Rise of the Eagles General Discussion Thread

[Sirlion]

Well its because they basically are XD I mean, I assemble them in photoshop. I'm not using real life references... although I probably should. Speeds up the development time. I know my limits both of time and motivation so I try to get most of what has to be done out in a decent shape before I lose momentum. It can be a day, a week, a year, no matter, it WILL happen. Creativity is a nice thing but it tends towards atrophy after a while especially doing it "for the glory". I'm no fool, I know perfectly what I expect from myself.

Speaking of which... here's the generic general for the strat map, shared by all nations.

[Hazzard]

You've given me some motivation to lend a hand. I don't know anything about coding or modelling, but would you like me to write some unit descriptions? I was thinking about the different units factions would get today and came to the conclusion that some repeated units across nearly every faction would be:

Line Infantry
Light Infantry
Grenadiers
Skirmishers (Rifles/Secondary Light units for France)
Guard/Elite Infantry
Hussars
Light Dragoons (Not really sure how you could differentiate them from Hussars here, perhaps make them able to shoot while mounted?)
Heavy Dragoons
Guard Cavalry
Lancers.
5 or 6 artillery units?
Maybe a handful of uniqueunits?

Do you have any plans for units thus far? I think the unit limit is 500, so giving each faction their own version of the above units doesn't seem possible to me and would also allow individual uniforms like NTW. If you have 30 factions, each one can get 16 units, with a few spares for factionless units, which would be mercenaries/AoR.

No shortage of mods with units to crib from after all.

Britain wouldn't get Lancers, unless they get some AoR German units, which could be shared with German factions. Poland would have half their roster being AoR.

Assuming we went with this system, would strict limits be placed upon recruiting a number of units? Like NTW, it could force you to recruit Auxiliaries from other nations, as opposed to a Uniformly French army conquering Europe for example.

I hope I don't seem like I'm taking charge here. This is you/Sirloin's project after all. All I have to give is some English skills and time.

[Sirlion]

Sirloin's project after all.

I know, I'm delicious to think about. Clever man

To be honest I'm more concerned with the campaign map at the moment, which is why I decided to start this porject in the first place. There are so many possibilities and already estabilished scripting wonders that it would be a pity not to get right on that. As for battles, since there are many modifiers, even based on terrain type, and a fine collision detection and unit cohesion, as opposed to ETW and beyond, I'd love to get as many units as possible and personalize their skills. I know the limit is 500, but I heard there is a memory hack project that did unlock more than 500 units. I'd like to get in contact with the creator at some point to see if that small limit can be lifted for this mod, they already did it for Rome if I'm not mistaken. IF that is not the case then, I'll proceed with AoR as intended from the start, and some units will be default for some nations. Of course, I plan to make full use of the French allies, especially in the context of the Fourth Coalition. France will share many units from the Confederation of the Rhine, no full French-only Grande Armee. There is also a nice ability unique to Medieval2, you can switch control of another nation from the AI on the fly. I thnk I'll take advantage of that, after an extensive research to check that it wont affect the AI negatively. I'd love to give France the ability to manage the Confederation of the Rhine piece by piece in a very strategic manner like a tabletop game (I've bought Crown of Glory: Emperor's Edition three days ago, and yes I'm thinking about that right now).
I'm also planning to "help" the AI make decent armies by giving the major factions involved some army prefabs, spawned at a given time, checking their setup at a certain date or turn, based on difficulty, to give the player a decent challenge. Do not forget that this game has also a nice hotseat feature for multiplayer campaigns.
Also the economy, the supply system, a completely different campaign map... there is so much to do...

Speaking of campaign map, here's a preview of the current setup, I've finished the ground_types map today drawn by hand. You can see I want to give hell to the French player when (if) Russia gets to be the next target on the list.




On a side note, I'd appreciate if somebody capable or willing to work with map_features and the trade routes would show up at some point.

P.S. I should mention that I got permission from Beethencourt and Steph to get some textures from their respective mods as well, although I'll try to keep the borrowing to a very limited amount.

[Hazzard]

I know, I'm delicious to think about. Clever man

I didn't realise I'd been reading it wrong the whole time.

To be honest I'm more concerned with the campaign map at the moment, which is why I decided to start this project in the first place. There are so many possibilities and already established scripting wonders that it would be a pity not to get right on that.

Fair enough. I'm looking for something new and NTW has campaigns which go a bit too slowly for me.

As for battles, since there are many modifiers, even based on terrain type, and a fine collision detection and unit cohesion, as opposed to ETW and beyond, I'd love to get as many units as possible and personalize their skills. I know the limit is 500, but I heard there is a memory hack project that did unlock more than 500 units. I'd like to get in contact with the creator at some point to see if that small limit can be lifted for this mod, they already did it for Rome if I'm not mistaken. IF that is not the case then, I'll proceed with AoR as intended from the start, and some units will be default for some nations. Of course, I plan to make full use of the French allies, especially in the context of the Fourth Coalition. France will share many units from the Confederation of the Rhine, no full French-only Grande Armee. There is also a nice ability unique to Medieval2, you can switch control of another nation from the AI on the fly.

I'm not sure if the memory hack project has gone anywhere. I don't recall them having done anything new after the initial adverts were posted, but I might be mistaken. I also wasn't aware of the option to switch factions part way through a campaign. The idea of playing as a small German state, creating a monster and then having to put if down by playing as one of the factions I've taken chunks out of sounds appealing.

I think I'll take advantage of that, after an extensive research to check that it wont affect the AI negatively. I'd love to give France the ability to manage the Confederation of the Rhine piece by piece in a very strategic manner like a tabletop game (I've bought Crown of Glory: Emperor's Edition three days ago, and yes I'm thinking about that right now).
I'm also planning to "help" the AI make decent armies by giving the major factions involved some army prefabs, spawned at a given time, checking their setup at a certain date or turn, based on difficulty, to give the player a decent challenge. Do not forget that this game has also a nice hotseat feature for multiplayer campaigns.
Also the economy, the supply system, a completely different campaign map... there is so much to do...

Pre-fab armies sounds like a good idea actually, but how will you get them to spawn appropriately? You don't want a losing Britain to get an army spawning outside of London and unable to advance on the enemy.

[Sirlion]

Thankfully MTW2 provides scripting capabilities far better than later titles, so I can just check whether the player is playing a certain faction and he is near a certain tile on the campaign map, or how much money he has etc. And if I were to ever use an extra army for Britain I'd put it in Portugal.

[Frunk]

Zarathos completely ceased his memory editing project some months ago. He confirmed as much to me via PM.

[Sirlion]

Hm. A public announcement might have been better... oh well. It seems the task is not worth the time then. Too bad. In any case, I was thinking about giving France a large pool of conscripts that would become something else when upgraded. That way one can choose the type of unit himself and get a new 3d model without sacrificing a unit slot in the EDU.

[Hazzard]

Hm. A public announcement might have been better... oh well. It seems the task is not worth the time then. Too bad. In any case, I was thinking about giving France a large pool of conscripts that would become something else when upgraded. That way one can choose the type of unit himself and get a new 3d model without sacrificing a unit slot in the EDU.

Would creating a set of buildings that provide armour bonuses like in vanilla and have them change uniforms? Set them to turn numbers, so you can have 1806, 1812 and 1815 uniforms on one unit for example. Have it work like Stainless Steel, or some other mods that have skins and models tied to armour upgrades.

[Ngugi]

Nice work here, the era is not quite my cup of tea but best wishes to the mod

[Sirlion]

French Voltigeurs



Officer, Drummer, Standard bearer finally completed.






First captain's speech. I didnt want to share at first since it requires work especially on the default camera positions (which I have no clue how to adjust at the moment) but I thought it was a nice speech to begin the adventure.

[Sirlion]

Prussian Musketeers





First bloody contact against the French

[Sirlion]

Prussian Hussar. I'm still not sure if the pistol will be used as a secondary ranged weapon or not. We'll see how he behaves in game, once I get the mounted infantry mechanism properly.

[WhiffOfGrapeshot]

Mounted infantry mechanic? What are you planning with that?

Brilliant work so far!

[Sirlion]

Well I just thought that voltiguers or sharpshooters and dragoons could dismount when near the enemy to fire a quick shot and then mount back to ride away from enemy lines. But I'm not sure that is possible.

In game screens

[WhiffOfGrapeshot]

Well I just thought that voltiguers or sharpshooters and dragoons could dismount when near the enemy to fire a quick shot and then mount back to ride away from enemy lines. But I'm not sure that is possible.

Sadly it's not. They'll have to either fire from horseback, or be infantry skirmishers with perhaps a speed bonus. I'd say it'd be best keeping them on horseback and maybe shortening their range, so they have to ride up close to fire and run away, giving them a higher risk of getting caught by the enemy, like hastily mounting their horse.

At least that's better for dragoons, for the voltigeurs and sharpshooters maybe go with the slightly faster infantry.

[Sirlion]

Good idea. What I love about these units is the customization process. There are many variables to create a potential tactical game with two players that have a decent knowledge of the era and / or love to roleplay.


Prussian Schutzen

[Sirlion]

Prussian line officer, drummer, bearer. Adjusted equipment textures for line infantry



Prussian light infantry officer

[Sirlion]

Napoleon himself. I took some liberties here, but I wanted his younger self getting some attention. I want to fight with - or against - the legend, rather than the man, in thsi case the line is so blurred it is easier to portray him like this.



Hero ability - The Emperor at the front lines! (1 use each battle)

Effects on allies:
- Raises own army morale to Impetuous, Fatigue reduced, kill chance +1 for 20 seconds
- Raises allied army morale to High for 10 seconds

Effects on enemies:
- Reduce army morale to Shaken for 5 seconds
- 51% chance of startling generals and captains alike, upon seeing Napoleon advancing they will not know what to do, thus, enemy units go inactive for a maximum of 5 seconds

I hope there is a way to tell the AI to use hero abilities...

[General Gordon]

Looks great ! Looking forward to this one. If you get rid of princesses and religious figures think it would be greater still !!!

[WhiffOfGrapeshot]

Great to see the man himself. I don't think the AI can be told to use abilities, though, unless someone figured it out. That's something I'll want to look into, myself.

And yeah, princesses don't fit, nor really priests and religion as it is in Medieval. Perhaps religion could be changed to something else, like government policy, so Napoleon can spread the Continental System or Napoleonic Code rather than Catholicism when his influence is spread over other factions? Then Priests could be changed into something like Ambassador or Courtier. Scripting possibilities also open up. Or just eliminate priests altogether, as the heavy religious tension was mostly over by this period.