Hate to double post, but I figured this would need its own post.
A little update; Warband only has 6 factions to begin with. Though it's possible to add many more in, I'm not trying to spend forever and ever modding this - as such, I'm just gonna stick with going for 6 factions as well, and as a result, it'll be set circa 400 ad. The Western Empire still owns Spain, Gaul, Britain and North Africa, but not for long - historically, the famous barbarian invasions are set to begin.
I used a picture of the Europa Barbarorum (a Rome Total War mod; highly recommend for those who love to get deeply into history when playing) world map as my editing template; it doesn't have too much writing on it to catch your eye, nor does it have brightly coloured regions all over the place. I cut it down a bit since it spread very far East, further East than I wanted, but the Persian Empire is still very strong and has more land than the original BI mod would have allowed for.
The 6 factions are
- Western Roman Empire
- Eastern Roman Empire
- The Huns
- Persia
- The Picts
- The German Tribes
Ideally there would have been going on, if not more than, a dozen factions, which would have allowed for "The German Tribes" to be separate factions, not just one (ie the Franks, Saxons, Burgundians, etc) As it is they've been meshed into one, and I intend to try and show the diversity of the "coalition" by including troops of all cultures, ie Frankish throwing axeman as a heavy infantry/missile unit, Saxon heavy infantry, etc.
The Map
Legend
Red = Western Roman Empire
Purple = Eastern Roman Empire
Dark blue = The German Tribes
Black = The Huns
Teal = Persia
Green = The Picts
The large crosses are areas I intend to make inaccessible - since no one was wondering around the Sahara or the Arabian desert, and since they were of no importance, they'll be impossible to walk into. I'll see if it's possible to generate Berber/Bedouin bandits to patrol each of them for fun, but due to the faction limit, there won't be a Berber or Bedouin faction for the Romans to contend with, unfortunately.
The arrows indicate intended areas where sea travel will be allowed - from the mods I've played, I've gotten the impression that sea routes are laid out by the modder, and it's not just the case that an army can get on a boat at any point of water and sail to wherever they please. These are intended to better simulate troop movements (in case the Romans ever happen to fight one another) as well as the famous migrations into Britain of the Germans along with Pictish raids into Britain.
Intended Features
Nothing too major here, especially as I don't know what's possible to add in, but there are some things I've thought about.
- if it's possible to add in several different lines of success for troop trees (ie 2 types of infantry, not just 1, along with the same archers and cavalry being possible) I want to implement, for the Western Empire, a Foederati recruitment system - "Foederati" was the name given to barbarian soldiers in service to Rome, and that's what I want for the Western Empire; to reflect the decline of the West, Roman soldiers will cost a bucket-ton of cash, but instead of upgrading to heavy Roman infantry, the player can opt to make their peasants/light infantry upgrade into a different branch of infantry, the Foederati. They'll be cheaper, but not as good on the battlefield. I realise it's not particularly accurate to recruit Romans from a village in Italy and end up turning them into barbarian soldiers, but life, lemons and all that!
- keeping in line with the same theme, and as mentioned, I'd like to work most of all on the Germanic troop tree, and try and get different "branches" that would represent the different men and fighting styles of the many Germanic tribes. Saxon soldiers could predominantly be heavy infantry, with the Franks offering ranged infantry, and other famous Germanic warriors being present in the troop tree. It's just an idea, but it could work.
- if we
really wanted to simulate the decline of Rome at this point, we could set it so that villages are more regularly raided by bandits in an effort to show riots and a lack of public order, requiring the Romans to stay around their holdings to prevent them from "revolting" (unlikely to be included, since the AI probably wouldn't bother to attack bandits unless nearby)
- the Western Empire would be outnumbered by the Germans, the Picts, and, when they arrive, the Huns. Those would be their main enemies. The Eastern Empire would have to contend with an immensely strong Persia, as well as the Huns, who would both be battling it out at the far East of the map.
And that's all for now!