AAR: Me, Floris | Completed | Chapter 60 & Epilogue posted (19-09-2015)

Yeah.. Just delete the j.
But seriously, waht about Fjord?

Fjord? A small bay commonly found in scandinavia?

So where i heard it!
what about Arinbjorn?
It's from http://www.angelfire.com/wy/svenskildbiter/Viking/viknams3.html

Its your AAR, I dont care about the name as long if it is not Bob.

Arinbjorn will be fine. Thanks for your help. You will be mentioned.

Guess what. I played scrabble and the first word i placed was AAR, but no one acceppted it.

Mrr.Phil said:

Guess what. I played scrabble and the first word i placed was AAR, but no one acceppted it.

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i don't think acronyms are words.

Hi, just wanted to say that I really enjoyed reading this

just read through this and  its epic
great stuff!!

Rahn: That's a very good progress . I hope you won't be crushed by an enormous overwhelming Nord force, but I guess you'll manage.

Lord Brutus: Ah, sorry. I understood you wrongly. In that case I totally agree with you.

lancecor: Starting with businesses and good trading seems like a solid idea: this will give you a good financial basis for a large army that could thunder over the Calradian landscape. Too bad the businesses didn't exist yet when I started this game.
I'm sorry, but I'm not going to make a poll over here about what kind of AAR or mod you should start. I'll reserve polls over here to things related to this AAR. What you could do, is start a new thread, announce that you'll be making a mod/AAR, but that you're not sure yet which too choose. You'll also make a poll in it. When the poll is finished, you can easily remove that poll and edit your first post. That way you immediately have a topic for your mod/AAR.

Mrr.Phil: Way to go!

lancecor: Not every AAR is indeed an epic story. But they could grow better. I find it more unfortunate that quite some AARs seem to stop after just a few chapters.
Great to hear you've made your choice . I'll add your AAR to the list after I posted my next chapter.

Lord Brutus: It is possible! the past few weeks the chapters haven't been coming as fast as in the beginning, exactly due to Real Life. You should check it out: it's a very awesome experience .

Mrr.Phil: Next post is indeed coming soon!

Ssgt. Griggs & Mrr.Phil: Hehe, I laughed a lot at those names. I'll add the AAR to the list in a moment.

Mrr.Phil: Really too bad they didn't allow it. You should have send them over here, so they could experience AARs for themselves. Then they probably would have allowed it!

Malik Faris: That too...

xenoargh: Thanks!

wanderer949: Thanks! And it's certainly due to the help of your great mods .

Hold tight people, update in a few minutes!

Dear Diary,

Many good things have occurred during this truce. But now I realise it wasn't enough. Today the truce with the NOrds ends, but what have I done to prepare for a renewal of the fighting? I have squandered the past three weeks with niceties while I should have wondered about the Nords' next move. Will they attack, trying to recapture the two cities I took from them? Or will they wait, slowly building up their forces until they are ready? All I know is that I'm not ready. Not with all the changes of the past month. A revolution has been unleashed, an arms race started. And amidst of this all, I trade, and reform my country even further. Calradia is changing into something new, something no fortuneteller foresaw that it was possible to transform in.

On the positive side, my businessplan has finally come into fruition. I travelled to Dhirim and Veluca, where I told the masters of the local ironworks to stockpile the tools they create. Along with the stockpiling ironworks in Curaw, this will give me a nice edge. Also I rode to Jelkala, where I closed down the tannery, and build a dyeworks instead. It took them a week to get it operational, after which I returned to order them to stockpile the velvet. These four workshops now give a negative profit on my weekly budget reports, but in the long run they will be paying back much more. I just have to visit them once in a while.

Also I finally divided the last of the fiefs I had conquered on the Nords: I kept the five villages for myself. Finally the businesses became really efficient, and the profit they generate isn't lost anymore to that wretched tax inefficiency. These fiefs expand my personal holdings much further while the tax inefficiency can't get much worse than it is already. And my vassals seemed to approve of this thought: no-one protested or got begrudged when I announced to keep the five villages for myself. It did do a lot of good for the budget. Finally I will have the financial means to build the best army in the region.


The weekly budget is getting better, now with a profit of 7768 denars.

Change is the key. Calradia is being reformed. Once again I am more progressive than the other kings. For how long have they struggled in this useless sequence of wars? No-one can recall, they even stopped numbering them. But all is changing. Quite a few times I returned home to Khudan, and discussed this topic with my wife and my close advisers. In the end we came to the conclusion that to effectively govern a Calradia-enspanning empire, I would need to reform the way the government operated. The area is simply too large to be governed from just one place, even if it would lie in the center of it all. I would need small governmental branches to maintain order in the faraway places: I would need to decentralize my rule, even if it means more taxes would be lost due to tax inefficiency. But if I would add more villages to my personal domain, I could neutralize this downside.

At the same time, the people need to see that my reign is a good thing. That can only happen when they prosper, when people smell the riches I bring. After thinking for a while how to make Calradia richer, I thought of the way I found my fortune: by trade. If the people would be free to trade wherever they want, there would be harsher battles for better prices, making everyone richer in the long run. So in my empire people would need to be free to trade. An interesting thougt, although freeing the people themselves is one step too far: Maybe I'll need to tighten their serfness to enforce their loyalty. After we had come to this conclusion, I immediately ordered government officials to set up faraway branches, to start the outsourcing. It would take time for people to adjust, but in the end it would be for the greater good. And better profits.


Once every month I can push my government towards a specified direction. In my case I want to decentralize it fully and at the same time create an absolute plutocracy. Free trade for all, although free people might be one step too far.

But despite my reforms in the government, and the completion of my business plan and true domination of the Calradian economy, the real change came from the military. I had fought the past three years all over Calradia, and had brought new ways to fight both in personal combat as on the battlefield to this place with me. The grandmasters have apparently analysed me, turning me into a subject of study. Or something like that. To make a complicated story very short: they stole my moves, and all the armies started to reform, all with different thoughts about those new possibilities. While I traded in different cities, I kept a closefull watch for those new soldiers, the newly developed techniques and the new possibilities for a better army.

In the end I discovered that the Rhodoks had specialized their infantry further, although they also had grasped the basics of cavalry, that the Sarranids not only specialized their mamlukes even further, but also had incorporated many fled Khergit horse archers into their army, and that my Swadian holdings had sprouted very fearsome longbow archers. Only the Nords seemed to struggle with this reforms. But only time will tell if these reforms are truly good or bad. I'm still training my men.


There are a lot of new kind of soldiers.

How will the war continue? I can't tell it yet. The truce was too short. I haven't even gathered my nobles, so I can't declare war yet. I surely hope the Nords keep struggling with these new kind of soldiers and their new equipment, because it will make the upcoming war a lot easier. But I'm afraid they'll solve their problems just before I start a new campaign, hitting me harder than ever. I'll have to prepare and train further, for war is coming once again.



*****
Gameplay notes
I've upgraded my game from 1.125 to 1.127. Also I've upgraded my mods, and added some new ones. But to make things complicated, I changed some mods, used not everything from some mods and blended some others. I'll try to give you an overview of what happened...
1. Mount & Blade: Warband v1.127 (was 1.125) I made a clean install with the latest version of the game.
2. Warband Battle Size Changer v1.5 (stayed the same) To raise the battles to 1000 men.
3. Diplomacy v2.8 (was 2.2.5) The well-known mod that adds more diplomatic functions.

The following four mods haven't changed for something like two months or are completed. So I combined them in my personal archive into one big 'Floris basic mod pack.' Next time I'll update my game and mods, I'll just mention this pack and you'll know that I still use all these great mods. Thus:
4. Floris Basic Mod Pack 1.0, containing:
a. Arena Overhaul mod v1.0 (stayed the same) The arena's become more divers and challenging.
b. Better Banners Mod v2.0 (stayed the same), along with my custom banners. It does what the name says: adds more and custom banners to the game.
c. Faction Arms Coloured v1.0 NEW! A minimod where the black and transparent faction arms are coloured.
d. Historic Castles Project - the British Isles v1.2 (was 1.1) Some castles have been replaced by historical British castles.
e. Magus Mod v1.7 NEW! Restyles and expands the troop trees.
f. More horses v2.5 (stayed the same) More horses in the game!
g. More Warhorses v1.5 (stayed the same) Even more horses!
h. The Chocolate Box v1.01 NEW! Adds a total of 61 new items to the game.
i. Utrehd's Castle Pack v.0.32 NEW! Quite some castles and cities have been replaced by new models. Unfortunately the download url didn't work anymore, so I took these from El Arte de la Guerra v1.6 (see below).
j. Utrehd's Music Pack v.0.8 NEW! Adds a lot of new and cool music to the game.
I have asked the different authors of the mods from the Floris Basic Mod Pack for their permission to bundle their mods into one pack. As soon as I get it from them all, you can enjoy the pack too. And no, I won't implement the Floris King logo's into the pack: those images resemble too much some copyrighted material from some very large corporations.

5. More Metal Sound Mod v2.2 (was 2.1) There are more realistic sounds added to battles.
6. OSP Warband Item Variants v1.6 NEW! Adds a total of 529 new items to the game.
7. Floris King logo's on taverns. (stayed the same)

Unfortunately the Reworked Armors 1.6 mod doesn't work with versions after 1.125, so I had to abandon this one.
I also tried El Arte de la Guerra v1.6, a mod which combines not only Diplomacy v2.7, More Metal Sound v2.2 and Historic Castles Project v1.1, but also Custom Commander v1.315, Utrehd's Castle Pack v.0.32 and Battlefield Tactics kit v1.0. Unfortunately this mod isn't compatible with the Floris savegame, so I couldn't use it.

Not everything isn't working perfect yet. For example, there are still some conflicts between the Nord troop tree from the Magus Mod and the advisers from the Diplomacy Mod. It might be interesting to have an army of cloned chamberlains, but they aren't very effective in battle. Altough you can have very strange conversations with them. And promote those upgraded Nord peasants to nobility and give them a fief. Just look at this:



Even tough it's funny, I want to solve it soon. I know it's possible, since Pike & Blade and Diplomacy have been merged too. Another funny hiccup I encountered, was with the extra item the Diplomacy Mod provides, the Constable Coat of Arms. While mixing up mods I encountered before that some items - or horses - ended up with the wrong merchants. No big deal for me, but this time I saw something lame:



I didn't encounter any other hickups, so as soon as I solve that small issue with the troops I consider it another well-done mix of mods. Anyway, to get back to business, here is a picture of Floris' current stats:



There haven't been much changes in the territories during the truce. Floris expanded his personal domain. The Nords seem pretty cozy with the Sarranids too, while the Rhodoks also keep quiet.

Nice chapter!

Woot! but now the Sarranids are going to be a pain in the ***. during those chapters my eyes will be stuck too the screen, can the great Hollandic Empire defeat the even greater Sarranid Sultanate? if you look at the area then really i think the Sultanate is actually bigger that the great Holland.

Also, add my AAR into your ''AAR's inspired by this one'' list.

NO STRING!

Poll to kick player

When is the next chapter coming?

Piipe said:

When is the next chapter coming?

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When it comes. People have had to wait like 2 weeks for a new chapter, so 3 days or so shouldn't be so much of a problem.

I just have to say that this has been a very very entertaining story to read haha. keep it more..i love the AAR on this site.

This is magnificent! I didn't even know what an AAR is before i red this. And so many inspired by you, geez i gotta make one too.