TMW (The Medieval World) *suspended*

[knin]

Thank you kindly

I'm still taking comments on the balancing issue, if anyone would be so kind as to consider that.

Anyway, I'll work on this a little bit more tonight but I'm leaving town for a few days tomorrow so I won't be able to work . I'll be checking the website while I'm gone though, so keep leaving comments and suggestions and I'll work on responding to them when I get back.

[knin]

I forgot to mention that for England I started to use the Domesday Book but the information I found wasn't much help. First of all, the largest cities, London and Winchester, were never even counted because their populations were thought to be too large to handle, but then other cities such as Exeter and Gloucester seemed to only have a few households. The only one that was semi-useful was Norwich which apparently contained 1367 households but I never found a source that explained how many people made up a household since 1:1 seemed too small a population for the third largest city in England at the time.

Also if anyone would be so kind as to offer guidance on the HRE, when I was setting the regions up last night I couldn't really determine which, if any, settlements were large enough to be considered cities, so all the ones I did are either relatively big towns or somewhat big large towns. I'm not even sure what the largest city in the HRE was at the time...Augsburg? Regensburg? Cologne?

Thanks for your assistance Ixor, I'm sure multiple people combing the Internet will be much better able to find the hidden gems of information than just me. I'll be back late tomorrow so then I can continue to work on this mod for everyone's enjoyment.

[Ixor_Drakar]

From what I understand of the Domesday book only the heads of households were counted so yes its not the best resource for populations.

[knin]

I am back home and back to work on the mod!

Stinks about the Domesday Book, I was really hoping that of all places would be a good place to start but obviously not. Ah well, I'll keep searching around then.

EDIT:
A few more balancing previews:

HRE: 3 large towns, 5 towns
Leon: 2 large towns, 1 town
Moors (in Spain): 1 large city, 2 large towns, 4 towns

[knin]

Questions were moved to separate thread in Mod Workshop.

I'm still hard at work adding populations and filling out the map, but not to worry, it shouldn't be too much longer before I can give you guys a fully playable map!

[knin]

Hey guys, I just wanted to give a quick update of where I'm at and hopefully rekindle some interest in this since I seem to be the only one posting these days (haha).

1) With regards to that troublesome Wallachia area, I've opted officially, finally, permanently, and completely to go with 2 regions: Oltenia, with settlement at Severin, and Muntenia, with settlement at Vicina. End of story.

2) I'm dropping all the Irish regions except one (which is really to say that I'm dropping Munster, since the other two were already deleted to make room for stuff elsewhere). Unfortunately, I feel that Ireland is sort of an all-or-nothing idea, either you have enough space to divide it properly into its regions or you don't. So Ireland will now be one province with settlement at Dublin and a few PSF's to replicate 1-2 of the other cities I originally had. It's nothing against Ireland, but that area was simply too sparsely populated to warrant all 4 regions, and so it ends up being nothing instead of all.

3) I'm currently fixing up an old map of the HRE to do a slight revision, especially in the southwest since my original draft was created using two separate maps pieced together but each was a different time period and I never felt like the meshed exactly how I wanted. I also changed a few of the settlements in various places to reflect further research and weighing of historical importance, so you guys will see those reflected in the released map (if I ever get there, haha)

4) Because I've decided to take that region out of Ireland, I now have one open slot for somewhere, and I haven't decided yet where I want the new region to be. I was thinking perhaps another French region, simply because that area was so much more populated than many other medieval countries, but I also don't want to crowd France and I don't want to ignore more important settlements elsewhere that I may have missed. I suppose North Africa might benefit from an additional coastal region, but that might contribute to a much too overpowered Almoravid Dynasty (which I'll be discussing in a second). Other possibilities include Derbend, which I've seen included in some other mods and might add some flavor to that basically empty Steppe area, although by the same token I could also split Volga Bulgaria into Bolgar and Bilyar.

5) Having looked around at some other mods and submods which also focus on historical accuracy, and keeping gameplay balance in mind, I've decided that it's likely and basically necessary to split up both the Almoravids and the Seljuks. The Seljuks are simply much too powerful and control way to many territories for the Byzantines or the Caliphate to stand up to, and so my plan is to have 1 faction for the Sultanate of Rum (the Anatolian Seljuks) and 1 for the Great Seljuk Empire (which controlled basically everything else). The Almoravids are in a similar boat, though not quite as bad, but I also feel that having a separate faction for Muslim Spain will allow the AI to better handle attacks from Leon (and the future Navarre), instead of being stretched across Spain and the entire coast of North Africa. So I'll have 1 faction for the Almoravid Dynasty proper and 1 faction for the most powerful taifa of the time (which was either Seville or Badajoz, I can't remember right this second) to control most of Muslim Spain (obviously those areas under the jurisdiction of other taifas will not be included, but I'm pretty sure whichever one was the most powerful (I really do think it was Seville) controlled most of the others at its apex). This means that for the very initial release of the mod, which will basically be map-only, there's going to be a large swath of rebel regions in Anatolia and Muslim Spain, or alternatively, I could leave both factions combined until the new ones are created.

6) I'm also working on the creation of distinct rebel 'factions' for each region or small group of regions. This is simply a flavor aspect and won't add much to the game, though in future releases as units are inevitably added to the mod, each region will have a more distinctive set of potential rebel units to appear.

7) I'm still working on the populations and settlement tiers also, and so what will probably end up happening is I'll release my preliminary numbers, see how they pan out in the span of a game, and adjust and tweak in future updates as needed. Finding population data is basically impossible, so I'm relying on the relative importance of a settlement in each area to determine both its size and then basically guessing (read: 'BS'ing) a number. Also its really strange to see things like, Badajoz had a population of 25,000 in this time (found that in some Wiki article) when the largest cities in vanilla started with less than 15,000, nevermind the fact that they completely underestimated Cordoba. (I divided by 10, by the way).

Wow, I really didn't mean for this to turn into an essay but I guess having a solid plan is always better than just trying to wing it. It's nice to get my ideas down into something concrete and tangible.

[medievaldude]

Hey guys, I just wanted to give a quick update of where I'm at and hopefully rekindle some interest in this since I seem to be the only one posting these days (haha).

1) With regards to that troublesome Wallachia area, I've opted officially, finally, permanently, and completely to go with 2 regions: Oltenia, with settlement at Severin, and Muntenia, with settlement at Vicina. End of story.

2) I'm dropping all the Irish regions except one (which is really to say that I'm dropping Munster, since the other two were already deleted to make room for stuff elsewhere). Unfortunately, I feel that Ireland is sort of an all-or-nothing idea, either you have enough space to divide it properly into its regions or you don't. So Ireland will now be one province with settlement at Dublin and a few PSF's to replicate 1-2 of the other cities I originally had. It's nothing against Ireland, but that area was simply too sparsely populated to warrant all 4 regions, and so it ends up being nothing instead of all.

3) I'm currently fixing up an old map of the HRE to do a slight revision, especially in the southwest since my original draft was created using two separate maps pieced together but each was a different time period and I never felt like the meshed exactly how I wanted. I also changed a few of the settlements in various places to reflect further research and weighing of historical importance, so you guys will see those reflected in the released map (if I ever get there, haha)

4) Because I've decided to take that region out of Ireland, I now have one open slot for somewhere, and I haven't decided yet where I want the new region to be. I was thinking perhaps another French region, simply because that area was so much more populated than many other medieval countries, but I also don't want to crowd France and I don't want to ignore more important settlements elsewhere that I may have missed. I suppose North Africa might benefit from an additional coastal region, but that might contribute to a much too overpowered Almoravid Dynasty (which I'll be discussing in a second). Other possibilities include Derbend, which I've seen included in some other mods and might add some flavor to that basically empty Steppe area, although by the same token I could also split Volga Bulgaria into Bolgar and Bilyar.

5) Having looked around at some other mods and submods which also focus on historical accuracy, and keeping gameplay balance in mind, I've decided that it's likely and basically necessary to split up both the Almoravids and the Seljuks. The Seljuks are simply much too powerful and control way to many territories for the Byzantines or the Caliphate to stand up to, and so my plan is to have 1 faction for the Sultanate of Rum (the Anatolian Seljuks) and 1 for the Great Seljuk Empire (which controlled basically everything else). The Almoravids are in a similar boat, though not quite as bad, but I also feel that having a separate faction for Muslim Spain will allow the AI to better handle attacks from Leon (and the future Navarre), instead of being stretched across Spain and the entire coast of North Africa. So I'll have 1 faction for the Almoravid Dynasty proper and 1 faction for the most powerful taifa of the time (which was either Seville or Badajoz, I can't remember right this second) to control most of Muslim Spain (obviously those areas under the jurisdiction of other taifas will not be included, but I'm pretty sure whichever one was the most powerful (I really do think it was Seville) controlled most of the others at its apex). This means that for the very initial release of the mod, which will basically be map-only, there's going to be a large swath of rebel regions in Anatolia and Muslim Spain, or alternatively, I could leave both factions combined until the new ones are created.

6) I'm also working on the creation of distinct rebel 'factions' for each region or small group of regions. This is simply a flavor aspect and won't add much to the game, though in future releases as units are inevitably added to the mod, each region will have a more distinctive set of potential rebel units to appear.

7) I'm still working on the populations and settlement tiers also, and so what will probably end up happening is I'll release my preliminary numbers, see how they pan out in the span of a game, and adjust and tweak in future updates as needed. Finding population data is basically impossible, so I'm relying on the relative importance of a settlement in each area to determine both its size and then basically guessing (read: 'BS'ing) a number. Also its really strange to see things like, Badajoz had a population of 25,000 in this time (found that in some Wiki article) when the largest cities in vanilla started with less than 15,000, nevermind the fact that they completely underestimated Cordoba. (I divided by 10, by the way).

Wow, I really didn't mean for this to turn into an essay but I guess having a solid plan is always better than just trying to wing it. It's nice to get my ideas down into something concrete and tangible.

Ah a solid foundation builds an solid house !

[AJStoner]

Good luck with this, looks interesting.

[knin]

Populations are done, as well as river crossings.

To do tomorrow (or wait, today, haha):

1) rebel factions
2) ports
3) religion balancing

Sleep awaits!

[Ixor_Drakar]

All sounds good, came up short myself in the search. Like you said after people play it just make adjustments for game balance.

[knin]

*Sigh* Modding can be quite frustrating sometimes. I had all this work done on a final England, Scotland, and France, was having trouble with a couple of family trees, ended up canning the idea and replacing a few files with backups, and somehow other files which I swear I didn't touch got reverted to old versions, giving me errors left and right which I've spent the better part of an hour now trying to fix and revise. BUT, all that said, everything is back up and working now so I'll resume what I was doing before which was adding garrisons, family members, buildings, religious variety, ports, and rebel faction names to all regions.

Once I get this thing back to where I was this afternoon, I'll post some pictures of what the final map will look like now that I'm putting the finishing touches on this first map release.

[Ixor_Drakar]

Sorry to hear about your troubles but glad everythings ok now. Looking forward to the release.

[knin]

Name CTD's again. But I'm also so tired I can barely see straight so it wouldn't surprise me if I made some dumb error. Will look more closely tomorrow. By the way, does anyone have a working link to that old name verifier tool? It might come in handy, but the download I tried earlier seemed to be dead.

Pictures to come tomorrow.

[NikeBG]

I'm quite impressed by the speed you're working with and the enthusiasm and effort you're putting into this. Looking forward to the release as well.

[knin]

Heh, of course it had nothing to do with names. Stupid me decided it would be fun to write named_character instead of named character. Hopefully everything will progress much more quickly now.

[knin]

Sorry for the double post but I have some pictures!!!

Final England (with a peek at how the Rebel Factions flavor looks)


Final Northern France


Final Southern France


Final Rhineland

[medievaldude]

Hurahhh more and more work you make

[knin]

As much as I wish M2:TW could channel some Crusader Kings to replicate the ridiculous amount of marriages, divorces, children, bastards, and all manner of confusing relationships which characterized the Middle Ages, unfortunately the engine is quite limited in its replication of the familial aspect of medieval politics. So while I'm trying to clean up some of the worst offenses of the original game with regards to family trees, there are going to be a few strange circumstances where bastards are suddenly legitimate or first wives (or second wives) never existed. Bear with me, I'm doing the best I can. (I'm talking to you, de Hautevilles! That is one helluva family tree...)

Anyway, I'm wondering if there's a way to flag children as heirs. For example, the way I have France set up right now, King Philip and his wife have just had little Louis, age 0, the heir they had been hoping and praying for. However, since he's underage and there are some other, lesser nobles in his court (and since this aspect of the game mechanics sucks!), the current heir to throne is 68 year old Thibault de Blois (He's not in the family tree, but the error message basically says that without an heir, the engine picks the next named character in the faction). That's a bit of a problem.

Anyway, still working, lots more to do tonight, will hopefully have some more pictures up later.

[Ixor_Drakar]

The Next Heir Ancillary, my most favorite script in the world. http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=381796

The map is wonderful, I see someone finally went with Arle instead of Marseille.

[knin]

I've finished most of the family trees, except for the Fatimids and the Seljuks, since I couldn't (relatively easily) find information on either Jalal (Seljuk) or al-Multansir (Fatimid)'s families.

Like I said, I had to do a bit of fudging since there's no double marrying or bastard children or large amounts of children, but I think they (mostly) came out very nicely. But I drastically improved the often ridiculous fudging in vanilla, in which every kingdom had a 50-something year old king and an able heir. Not anymore!

Many of the families are much smaller, and so I will try to counteract their lack of named characters with lesser nobles where possible, and lesser nobles will also rule many "minor faction" towns.

@Ixor_Drakar - does that script work for children? That's all I really need it for, in all other cases succession is fine as of 1080 and after that it's all up to the player or AI.

I'll keep periodically updating with pictures as I finalize areas and I'll also be phasing out the old pictures in the OP.