.

I usually set up my armies that way:

Regiment of Foote

1. General
2. Musketeers
3. Pikemen
4. Musketeers
5. Saker
6. Musketeers
7. Pikemen
8. Musketeers

Regiment of Horse

1. General
2. Troopers/Harquebusiers/etc
3. Troopers/Harquebusiers/etc
4. Troopers/Harquebusiers/etc
5. Troopers/Harquebusiers/etc
6. Troopers/Harquebusiers/etc

Regiment of Dragoons

1. General
2. Dragoons
3. Dragoons
4. Dragoons
5. Dragoons

This would be for full armies, and only when the regiments are complete, what they hardly are. Otherwise companies might be detached, in particular dragoons.


Of course, if you don't want to have more than one general per army, my modification would not be of your liking and you shouldn't download it.

[SirHiggins]

Sorry, 20, i mistyped.
I used the swedish model, for this 3 musketeers, 3 pikers, 2 saker, 2-4 cav unit + the commander.
Or when i want full stack 6/6 musk/pike, 2 saker, 1 drag, 2 cav unit + general.
(the alternate at the bottom of the pic)

I think one commander is enough for a battle - and we havn't got so many to use them in pairs, or 3-4 of them.


I like to use your mod, mostly because of the recruiting system

[konny]

Yes, the lower sketch would be a Swedish deployment.

[SirHiggins]

So is it possible to use the package with the recruitment without the caracter specific rec. ?
And is ur mod compatible with the historical battles(because of the armies included there - ie. mounted-dismounted dragoons) ?

[konny]

Character based recruitment changes campaign_script and EDB. Make a backup of these two files, unzip the package and afterwards replace the changed campaign script and EDB with your two backup files.

NB: Your generals would still have the regimental ancillaries, but these now won't do thing, save for giving them an additional command star.

EDIT: I haven't tried it with the historical battles.
EDIT II: But I am using a custom EDU with the historical battles and it works, so I think it wouldn't harm the battles

[SirHiggins]

Maybe i was mistakable, i mean i like to use the "where is my colonel, i can recruit his regiment" thing, but i like to recruit cavalry where i want - without limited by the general's person,
so the cavalry colonels can lead -in their own- a mixed army with infantry too, and non-cav colonels can recruit mounted troops too.