Medieval Kingdoms Total War: Campaign Map Master Thread

[HannibalExMachina]

So there was some discussion a few months ago about how to best implement and represent the Holy Roman Empire as a faction. The subject still seemed to be up in the air with no final decision having been made. I wanted to put forward some ideas as to how I think the faction could be represented, under the assumption that there still has been no final decision. If the team has actually decided how to implement the faction during the last few months, this post is not intended to challenge any decisions that have already been made, but simply to put forward some suggestions about things that may not have been worked out yet. Also note that I know next to nothing about modding, so some of these ideas may be impossible to actually implement. Once again, I’m only throwing some ideas into the mix, make of them what you will.

So first of, I made a map outlining what I think should roughly speaking be the territory of the Empire (see attached image). This is obviously only a rough outline and not an indication of precise borders, but it gives a decent overview of the most important areas. The map is divided into 2 halves that very roughly speaking represent the spheres of influence of the Welfs and Hohenstaufens with the Hohenstaufen crown lands, Swabia and the Hohenstaufens' south and middle German allies in the lower southern part and the Welf possessions in Braunschweig and Lüneburg and their Rhenish allies in the upper northern part.

The idea is that at the beginning of the campaign Otto IV will be Emperor, but only the northern regions will be loyal to him, the southern part will have very low loyalty and will rebel and join Frederick II pretty much as soon as he arrives in the Empire, as they mostly did otl. So really the HRE will only have effective control of the Northern area and will require a lot of effort to successfully bring the South back into the fold.

There is however an alternative (this one will definitely require custom scripting and I have no idea whether it is even possible, but it could potentially be really awesome if it works out). The player can also decide to have Otto abdicate and make Frederick the new Emperor, as pretty much happened otl. The HRE would remain the same faction with the same territory (except for that potentially conquered by other factions), the same units etc., it would just have another Emperor. Basically, what I’m trying to do is separate the Empire as a faction from being tied to any single dynasty or royal family. This means that the HRE can theoretically not be defeated (at least not by any western faction) as any Catholic ruler can theoretically just replace the previous Holy Roman Emperor and take over the Empire instead of conquering it. Basically, the player is playing as the Empire not as any individual dynasty, there will however still be incentives for dynastic stability and this is where I get to my final suggestion.

Basically I tried to come up with a very simplifies system of Imperial Elections. (once again this one will definitely require custom scripting and I have no idea whether it is even possible) The idea is that after an Emperor has died the player will get to choose his successor. The player will have the choice between the son of the current Emperor and other candidates that could be determined in a number if different ways. For example, there could be:
- Only one other candidate, the faction leader of the strongest vassal faction of the HRE
- Candidates from each of the 3 most powerful noble families of the Empire: the Habsburgs (Austria), the Luxemburgs (Bohemia) and the Wittelsbacher (Bavaria)
- One candidate from each of the HRE’s vassal states.
If the player choses to pick the son of the last Emperor he will have to pay a large sum of money, representing the hefty bribes that many Emperors had to pay to the Electors to ensure their son’s election. If a different candidate is chosen, there will be faction-wide penalties to law, public order and loyalty throughout the Empire and the control of the vassal factions will weaken to represent the negative effects of dynastic instability.

Now a lot of this is probably just wishful thinking on my part, but if any of these ideas actually end up contributing to the creation of this amazing mod in any way I would be honored.

i think the spheres of influence are a bit too limited.

even before friedrichs coronation in 1212, otto had lost the support of thüringen, bavaria, austria and bohemia. he was also allied to lorraine and brabant who supported him at bouvines.

[Knight2708]

i think the spheres of influence are a bit too limited.

even before friedrichs coronation in 1212, otto had lost the support of thüringen, bavaria, austria and bohemia. he was also allied to lorraine and brabant who supported him at bouvines.

Yeah, but the principalities you mention are all going to be their own factions in MKTW, this is just for the territory of the HRE faction itself.

[Count of Parma]

Will there be death company for milan?
And as the pope will you have decision to centralize and istitutionalize the church away from bishop authority and have absolute rule over the church?

[HannibalExMachina]

gotcha. i think its fine as it is now, there are already too few settlements in attila to portrait the political situation as is. right now, the HRE faction basically has all the imperial and allodial territories of house staufen, as far as it can be done with this map. i see the biggest problem with the faction leaders: it would make sense to make otto the FL of saxony and give friedrich the HRE faction, i dont think player choice for other HRE factions needs to be scripted, we have diplomacy for that.

however, that leaves sicily without a FL. not sure how to resolve this.

[Knight2708]

gotcha. i think its fine as it is now, there are already too few settlements in attila to portrait the political situation as is. right now, the HRE faction basically has all the imperial and allodial territories of house staufen, as far as it can be done with this map. i see the biggest problem with the faction leaders: it would make sense to make otto the FL of saxony and give friedrich the HRE faction, i dont think player choice for other HRE factions needs to be scripted, we have diplomacy for that.

however, that leaves sicily without a FL. not sure how to resolve this.

I honestly dont see the point of these counterfactual FL proposals. The matter of fact is that Otto was Emperor at the beginning of 1212 and the fact that he did not remain in power for long afterwards does not change that. Just because the deck was stacked against him in 1212 and Frederick's ascendancy seems kinda inevitable in hindsight does not mean that it actually was at the time and I think that taking Frederick's victory for granted before he had actually won is doing a disservice to history. I know that it can seem as if Otto's reign was nothing but a short and insignificant disruption of a period of consistent Hohenstaufen rule, but I think we should always be skeptical of adopting such a teleological view. I mean the entire point of Total War games is to change the course of history. The team has stated on numerous occasions that their goal is to recreate the situation in 1212 as accurately as possible regardless of what happened later and the reality is that Otto was Emperor in 1212. Making the Welf-Staufer conflict a foregone conclusion is also kinda robbing the player of the opportunity to experience one of the central conflicts of the year 1212.

[HannibalExMachina]

I honestly dont see the point of these counterfactual FL proposals. The matter of fact is that Otto was Emperor at the beginning of 1212 and the fact that he did not remain in power for long afterwards does not change that. Just because the deck was stacked against him in 1212 and Frederick's ascendancy seems kinda inevitable in hindsight does not mean that it actually was at the time and I think that taking Frederick's victory for granted before he had actually won is doing a disservice to history. I know that it can seem as if Otto's reign was nothing but a short and insignificant disruption of a period of consistent Hohenstaufen rule, but I think we should always be skeptical of adopting such a teleological view. I mean the entire point of Total War games is to change the course of history. The team has stated on numerous occasions that their goal is to recreate the situation in 1212 as accurately as possible regardless of what happened later and the reality is that Otto was Emperor in 1212. Making the Welf-Staufer conflict a foregone conclusion is also kinda robbing the player of the opportunity to experience one of the central conflicts of the year 1212.

nothing about this is counter factual. otto was emperor, friedrich was elected at least counter king (though the term alium imperatorum pops up here) in 1211. the conflict wasnt over at this point, so i dont see your problem.

[xalvissx]

I don't know if this question has been answered or not, and please forgive me if it has, but do the developers have any plan of adding the Qara-Khitai on the campaign map as a horde faction ? Or it would be unhistorical and/or outside of the scope of the mod ?

[Thrasi]

Campaign still under development?

[Polemaios]

Yes.

[Knight2708]

Also I assume that the team is aware of this, as the maps in post 2 are almost 2 years old, but Saxony is pretty much on the wrong side of Germany in the starting factions map in post 2.

[HannibalExMachina]

true, i pointed that out quite some time ago, so you couldnt have seen it. i suggested to turn the faction into braunschweig-lüneburg instead. wouldnt be entirely accurate, since the duchy proper didnt exist under Otto, but i think its the closest you can get without being able to change provinces.

@Hannibal

Interesting stuff, idk how much we can alter or change about some of it like the Saxony one but we'll look into it.

[Knight2708]

true, i pointed that out quite some time ago, so you couldnt have seen it. i suggested to turn the faction into braunschweig-lüneburg instead. wouldnt be entirely accurate, since the duchy proper didnt exist under Otto, but i think its the closest you can get without being able to change provinces.

@Hannibal

Interesting stuff, idk how much we can alter or change about some of it like the Saxony one but we'll look into it.

Well the team said that they wont be adding any more factions and as Saxony is already in the game, I doubt that we will be seeing Braunschweig any time soon, which is why I still think the best option is to make the territory of Saxony on the campaign map part of the HRE faction and squeeze Saxony in in its proper location. The Duchy of Saxony was actually rather small, so i think it should be possible to squeeze it in.

Of course if anyone from the team could weigh in on this it would be appreciated.

[HannibalExMachina]

problem is, provinces cant be changed. so, to add saxony, one would have to drop thüringen or brandenburg, or give the frankfurt to thüringen, and thats an awful stretch. also, what faction gets braunschweig?

[Knight2708]

problem is, provinces cant be changed. so, to add saxony, one would have to drop thüringen or brandenburg, or give the frankfurt to thüringen, and thats an awful stretch. also, what faction gets braunschweig?

Crap! I completely forgot about Atilla's restrictions on campaign map modding! Suddenly the weird locations and borders of some factions make a lot more sense.

There was some talk of changing provinces earlier, so lets hope that that will be able to help.



EDIT: Looking at the map some more, if the provinces can't be changed, I think the best alternative is to move Brandenburg to the province around Stralsund that is currently held by Denmark and move Saxony to where Brandenburg is now.
Obviously far from ideal, but still at least closer to their actual locations than what we have currently.

[HannibalExMachina]

im all for giving the HRE more factions, but who gets braunschweig? seems we would need another faction no matter what.

[Knight2708]

im all for giving the HRE more factions, but who gets braunschweig? seems we would need another faction no matter what.

well as I said earlier, I think Braunschweig should be part of the main HRE faction so that we can have both the northern Welf territories and the southern Hohenstaufen territories within the same faction.

[HannibalExMachina]

yeah, but does that make sense? otto didnt have any real influence in the south at this point.

but i suppose thats not really a problem with the current setting, if it doesnt unduly effect balance. if friedrich as the sicily FL defeats otto, he will have destroyed the HRE faction anyway.

i guess the problem is that an HRE faction isnt really satisfactory in any way, i hope they can script some stuff there, would be kinda stupid if there can only be an emperor from one faction.

[Knight2708]

yeah, but does that make sense? otto didnt have any real influence in the south at this point.

but i suppose thats not really a problem with the current setting, if it doesnt unduly effect balance. if friedrich as the sicily FL defeats otto, he will have destroyed the HRE faction anyway.

i guess the problem is that an HRE faction isnt really satisfactory in any way, i hope they can script some stuff there, would be kinda stupid if there can only be an emperor from one faction.

I tried to address some of these issues in the large post I made some days ago. Although, as I said then, there are several suggestions of which I dont know whether they are actually possible.

[Heisenburrg]

Throwing my two cents in this debate, I think the best idea in this case came from Knight2708; Renaming current Saxony to Braunschweig-Lüneburg, moving Brandenburg to the Stralsund-Province and giving the current territory to Saxony, (as well as renaming Magdeburg to Leipzig), would be an acceptable solution for this problem.

Of course it would be a relatively big change to the current campaign map... Furthermore given the fact that it would be at least as historically incorrect to give away the danish possessions in northern germany (respectively removing another important duchy like for example brandenburg) as to keep Saxony unchanged in its current position, which would at least follow the tradition of the -at mod´s starting date not sooo long disbanded- "Stammesherzogtum Sachsen", you could argue that this changes would not be worth the effort. Some things would be made more correct, some things would be made less correct. I doubt that changes like this will still be made in this state of the mod. Made some suggestions for iberian kingdoms, the teutonic order and a few rus states in terms of historical accuracy some time ago too and it seemed not like changes like these are a big goal in the mod´s development currently, what I can understand to a certain degree.

[Knight2708]

Throwing my two cents in this debate, I think the best idea in this case came from Knight2708; Renaming current Saxony to Braunschweig-Lüneburg, moving Brandenburg to the Stralsund-Province and giving the current territory to Saxony, (as well as renaming Magdeburg to Leipzig), would be an acceptable solution for this problem.

Of course it would be a relatively big change to the current campaign map... Furthermore given the fact that it would be at least as historically incorrect to give away the danish possessions in northern germany (respectively removing another important duchy like for example brandenburg) as to keep Saxony unchanged in its current position, which would at least follow the tradition of the -at mod´s starting date not sooo long disbanded- "Stammesherzogtum Sachsen", you could argue that this changes would not be worth the effort. Some things would be made more correct, some things would be made less correct. I doubt that changes like this will still be made in this state of the mod. Made some suggestions for iberian kingdoms, the teutonic order and a few rus states in terms of historical accuracy some time ago too and it seemed not like changes like these are a big goal in the mod´s development currently, what I can understand to a certain degree.

Which is why It would be great if someone from the team could chime in to clarify some things. Currently, I am not even sure whether the map in this thread is still up to date with the current state of the mod, given that it was posted almost 2 years ago.
I will also point out that Denmark would still maintain control of Holstein in my suggestion, so it would not lose all of its German territory. I am also totally aware that is far from an ideal solution, but unless provinces can be changed, it is still less incorrect than having Saxony on the entirely wrong side of Germany. A faction having less territory than it did otl, is still less wrong than it being in totally the wrong place. Quite a few factions have somewhat more or somewhat less territory than they did otl, because the size of the Attila map's provinces rarely aligns precisely with the size of these factions' territories, but at least they are in the correct location.