Faerûn[Forgotten Realms]TW - v0.2 released, check the first post

[Mapolq]

hekk has very good points, but in the end, I don't think you want to make 1-province factions like the Daemonfey, Surkh, Uthgardt would probably have to be. We have discussed the Dalelands and Chessenta issue of not being unified, I proposed them since seeing what you did with the Captains' Confederation, I figured you would like to do larger factions and it would be fine if they weren't actual polities if they had an unifying "feel". And the Dales, though not an unified polity, are an alliance, so that is even better - they are arguably more unified than Chondath is.

As for the Drow... the thing is all those outposts would be 1-province (and in many cases, that's stretching it). But they would be viable, in a sense. As would the yuan-ti, with Hlondeth and Najara.

[hekk]

If wishing to add in a drow faction, I can tell you there are number of surface drow outposts around the map you have. There are the Jaelre Drow of Minauthkeep, in the Cormanthor Forest. And there are also numerous Vhaeraun-worshipping drow settlements in the Forest of Mir between Tethyr and Calimshan, such as Dallnothax, Iskasshyol and Holldaybim. There is also the ruins of Sulasspryn in the Moonsea which is occupied by Lolth-worshipping drow who use it as a base to launch slave raids.

Also concerning Dalelands and Chessenta it would probably be best to select a particular city-state (or dale in Dalelands case) out of them, since they are not unified realms. Cimbar for Chessenta would make sense, since they unite Chessenta under Tchazzar 1 year after this start date. Archendale for Dalelands seems reasonable since it boasts the most formidable army out of all the Dales.

If you want to add in an fiend-ish faction, the Daemonfey of Lothen of the Silver Spires seem to have potential (they are basically demon-blooded elves). There is also the Scoured Legion of Hellgate Keep which is made up of various demonic abominations

It would be really cool if an Uthgardt barbarian faction was added, as they are pretty classic to the Realms. The Griffin tribe or the Black Ravens seem like good choices as they are fairly warlike, hostile and ambitious tribes, rather than having another "goody" faction up there to gang up on the lonely Many-Arrows Orcs.

Evereska ought to be considered as well, it would be a more stronger and secure realm than Cormanthyr despite it's recent troubles, since it's existed for thousands of years and has illusionary magic to protect it from invaders.

Also just to give some more non-human faction suggestion, the Lizardfolk of the city of Surkh are a fearly powerful menace in the Deepwash (that area seems a little empty of factions in the campaign map you guys have). Hlondeth also would be very cool to have, it's a quite powerful city-state in the Vilhon Reach that is ruled by the Yuan-ti.

Personally I would advise against expanding the map. Given the hardcoded limits of M2TW of the number of provinces and factions you can add in, it would be better to just refine and polish the area you have already. The map and the units all look wonderful btw, nice work.

[Martinskyboy]

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[Mapolq]

If you go a bit counter to the lore for faction balance sake, you could add Surkh to a "reptilian" faction along with Najara and Hlondeth, that'd be pretty viable.

I say counter to the lore because Surkh is isolationist and not allies to the yuan-ti or nagas by any stretch.

[assurbanippal]

welcome on board mapolq, glad to see another FR enthusiast over here

2 more pre ingame previews: simbulmyn (2h knights) nd simbarchs (wizards)

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[hekk]

hekk has very good points, but in the end, I don't think you want to make 1-province factions like the Daemonfey, Surkh, Uthgardt would probably have to be. We have discussed the Dalelands and Chessenta issue of not being unified, I proposed them since seeing what you did with the Captains' Confederation, I figured you would like to do larger factions and it would be fine if they weren't actual polities if they had an unifying "feel". And the Dales, though not an unified polity, are an alliance, so that is even better - they are arguably more unified than Chondath is.

As for the Drow... the thing is all those outposts would be 1-province (and in many cases, that's stretching it). But they would be viable, in a sense. As would the yuan-ti, with Hlondeth and Najara.

I understand that, however I think you'd need to add some 1-province factions, otherwise you'd risk only adding in human factions that are quite similar to each other. Having both Damara and Impiltur as factions for example, seems incredibly redundant in my opinion as both of them are conceptually very similar countries. They both are ruled by paladins of Ilmater (and Ilmater's faith is strong and nearly predominant in both countries), they also have no history of conflict or hostile relations between each other so they would have virtually no reason to fight each other in lore, but due the nature of M2TW they would come to war with each other fairly quick since they would border each other and have little room to expand anywhere else in this campaign map.

You could also potentially remove some provinces somewhere to make room for new ones. That is if you have reached the province limit with this campaign map.

Also you could add in events that could provide some extra units for small factions (i.e. Uthgardt managing to absorb barbarian warriors of other tribes into their tribe, the Drow given reinforcement from the Underdark, etc) to aid in their expansion.

Personally I think to nearly only have human factions would be a mistake, and not in line with the spirit of the setting, as the demihumans (i.e. non-human humanoids) are an important and interesting fabric of FR.

[Martinskyboy]

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[Martinskyboy]

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[Mapolq]

For the record, I'm against the addition of more non-human factions on your main mod. My reasoning is the following: such creatures are often very important in Faerûn, but apart from the dwarves, elves and orcs, and possibly a mashup of Scale Folk or a heavily scripted drow faction, they don't have the ability to raise armies. So they're not going to be very well-modeled by a Total War game.

The human factions have a lot of things that are particular to each one of them, so it wouldn't feel boring at all. On the contrary, I think it's a great way to explore less-known areas of Faerûn.

[Martinskyboy]

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[Titus le Chmakus]

Yep, you've summed up everything in your last post Mapolq ! All we planned to do is adding all those monsters as rebels ! For example, there will never be any drow faction, but Myth Drannor will be full of drows at gamestart. And powerful ones. We have planned not to balance the game, we have planned to recreate Faerun as it is in 1372. So if factions deserve to die, they will probably do in 90% of the games. And if selected by players, then it will be a tough challenge !
So a lot of monsters or non human will be in, but not playable (Yuan Ti, Drows, Centaures, Minotaures, Khobolds, Hobgoblins, Trolls ... etc)
We'll have Thay with a lot of monsters.

But for non human factions, Elves, Orcs, Dwarves and who else do we need ? Btw, Evereska is the main city of Elves. They also have Tangled Trees.

Each human faction will have its own units, own buildings and religions, so they are far from being redundant. At least less than France and England in vanilla !

For the map, we have suppressed the Southern part because it was pretty much useless. We wanted to focus on the main centre of interest of Faerun. And again, creating a 1 region faction is a lot of work for just a little game benefit. So it is not worth doing it.

Underdark is not feasable, we already thought about it.

197 is the maximum hardcoded number of settlements.

Maybe we could add 1 Uthgard unit to the Dwarves ?

We planned a special script for Elves for the High Forest in late game. It will not be accessible to other factions. So there will perhaps be some Demons as rebels too ...

[Titus le Chmakus]

No it was not a mistake, it was a long debate between Vlad and I on its use in the mod. It was too many settlements for a little benefit, where these settlements could be of better use somewhere else. Sometimes it is better having a smaller map with tactical interest than a huge empty map ...
And as the map has a max size, Evermeet was too much West to be useful because it would mean a lot of sea South of it ...

[Martinskyboy]

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[assurbanippal]

city guard, the last unit of aglarond roster

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tomorrow the ingame preview

[Mapolq]

Underwater factions would actually be some of the most natural, in the sense that they have large populations, armies, cities, etc. But I didn't mention them at all because I imagine the implementation would be a nightmare.

[Titus le Chmakus]

Underwater factions would actually be some of the most natural, in the sense that they have large populations, armies, cities, etc. But I didn't mention them at all because I imagine the implementation would be a nightmare.

It would have been totally impossible. You cannot split the sea into regions and give them settlements. So it would mean that we would have to give a land settlement to them and that would be their base of operation. But if you look at Sahuagins tacticts, they are raiders, not conquerors. Therefore, they have little interest in a conquest game ! That is why we decided not to use them.

For Evermeet you can have made it like in the south-west corner. A little like vanilla america. It will have just a little more pixel to the west.

We could ... but we won't. Elves of Evermeet don't care anymore about the rest of Faerun, they do not want to be mixed with them again. So they would only be defensiv. And on top of that, how do you implement the massiv magical defenses they have, ingame with TW mechanics. Seriously, Evermeet is good for Faerun lore, really useless for a Total War game.

[Martinskyboy]

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[Mapolq]

Screenies are looking good!

I have a general suggestion for models that may or may not have been floated before, and I understand it'll probably take a lot of work to do. It might be interesting to include female models for most of the units, perhaps excepting the heavy infantry and heavy cavalry ones, and elite archers. There's no hard figures for this, but I'm led to expect by what I know of the Realms (I can expound on it if you want) that light skirmisher units would probably contain many females, and so would some militia and city watch units. Wizard, priest and druid units might be close to 50/50.

I mention that since it would be a fairly subtle but VERY Realms-appropriate thing that would go well with the spirit of the mod, I think.

[Martinskyboy]

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[assurbanippal]

Aglarond roster in game
All 3D models made by me from the scratch but hands (they are vanilla) including every mount. all units have been designed for me too due to the lack of pics, same for the previous rosters and incoming ones
Textures: some made by me, some taken from TES: oblivion, skirym and romeII

Yuirwood rangers

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Yuirwood archers

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yuirwood riders

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yuirwood druids

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pikemen of the lion

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swordmen of the lion

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archers of the lion

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knights of the lion

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Watchwall guard

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Watchwall patrolling

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griffon riders

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they will look like the last pic, only colours changed

on foot

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Simbulmyn (bodyguards)

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Simbarchs (wizards)

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city guard

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as note aside some of them will need tweaks on normal maps nd some other minor corrections like adding variety, more drawings on shields... but roughly they will look like this