Anton's Banner, Visual and Clan-swapping Overhaul [v1.7] - Include's seven new clans (Nagao, Nanbu, Sanada, Akechi, Shiina, Red Devils, Suwa), ROTS minor clans added to custom battles, loading screens, historical battle map and more!

[Akaie]

That's right Anton,

Take your time and stretch your legs and muscles a bit until the new patch.

And count me as your loyal fan of this wonderful banner project.

Godspeed,

Yes,do take your time,It won`t be good if you release a new version,then a patch comes and breaks it.Count me too to the loyal fans of the mod.

Right-o then! To return the kind words, I noted you guys in the first post under credits.

[Date-san]

Right-o then! To return the kind words, I noted you guys in the first post under credits.

Thank you for this honor.You are a very kind,good sir.

[Akaie]

Thank you for this honor.You are a very kind,good sir.

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I will also take the time to note some fixes that will be applied to the mod in v1.6. I wrote them in past tense, so forgive that. This will be on top of any de-gamebreaking fixes (in the event that this modification is made unusable by patch9) and any new content.

Ikko-ikki related changes:
-Ikko-ikki sashimono crest changed to a circle.
-Ikko-ikki crest changed; the inner inner circle is to be made smaller.
-Ikko-ikki agent crest changed to the updated crest.

Ashikaga related changes:
-Ashikaga banner: Crest should be slightly bigger and the inner white bits transparent. *test* Red banner background.
-64x64 Ashikaga crest image polished

Clan-specific changes:
-The Nanbu banner should make use of the soldiers' dark'ish red theme.
-Yamanouchi crests have been inverted
-Kiso colour theme (green, for the most part lol) applied to the soldiers
-"European Traders" are now known as "Portugal". Euro traders is ambiguous and nullified by the use of Portuguese visuals.
-Satake naval sashimono-equivelant looks too light, whilst the crest looks fine.

General changes:
-In the clan selection menu, hovering over buttons shows the vanilla clan name. I need to find the file that deals with that.
-The bits of the banners that attach to the flag pole have been polished.
-*possible change* A higher resolution image (~1920x1200 would be nice) for the land battle loading screen.

Uhh... lets call this bit "other things":
Here is a bug that I think the game itself is causing: the Kiso and Ikko-ikki crests on the Naval banners, in the first case, used the crests of two other clans that were present in the battle. In the second test where I had only the Kiso and Ikko-ikki, no crest showed up.
I'll still look into this under the assumption I can fix it, but I'm not too sure about that.


I have also been thinking of overhauling the games' user interface. The thing is, I'm not too sure what the specific changes would be, only that I want to do it . If anyone has any suggestions, or even better some examples, let me know.

[Master Necromancer]

WOW. just WOW man!!! If you need any help with 2D art or historic references I offer my services. +rep

[Akaie]

WOW. just WOW man!!! If you need any help with 2D art or historic references I offer my services. +rep

Thanks for the support my necromantic friend!

I'll be sure to pick your brain if I come into any 2-dimensional roadblocks.

And history? Well, info on banners is always welcome! In fact, more of a priority. If you have the time, have a little look at the banners I have already changed. There is a list in my first post. If you can see a potential change, or if something is horrifically inappropriate, let me know!

Anyway, cheers!

[Akaie]

Morning... ish!

I have two little notes to make.

Firstly, regarding the very cool 'All Factions Playable' mod, it seems prudent to note that it will work with my mod. I have started playing my long-awaited Ukita campaign, and I have not seen any compatibility bugs.

Secondly, regarding my mod, is a two-part'er. The first part is that I have a few extra changes to note. They are as follows:
-The small map in the top-right hand corner that tells you which clan owns what needs a few colour tweaks: the Ikko-ikki's colour will be red, the Sakai gold, and the Imagawa purple, considering purple is no longer used by the Nagao.
-Banner changes: the new rebel banner will be a simple white banner with the rising sun crest; the Hosokawa banner will have a black crest with an alternate secondary colour.

The second part is regarding banners in general. I have come to the point where I don't have many more applicable historical banner ideas for the clans I have not yet changed. There are probably a few I have overlooked, but the point stands. I am thinking of applying my own colours to the banner backgrounds. This ties back to my ultimate goal of having every banner re-done. An example of this 'applying my own colours': the Nanbu. Right now, they have a black crest and a white background. I intend to give them a slightly dark red background. I don't intend to give clans wild looking colours like pink or anything of that nature.

...thoughts, anyone?

By the way, something to feast your eyes on. Many variants of this sort of thing, but never-the-less...

[Jace11]

I too am struggling to find historical or useful banner info. I've trawled google endlessly... Got lots of PDFs etc. I did have a nice mon website in Japanese. But still many clans missing...

Anyway, I'll be playing that sengoku game for a while I think... Then rise of samurai. First mod people should work on when that arrives is getting the RotS campaign map into the normal campaign.... Priority 1. maybe hedge or Mitch will be able to do it...

anyway sorry, got sidetracked..

Point is, for many clans there isn't much info other than the sources we all know about already...

[Akaie]

I too am struggling to find historical or useful banner info. I've trawled google endlessly... Got lots of PDFs etc. I did have a nice mon website in Japanese. But still many clans missing...

Anyway, I'll be playing that sengoku game for a while I think... Then rise of samurai. First mod people should work on when that arrives is getting the RotS campaign map into the normal campaign.... Priority 1. maybe hedge or Mitch will be able to do it...

Yeah. It seems the best english source we have is that Samurai Heraldry thread by Elvario over at Samurai Archives.

I'll have to actually have a go at playing Sengoku. I haven't played those types of detailed Strategy games for a long while, so I suspect many failures before I get the hang of it . Anyway, good luck with 'em.

[lament9582]

"Nobunaga's ambition" is also recommendable if you want to see japanese history and how video game developers regarding it, but there is no good source of information regarding their crest.
I suggest Taiga drama even though it needs correction sometime and it sucks these days.

[Akaie]

"Nobunaga's ambition" is also recommendable if you want to see japanese history and how video game developers regarding it, but there is no good source of information regarding their crest.
I suggest Taiga drama even though it needs correction sometime and it sucks these days.

Thanks! I'll be sure to look into them.

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So, given my inclination to screw with everything in S2, I have messed around with the strength bars image rather than simply knocking out the reference to them. Credit goes to Jace11 for this (original example here). With his permission I'll add this to the overhaul in some way. Back to the point. Basically, forcing the strength bars to show up on one of the sides seems to be the best way to ensure the best bits of the banner can be seen, all the while allowing the player to make use of vanilla game elements. My attempt could use yet a bit more refining (the bars should be just a little bit bigger) but you get what I'm getting at in the screenshot below:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

[Erwin Rommel]

The second part is regarding banners in general. I have come to the point where I don't have many more applicable historical banner ideas for the clans I have not yet changed.....

...thoughts, anyone?

Continue with your excellent Nanbu switch and extend to bring in new minors to replace old minors.



Sanada, Honda, Shibata, Katakura, Akechi, Ishida, Ii, Toyotomi, and many more.

Unfortunately

y'know, if someone could help me with some startpos changes, I could put this together. Have the campaign start at 1575 (debatable), swap out clans like I have been doing in my banner overhaul, and bam, you have yourself "The Sekigahara Campaign".

I dont know how.

[Akaie]

Without some startpos editing, I figure the Katakura could go in Fukushima. Having them take over the Hatakeyama for Miyagi also gives them a bunch of other regions. Hmm.

The Sanada looks to be the easiest to place; I could either put them in North Shinano, or, what I figure to be a bit better, replace the Anegakoji with the Sanada. This way, we don't have Shingen steam-rolling Yukitaka in the second turn .

Either the Akechi, Toyotomi or Ishida could easily replace the Saito, and thus take over Mino.

The Red Devil is hard to place. However, I recently had an idea to represent them in the game without elevating them to a clan status in Shogun 2. How? Unit variants. Call them "Red Devil Ashigaru" (screw the distinction between yari and yumi units, ashigaru had them both anyway), "Red Devil Samurai", and then have a recruitable Naomasa (best limit this unit to one ).

[Erwin Rommel]

There was a taisho model that was clearly modeled after Naomasa.

The UI shows him in a red zunari kabuto, mempo with white mustache, and of course the distinctive side horns. However once you see him in-game, it becomes a maedate of "V" horns instead, you know, showing the crest on the front of the helmet instead of the sides. Such a shame, I was screaming in glee when I saw him during the Campaign trailer.

I was like ZOMG ZOMG ZOMG! ITS NAOMASA!.......................wait, why is he in Takeda?

I think replacing clans is just the easiest path, disregarding that you might be elbowing out the vanilla minors in favor of spanking new ones albeit in daimyo status, unless they come in as your vassals at the very start, like the Imagawa-Tokugawa relationship in-game.

[Akaie]

I actually intend to create a new thread for the red devils, but I'm putting them here for now, considering I have only created the Ashigaru unit. My newest creation has been the "Red Devil Ashigaru" unit, part of what I intend to be a unit pack covering the Red Devil himself Ii Naomasa, "Red Devil Ashigaru" and "Red Devil Samurai" units, as well as some similarly themed cavalry units. This particular ashigaru unit is both a bow and spear unit. The front line of the unit is able to use a bow. This was actually a bug, but I have actually decided to call it a feature for now, as I quite like it for the sake of balancing. The unit bears all the features of the Yari Ashigaru unit, having the same stats, abilities and a similar unit card (the same one, just recoloured). The only difference is the ability to use a bow and the 'flaming arrow' ability. Of course, these guys can take a harmful chunk out of an enemy yari ashigaru unit before engaging in melee, giving them a huge advantage. For this reason, they are notably dearer; a base value of something like 110 koku. The .pack file is inside the file "Red Devil Ashigaru.rar" linked in this post.

Download here.


@Erwin Rommel.
I'll track down that unit variant file and use it in the Ii Naomasa unit for the aforementioned "The Red Devils Unit Pack". Once I create, at the very least, the new RD Samurai and Ii Naomasa units, I'll create the thread for the unit pack. It's too bad I can't apply some unit-specific heraldry, particularly that stylized square(ish) graphic seen below. I could, however, muck around with textures to show that symbol on the armour. More specifically I would have that cursed circle on the soldiers' jingasa and armour swapped out for the Naomasa symbol. I'll have to learn what to do, so if some kind person were to do that for me, that'd be pretty damn awesome (if someone were to do this, could you make it so the vanilla ashigaru armour stays as is, thus making the Red Devil armour a new entry?)

[Date-san]

Can you make the Kaihogyo monks available for all clans?BTW they are great,I like using them for a really really strong charge(it almost destroys morale of ashigaru and gets the samurai to yellow) then i retreat them and attack with my normal units to mop up.

[Akaie]

Alrighty. I have changed things so pretty much every Buddhist clan or the Ikko-ikki can recruit them. I also got rid of the "Nagao" bit.

I have made some tweaks to the Kaihogyo Sohei unit, putting them at v1.5! The stats are the same, but I have changed accessibility during the campaign. They can be recruited at forts that have a second or higher tier of any temple (Buddhist or Ikko). You also no longer have to be the Uesugi (or Nagao if you use them with this overhaul); as long as one of your forts has a second tier or higher temple, you can recruit these monks. Regarding tactics: these guys are not to be used in direct combat, but rather as morale breakers. Test them out, get a feel for them and you will understand what I mean. The .pack file is in "Kaihogyo Sohei [v1.5].rar".

Download link here.


As a follow-up, Date-san, would you mind answering a few questions?

1. Do you think the 'Kaihogyo Sohei' unit is sufficiently powerful?
2. Do you think they are worth the cost?
3. Do you have the 'Sengoku Jidai' unit DLC?


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I noted before I was playing an Ukita campaign. I applied my second unit card change to the daimyo that shows up for that clan. A cropped image of Ukita Naoie replaces the 13th general unit card (both young and old) as well as the image that you can see when you save and load a game. The thing is, since there can be a huge amount of daimyo in the campaign, I suspect the Naoie unit card would show up randomly for a standard general. Still, having such a portrait should outweigh randomly seeing it in a campaign.

[Akaie]

I have a bit of time today. The second thing I have done today is mess around with custom banner files. Thanks to a certain .tai file I can do this all I want! Very good indeed.

Back to the point! I shall introduce, for the first time in Shogun 2, the Sanada-shi!



The more observant will note their location as being Hida province. We all know the game to be pretty limited, so I am sacrificing the more unpopular clans for the more well known ones. Sorry, Anegakoji-shi. I could have put them in North Shinano, but as I noted in some other post, without startpos editing, which I would rather not be a part of this visual mod for numerous reasons, the Sanada and Takeda would ahistorically go to war. Some time in the game they would probably go to war anyway, but at least they have a bit more time to live.

I haven't done any text-based changes yet; I'll do that before I release the next version.

[Akaie]

I have started executing the work for version 1.6, which I will roll out later this month (promptly after the upcoming Shogun 2 patch). Apart from the screenshot above, here's the first major peek:


The Anegakoji has been completely re-worked into the Sanada clan. This covers the same changes that made the Nanbu clan possible: clan crests, sashimono clan crests, campaign/battle and naval banners, unit re-colourings and text-based changes.

Here you can see the new banner on the battlefield. You can also see the smaller crests in a few locations.

Here you can see the banner on the campaign map, as well as the clan crest in numerous places. Also note the name of the daimyo!

Here is a shot of me (the Takeda) engaging in historically-appropriate dealings with the Sanada.

Unit recolourings: the armour has a very nice silver that gives it an appropriately worn appearance. The soldiers' clothing is red, while a gold colour is used inside the circle.

The same re-colouring applies to the samurai. Here's a screen to exemplify.

[Christopher89]

hi Anton is your sanada clan to 100% ? can you upload then please for me the clan is very very amazing what clan replace her???

[Erwin Rommel]

ZOMG.

It worked perfectly.

I mean.....there it is...

The Sanada Clan....my god....its beautiful....its......it........

Must die. For my Date Masamune in me compels it.