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Yay!

Congratulations! So glad to see and hear.

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Ruler of Calradia said:

Johao said:

Does anyone like sweeteners? I know I love mine with an axe.

Spoiler

Only issue is that the firearm is designed as a straight handle rather than a rifle or curved pistol handle, which can be a huge issue with the firing animation, although nobbing heads off isnt an issue with this.

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Perhaps team could add it to cheat menu, its too unrealistic to be true, you can`t shoot with that thing. Its sweet tough, and i would probably give it try.

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Ruler of Calradia said:

Johao said:

Does anyone like sweeteners? I know I love mine with an axe.

Spoiler

Only issue is that the firearm is designed as a straight handle rather than a rifle or curved pistol handle, which can be a huge issue with the firing animation, although nobbing heads off isnt an issue with this.

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Perhaps team could add it to cheat menu, its too unrealistic to be true, you can`t shoot with that thing. Its sweet tough, and i would probably give it try.

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Despite the immediate chuckle you get when seeing it, the Danish Carbine Axe was a rather interesting anomaly during the war. It was only use for two regiments of Danish dragoons and was ditched, but as of 1702, they were in use, just one of those weird anachronistic, bizarre sides notes of history. I have a thing on it in a catalog of weapons I own. Baffled me when I first saw it as well. Problem is, I don't know which regiments used them. The footnote only states two dragoons used them. I thought it would just be something interesting to see being used.


I have a feeling it was intended for use as a sapper's tool and gun in one. I have high doubts that thing was ever of any real decent use. I've never seen one auctioned for sale, but I have seen prototypes of it in antique firearm collections. Hard to find much history on it, but I'd relish more. One exists in the Museum of Sigmaringen (Southern Germany), but it's a 16th century model using a wheel lock. If found to be annoying, I can move it to the Custom Gun collection, but I thought having it in would be kind of interesting. If someone can find more concrete evidence on it, I would be dearly happy. Even amongst collectors, most don't know much about it.

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Ruler of Calradia said:

Bluehawk said:

But does the average Warband player really seek an economic victory? In Vanilla, raiding villages has little effect on the AI lord that owns them, and only serves as an expedient means of income at the potential expense of companion morale. It will be a task for the developers of Twilight...King to not only develop this mercantilist system and simulate off-board colonies etc. etc. but to also explain it to the player and stress it's importance. My prediction will that be most players who download the game will focus on combat alone and may even run their savegames into the ground if they're not careful.

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Well I enjoy battles and wars,  (one of the) reason(s) why I play Warband, and in times of peace i only cather my armies, but becouse peace times last so long, i also build economy in all possible ways. So if economy sucks, I just tend to declare war someone. And then i get bored. But if there are something to do besides battles, I don`t get bored. I keep on playing, and when war comes, I have Terrifying economy to fund my armies. And then war lasts longer, and im more happier 
Sry for my bad english

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No need to apologize on the English. I struggle in other languages myself.

The main reason I wanted to change and recreate the economy was because I wanted the player to be able to make money in times of peace, so as to prepare for war. In 1700, the notion of rampantly running around fighting off bandits is sorta anachronistic for a regiment. The bandits have been replaced with political dissidents (Kuruc Rebels, Uskoci Pirates, Monarchist Agitators, Jacobite Rebels, etc) which are localized to their area. An early game player would probably make money by using militias, doing quests, or serving as a mercenary. I assumed a player who's been integrated into a national army will have to make larger amounts of money to support higher quality, higher quantities of troops. The player will be able to manage their own shipping/trade empire should they wish. My plan is for a player to be able to also prey upon the system by being a pirate, should they wish. It will have its own set of pros and cons.

Economic damage from a war is something that I'm going to be making a key issue. I'm going to using some of Diplomacy code in combination with some personal code and a group economy code I'm working on with another team to create land investments, sea trading, sea battles, banking, a stock exchange (that will be much later in releases, I haven't even sketched out how to implement that yet), and land shipping. Village, town, and castle economic statuses will play a role in the AI and kingdom policies in war.

JackX: You're quite right to say it will be hard, though I think it will be easier to understand and use once you see it and use it. A player could live as a soldier for a nation and do well enough, but someone who wishes to start their own empire or really push the one they work for will need much more money to expand. It might be odd to see the flaws in a system that has been arguably improved upon, but no more so than playing regular Calradia . I would think of it more as learning how to game the system, since that's really what many did anyway. But you'll be able to do things like trade tea to Russia via London or send Trade Firearms to the Ottomans for a pretty penny. You could loot and sack towns/villages to curb population and tax returns, causing the AI to have smaller armies and money pools. I plan on making the retaliation for such acts quite obvious and one for which you should prepare.

But it's a system that I'm sure will require multiple iterations and adjustments. I don't expect to get it right the first time. I need to ensure players have a way to make money, sustain themselves, field armies, and expand their nation. I'm not going to set the attrition of battles, wars, and economies on a "real" scale. Even I would lose my patience. I have to make a fair compromise between reality and gameplay. Player feedback will probably be the determining factor. Once we release it, we'll open a subboard for economy stuff so I can get ideas and thoughts on it all. I'll use that to determine how to improve it. Same with gameplay.

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I love English Doglocks.


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mikkel the great said:

Bonjour!

I have a question regarding the economy system. In the first page of the thread it says you are going to make "a life-like mercantilism economy"

How do you intend to do that?

Also, will will be seeing exotic foods in the stores? Such as coffee, tea, perhaps potatoes?

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Ah Yes indeed.

How I intend to do that is by simulating (as best I can) the mercantilist system. Colonial trade, not seen on the map, will be transferred into a faction pool and sold within faction cities, as both raw and manufactured forms. For instance, a three tiered system I have requires ores. Tin, Copper, and Iron are produce from these ores. Iron is used in the creation of Trade Firearms and Tools. Just one example. I have planned about 30 new food items and possible 30 new trade items, many of which will be faction specific and worth more outside their faction. Players will make money on raw goods, as well as manufactured goods. It's encouraging to the player in that it helps increase prosperity, which is useful if you own the the town, village or castle, as it will return higher rents to you for higher prosperity. 

Some of the new trade items are things such as:

Some of the new food items:

As we have around 70 towns, 140 castles, and 280 villages, balancing this will be interesting, but I'll be tweaking it as we go. I haven't gotten to overhauling that aspect yet. I'm finishing up recruitment and item testing this week and next, then probably tackling cannons, sieges, character creation and the economy in that order. I'm hoping to get to the economy before the first release, but if not, it will be the first thing I get to upon doing so. One of my dearest loves and inspirations as a child was the game Uncharted Waters II: New Horizons. It's dynamic trading system always kept me with a huge fleet, shuttling items across the globe for profit and adventure. It's mechanics were rather brilliant and something I loved. I'm also using what is considered the "foundational text" of Mecantilism, "Austria Over All, If Only She Will" by Philipp von Hörnigk, published 1684. I'm also going to be relying on some primary source documents I've looked at from my university library concerning trade in this time period and economic policy. It's something I'll develop over releases, I'm sure.

I have some preliminary sketches of what I want it to look like, but it's by no means completed. A fellow group of coders and I are working on an economic model for another mod. I'll be making a modification of it for our purposes. When we're done, I'll explain it a bit further, but thanks for bringing it up . I'll be tying it to investments in land and other economic features like the bank as I go. Ideally, I want a seamless experience for the player, with an easy to read User Interface for more sophisticated trading. We'll see how close I can get to that. I'll put up screens of it as I develop it.

- all the raucous concerning L'Aigle and us -

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No worries. I didn't think any of you were, just stating I won't tolerate it . I have the utmost respect for modders. I've been doing this for a long time across a lot of platforms and games. He has a quality mod all of us respect here, and whilst we enjoy a good friendly competition and race, we don't hate on other mods. In all honesty, many of us lament we're not able to work on many of these at a time. There's been a few we're all really excited to see around here, our partner mods chief amongst them. I just wanted to cut off a flame-war before it even started. I like to think of it as we're two writers working on books in a similar genre. We'll both have our own style.

Volkonski said:

Off topic i love your sig(yeah i'm a brony), i find it ironic how this is called "Twilight of the sun king" and you have Twilight sparkle and princess celestia.

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I was wondering how long it would take before someone would notice . My boyfriend's a brony and he's at the convention in NYC this weekend. He altered my sig before he left for NYC. I signed on and was like "what the...?" I thought it was a Cat Avatar thing all over again until I realized I was the only one who seemed affected. He later called me on his way up and told me . I thought it fitting. Thanks We're both fans of the show, though he far more so than me.

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Volkonski said:

Bluehawk said:

TotSK has better dev-to-community communication. 

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True but the content Docm30 has produced is beyond staggering which is why it's my most anticipated mod for this year. That doesn't mean that i won't enjoy this mod just as much as L'Aigle.

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I greatly admire Docm30 and I dislike debates about "who's better." We're all going to have strengths and weaknesses, and his mod takes place around 100 years after ours. Whilst I and others on here may more communicative, Docm30 is largely a one man show.

No one's hating, but I don't support it at all. I give respect to anyone who puts in the time to make mods on this scale. This takes a lot of work and time.

That said, we share a lot of the same resources and our mods will be similar in many respects, but there will always be things we have that will be rather different from one another. All of us on this team are excited to see his, and our, mod come to fruition. I think we'll both be offering a different experience.

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Brilliant levy system. Nice job.

If you need code or artwork help, just message me, though you seem to have it handled

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Bluehawk said:

I think George I should be known as 'Prince George' if Queen Anne is still alive.

Could you maybe make drums into "muskets" or crossbows as far as the game is concerned? Would the men then fall into rank and try to "shoot" their drums?

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That's a good idea. I've had trouble trying to find a way to get the Jacobites to make sense in the period. Writing dialog is definitely not my strong suit. A term paper or analytic philosophical essay I'm fine with, but don't ask me to write a novel. Hahaha! I need to send it off to our writer(s) to get it hammered out better.

The "drums" are actually part of the uniform mesh, not a weapon that's wielded. We have drum sticks made for them, I just haven't put them in. I could make them into a pistol, perhaps. Not sure. It's something I'll have to play with. They would fall into rank, but I would need to force an animation on them to "play" the drums as tho they were another weapon. Adding the Ottomans in changed a lot of things, as they used archers, a slot I could have used for other things. I might have to move the muskets back to "firearms," instead of being "crossbows," but that does mean pistols and muskets will have to share the same ammunition. I didn't want that, as it's technically not realistic, but a compromise I'm willing to live with on that.

Thanks

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Progress made.



Now I need to adjust some animations for crouching, fix some string and dialog bugs, and remove all the "Calradia-isms" again. Once I finish making all of the regiments properly upgrade into their new tiered system, the development build will be released to the team. Exciting! Sieges and cannons to come next.

Hope you enjoyed. I would like to thank MadVader for helping me get that realized. He was instrumental in getting the recruitment process to work.

Anyone familiar with how to situate a firearm properly within the hands of the characters? We're having a problem with some of our new items not sitting correctly in the hands of the people. Once that's fixed, I'll have some great in-game shots of our new weapons. I was quite impressed.

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Comrade Temuzu said:

Damn nice hand mortar you got there.

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Aye. I'm trying to experiment with how to properly use them. The AI is...questionable, though somewhat realistic, in its use of grenades. I'm hoping the mortar proves a bit more useful. I might have to just keep it for the player and companions. Even in its day, the hand mortar was something of a gamble to fire. There's numerous accounts of soldiers throwing them overboard, similar to Nock Guns. I can't fathom having to light a grenade, stick in a tube, and hoping your mortar doesn't misfire. I've reduced the explosion size of the grenade to make it less ridiculous and more reasonable. One will only take out 5-10 closely packed men. Seems to be reasonable to me in game play. I'm going to experiment with Grenadiers using them and seeing how well it turns out. It might be something I have to force them to not use unless ordered.

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Docm30 said:

Looking really nice, but those screenshots appear to contain someone's CD-key. I would remove that.

Again, good work all around.

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Ah!

You're quite right. I can't believe I missed that. I took them down. I'll repost them once I've removed it. Thanks

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Just a few things:

1. Kuauik has generously offered to work on our uniforms. He sent me some previews that I wanted to show all of you, as I was impressed.

Modeled on the Coldstream Regiment of Foot Guards of Britain, they were a highly elite household infantry of the British royalty. They are the oldest regiment in the British army, stretching back to 1650. Their motto is "Second to None", "Nulli Secundus", though technically they were the second house guards, with the First Foot being the main regiment. It will be nice to have both in game.

More about them here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coldstream_Guards


2. A thank you to MadVader for helping me finish up our recruitment system. He's been instrumental in getting the next developer's build completed (well, will be by the end of the week). I'll get some other screens and previews up for you all to look at. It'll be our first since the 1.15x patches hit, so I'm pretty excited to start getting it rolling.

3. Our first six nations (France, Britain, the HRE, Bavaria, the United Provinces, and Bourbon Spain) are lacking in the diversity of units that we put into the others. Some, like the British and French, currently only have two national cavalry units. I have a list of possible choices we're looking at add to fix that, but I wanted to see if any of you had a favourite you'd like to see in? Cavalry and Infantry suggestions are both welcome. We'll try to get them in as we can. I will probably put up a list in the next few days on the main post with all of our current units.

4. I started an IRC channel for everyone, developers included, to drop in and chat about things related to the mod. You're all free to come in. I'll be idling in it most of the time, so if I'm around, I'll chat with you, as will the others on the team. There's also a link on the FAQ.

For browsers: http://mibbit.com/?channel=%23Totsk&server=irc.web.gamesurge.net

For IRC clients: irc://irc.web.gamesurge.net/Totsk

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Lithuanian duke said:

Do you still need help with info  and plans of Polish-Lithuanian cities, castles, towns?..

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We would love to have them. The more information we have, the better they'll look. We've not started scening Poland yet, so feel free to post them here or PM them to me.

The list is under the spoiler:

EDIT: I just wanted to clarify on the redundant names for castles and villages. In order to keep a balance, we've tried to choose the largest towns (in the period) to be the main metropolitan areas. Towns are also where one recruits infantry. Placing too many "towns" would cause an imbalance, so we're trying to carefully watch that. The same goes for castles, as that's currently set up to be the site where one recruits cavalry units. In many cases, the largest castle nearby was also a town, so we've made them into hybrid "castle villages." Castle is meant to represent the fortifications around the village.

Thanks

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Absolutely gorgeous. I love those overcoats. I was always more of a fan of the heavy coats in this period than the severely ornate uniforms of some nations. To this day, I still want a wool overcoat with cords and tassles.

I'm always astounded with proper texture and model work. An inspiration, to be sure.

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Antigonos said:

In any case, I continue to work and show the preview in Brussels belgium

not yet finished but gives a good overview

Spoiler

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Gorgeous. I always love your scenes. I have a collection of city plans from our period. If you need any sometime, let me know, I'll scan them in.

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warbandnoob said:

First thank you for responding. I'm impressed you are working through this. Creating each individually named regiment must be quite a chore. My only thought is with regimental specilizations (Infantry, Calvary etc.) how do battles play out? I do admit I like the idea of specialization, however, leading a musket unit only, might get a bit slow. Muskets usually end up in a volly firing duel followed by charges. In WFaS I have always fixed the position of my musket and pike and circled around with the calvary. Understanding your effort to make the game model a bit more like history, I think this is a good idea and the regimental model works well for armies. However, The player might have greater difficulty on their own (not sure how you are modeling the player into the game during this era as states were handeling their recruits more than mercenary commanders.) If you do plan to give the player greater freedom outside of the nation-state they choose to serve, you might consider allowing the player to promote their companions as regimental commanders. This would allow a player to use and command both infantry and calvary in their own brigade or perhaps lead a rebellion.

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Haha, you're quite welcome. Thank you. It wasn't a chore, per se, just took a while. I had to create 6 "troops" for each regiment. They only upgrade into the same regiment type, which helps simulate the reality of the battlefield. Most regiments had a mix of veterans, untested men, and complete professionals. Others were sorta ragtag, and think it's done a good job of representing that. I'd post better photos of it, but I'm not totally done with the recruitment for the nations, which would allow you to gain access to the other soldiers beyond the militias. Once I get it finished (should be within the week) I'll have some photos up of it. Leading a group of infantry isn't as slow as you would think. Infantry moves on the overland map according to the average of their athletics skill. Top tier units, like the Gardes Fancaises or the Preobrezhenzky Grenadiers have a 6, allowing you to march them quite quickly. Due to the 1.15x patches, the ability to allow soldiers' personal athletic skill to affect their walking speed in battle makes militias and low tier units slow to organize in a battle, but nothing you can't realistically handle. I can easily manage to get my men to line up quickly. In using the Advanced Formations provided by the Napoleonic Wars stuff, F2, in our mod, allows you to quickly form ranks of 1-6 deep. The men automatically kneel and will receive a charge from cavalry quite efficiently. The idea that you would be mauled by a cavalry squadron isn't unfounded, and I would urge you to run like hell if you come upon some Polish cavalry, unless you've brought quite a good group of men with you. But in general, it's quite possible for decent soldiers to handle cavalry. Using terrain to your ability is something of a skill you'll need to develop quickly in order to win many battles. Cavalry charges quickly lose their effectiveness up a hill. Musketeers accurately track oncoming soldiers, whether on horseback or on foot. You're also able to give commands to fire at will or by rank.


Musket reload speed is set to a somewhat quicker pace than reality. You can fire a musket every 5-10 seconds, depending on the type. I did this because of a suggestion early on by JackX and by testing amongst ourselves that it helped replicate the attrition of battles, but even my regiment of 300 men versus an opponent of a similar size army was able to rout them in about 5-7 minutes of gameplay, making the battle vicious, bloody, and many men will actually run from battle if enough are injured. Because they're classed as "archers" by the AI, musketeers have a more realistic morale setting, and run from battle quicker than a melee fighter, something many will need to keep in mind when battling with the Turkish. The Ottoman Bashi-Bazouk is something of a brawling, low end unit, but it is best to not think your musket will make them run from you immediately, and their cavalry will make you cringe. Not impossible, just makes you think before you attempt it. Without a loaded musket, your average musketeer in a Western army was quite at the mercy of a man armed with a sword and shield. The British experiences in India, even as late as the Sepoy rebellion, are proof of that. The player is not forced to have only infantry or cavalry, however. You're free to mix them, and even the AI has a chance of having a company or so of either. I did that to simulate the screening use of cavalry in an infantry assault, or the use of a scouting party of infantry. Simulated, but still gives you the feel of what it would have been like to be engaged in a minor skirmish in a larger battle.

I am integrating parts of Freelancer into this for the player to be a part of the main army as a ranker, but the ability to be a mercenary captain who becomes a lord (or lady) in their own right is completely available. This was a time of changing orders in the European armies. The medieval/Renaissance methods were going out of fashion, and as you stated, standing armies were becoming something of a more common business. We have pikemen for use, which I find quite useful for smashing cavalry and useful as a Forlorn Hope. I'll be assigning units to these classes below, for ease of the player. You're free, of course, to move and rename them. I simply did it so that a player looking to play tactically could so without having to go through a lot of hassle.


I can't remember if it's Custom Commander or PBOD that gives the ability to put companions in charge of battle groups, though it only affects how they're spawned. Either way, I'll be merging it in once I speak with Caba'drin about it a bit further. I have to do some reworking because we're using the Advanced Formations provided by the new patches, which overwrite his battle overlay meshes and mess with commands. I suppose I could find a way to allow you to "spawn" a patrol of sorts with one of your companions in control. I'll work on that if people want that.

celestialred said:

I'm in the process of designing the hiring system now. Villages yield you only militias, castles are currently slated to be for cavalry recruitment, and towns are slated for infantry recruitment. I did this more for gameplay value and balance, not for a particular historical basis. I'm able and willing to change that, if people feel that's ridiculous or game breaking. However, I would need some kind of replacement for that system were I to change it.

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This sounds like a great idea. I think it would be great if you could limit certain production types to a certain nation, i.e. in Amsterdam you can only produce Dutch units, in Riga Latvian and German units, in Stockholm Swedish units, etc. I would be very curious how you are planning on modeling hiring generally. For example in the 1500s and 1600s a state would pay a mercenary captain to raise and equipt a regiment of infantry or calvary. The mercenary captain would be paid a lump sum and would keep whatever funds remained. The captain would then serve that commander until the commander could not pay or the unit was disbanded. The 1700s was different as the state created larger and larger standing armies. I know this is just a game, but I was curious how you planned to model recruitment efforts. I did notice in the 1257 mod a lord could recruit a small mercenary unit (50 men) in one go, rather than a few men at a time. How will the player-state relationship be handeled in raising a regiment?

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I could regionalize all of the units, but in general I'm not doing that at the moment. I have separate militias designed for European and Ottoman lands, which can be recruited from the villages, and called upon for sieges in defense (it's a menu option I'll be designing allowing you to call them up, the strength of which will depend on your relation to the town and probably some other factors I've not yet worked out). At the moment, I'm going to generate a recruitment window for the towns and castles for you to pick regiments the nation fields. The problem with localizing units to certain areas is that if they're taken over, it would look somewhat odd to have, say, Dutch Blue Guards showing up in the armies of France (assuming one took Amsterdam for France). Though you do bring up a good idea. I did like how in Rome Total War (and other iterations), you could recruit Spanish Swordsman from Cartegena and Spartan Hoplites from Sparta.  Maybe I'll find a way to do that somewhere down the line in a way that won't seem odd.

There will be a set number of soldiers you can recruit from any given nation every 5-7 days, but you're always free to grab militias and mercenaries (there are a good number of them). I wanted to prevent the player from being able to just buy some massive army off the cuff and take on the continent. All soldiers will come as recruits and it will be your job to ensure they make it up the ladder. I'm toying with the idea of using Custom Commander's code structure to have only a % of the army allowed to be Tier 6 (the highest), preventing you from having an army of super soldiers, instead relying on your own intelligence and creativity to win battles. A dedicated player in regular Warband can gain a bunch of Huscarls and Hired Blades, allowing you to chew through sieges quickly and become a monster. I wanted to experiment beyond that, though I hope I don't make it impossible for people to "win..." whatever that means to them. Warband is rather Sandbox in its construction. I have enough respect for players that I don't feel the need to hand hold them. But as I said, player feedback means more to me.

Can't wait to see how you implement siege warfare. This was always lacking in the original. I like the stages of attack. It would be cool if at each stage you fought a mini battle for each stage. That sounds like what you have in mind with the zig/zag trench warefare to bring your guns and mortar within range to breach. Can't wait to see this. I hope supply is better handled than just what is in your inventory...or perhaps larger numbers on the supplies so they last longer...maybe wagons that can be tapped for resupply throughout the siege.

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I think what I'll wind up doing is increase how far food goes. I've added about thirty new food and trade items. Part of that is based upon the Mercantilism economic model I'm constructing, with your classic trade items of the period, like ores, gunpowder, manufactured goods, tea, cloth work, etc, but also things like Persimmons, Quail, Wild Boar, and other kinds of things. I do like the idea of spawning a supply/baggage train, and I might implement that. That's something I'll definitely have to think about when I'm constructing the siege menus. The sceners have all been updated to build sieges to have this style of siege: http://www.fortified-places.com/siege_warfare.html

We're looking at doing something like this:

You might consider having withdrawal options in place. For example say the player or the AI gets wiped off the map in the first phase of the battle. (BTW: I hate how other Lords almost always escape, but if a player loses, they have no chance of escape.) They could then get an option to attempt an organized withdrawal (realizing they can't win) and based on certain skills the withdrawing army gets an opportunity. However, the pursuing army commander might have greater skill and could prevent a withdrawl. The retreating army could then take a moral hit and the battle could either continue or turn to a route. You would probably have to code some common sense into the AI to withdraw if they were getting whipped.

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I could do this for the player, but the AI would be trickier. Giving you the chance to escape a battle is something I plan on changing. That's something that always bothered me about Native and I've already adjusted it for the AI lords. The default % is a 70% chance of escape in Native for AI lords. I'm hesitant to put a looping script to check for whether or not an AI lord should retreat en masse, but if it proves to not be a lag problem, I'll gladly do it. Looping scripts like that can slow down performance depending on how they're done. I could have it redirect to a communique between you and a messenger from the opponent, allowing them to leave if their morale is at a certain level, or something along those lines. I'm totally open to suggestions on that, though. The Battle AI is extremely limited in what you can do with it, so I might not be able to realize everything. I do wish they'd make it a lot more moddable.

I am amazed at your dedication. Good luck!

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Thank you muchly. This is a community project. Always will be, for me. It started out as a challenge, and I'm curious to see how far I can push it. We hadn't originally planned to be as detailed as we've become with it, but it's proving to be quite a joy. I like a challenge. I play nearly every game I have on hard. So when I saw just how much you can actually do with the Module System, I realized it's really a matter of your creativity butting up against analytic problem solving. When you can mesh the two, the results can be quite beautiful.

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Bluehawk said:

That's quite an impressive cast of characters! So long as the method of Anglicization is consistent, it should be fine. For example, I would not mix "Knyaz" and "Prince"; "Boyarin" and "Boyar" (or "Graf" and "Count", if you want 1706 titles to bleed backward through time), but stick to one term and apply it across the list. If you ever have questions about Russian to English translation and transliteration, you could shoot me a PM sometime, though I'm sure someone on the team can more than handle it. I'd be glad to help though.

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Thanks. Credit almost entirely goes to Auldman. He far and away did the bulk of the historical research on this stuff. We had help from the community on several things, but without him, we wouldn't have the foundation we do have. When we release, I'll send out a thing asking for translation work. Thanks for the offer

GABRILDURO said:

Well, honestly I am just shocked, really shocked....and very very sad!!
This was the last post Auldman made on his beloved original Topic
http://forums.taleworlds.com/index.php/topic,203566.msg5622388.html#msg5622388
...and there is no anticipation of all of this...
I know Auld very well, we were Mates in my Mods and are still great friends.... and this Mod Project was the biggest dream he had in mind.
I cannot believe he just quit it without any announcement or anything.....

I surely hope that he will spawn and say a word at least, cuz this was HIS project and HIS dream....and I would like to see why he left it so suddenly...
OR...at least to see any kind of post/comment from him.

Otherwise, ... it could seem like he had a heart attack or something....

I know for sure that he adored this Mod project and I know from my personal experience on this matter, how hard it would be to abandone it....

To be completely honest, I know that the majority of ppl on the forums can care less of WHO will continue a Mod....they just care about the Mod being done  .....but without him, all this would have not ever begun....so, I hope you will comment, AULDY 

Your friend
Gab

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Thanks, Gab. I was somewhat shocked myself, but, the door for him to come back is always open. He's a friend to me, as well. We both felt this was a community project, but it was his idea and his invention. As von Afton stated to me, "it's up to us realize it." I gave Auldman my word I would finish it through to the end, and I shall do so. I have a feeling he'll be back . I think he just really needed some time away. Personal life matters first and foremost. I certainly understand that.

Bravo2255 said:

That definatly is a sad thing thing to hear, I was an acquaintance with him, he always seemed to reach out for people with smaller modifications and stuff. Remember he started this mod. Anyway, Good luck Cele!

      Best of luck!
                        Alex.

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Tis, tis. He and I both try to help others around the forum. Mods wouldn't get made without the help. It will always be his, though, Alan de Soisson, who made our uniforms and drummers, takes a great deal of credit for it as well. They dreamt it up. I came along at the right time. Thanks

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CR

Thank you all for that. Our team's quite thankful.

warbandnoob said:

I'm very impressed with your models and period scenes. You might want to scale back your regiment sizes to one quarter of historical size. I don't know if the system can handle a 10,000 soldier army, although it would be cool. I think there was a mod for WFaS that allowed for bigger armies on the map, 500 vs 500 that I think would be essential if you don't want one battle to last 5 hours. One thing I have always found very annoying is that you get 150 men on a map and you have to go through 10 mini-battles before you finish the conflict.

You could just have the organizational units represented by 1/4 of strength. For example 25 soldiers to a company (Captain), 100 soldiers to a battalion (Major), 250 to a regiment (Lt. Col.). You could rank up to recieve the command skill to lead each unit size and only after reaching a full Col. can you lead a small brigade of four to five regiments.

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I was hoping someone would discuss this. I am nearing the point where regiments, castles, and cities need to be populated with soldiers. I can understand how people would want large battles, Total War style, but first person. You're quite right in that no battle could possibly handle that many agents on a field at once. Even using Battlesizer, the program you're referring to, battles most often start to have trouble after around 200-250 agents on the field. Most computers simply crash. It's for a number of reasons - Warband's RAM caching, CPU threading/number crunching, and simply an inability to actually keep track of that many AI agents. Even Total War is simulated in how regiments move and take fatalities. It's a calculated animation process.

Historically, regiments were largely supposed to be around 700 men, but more frequently (due to inabilities to keep full strength, disease, casualties, etc) were around 440 for infantry. For cavalry, a squadron was, on paper, supposed to have around 400 men, but normally had around 240, for the same aforementioned reasons. So, while I can't remake the epic battles of the period within this engine, I can at least simulate it. I personally don't have problems with fighting long battles, though I do understand people's concerns about having to fight a four hour battle (though even in a siege with 4000 men, I still managed it in less than an hour). Ammunition is automatically dropped by fallen musketeers and archers (for the Ottomans), so that's generally not a problem for the player, though your soldiers will run out in about 30 minutes of a fight.

There are several scripts which impact the number of soldiers a "commander" has. I have already constructed a system whereby the first 8 lords of every nation are purely cavalry with a chance of militia or mercenary units. These, I had planned, to place an ideal size of 200-260. The following 12 are given infantry regiment templates with an ideal size of 400-480. The quality of the nation's cavalry and infantry varies and is historically based (though I'm sure I'll have to tweak those at some point based upon feedback). Every regiment has 6 tiers, making the regiment self contained. A British Orkney regimental, for example, starts at level 4 as a recruit. He upgrades 5 times: Recruit -> Green -> Experienced -> Veteran -> Hardened -> Elite. They advance up in level, gaining stats and equipment as they go. I did this so that if a player has a particular regiment they like, they can simply stick with it. It also allowed me to keep and simulate real regiments. The level cap for each regiment type is tiered. A British Orkney regimental tops out at 15, whereas a British Grenadier, First Foot Guard caps at level 31. This helps to reflect the more elite quality of the better units - with pay and hiring costs adjusted. An early game player would probably make use of militias and lower cost regimentals (like the Orcadians).

I'm in the process of designing the hiring system now. Villages yield you only militias, castles are currently slated to be for cavalry recruitment, and towns are slated for infantry recruitment. I did this more for gameplay value and balance, not for a particular historical basis. I'm able and willing to change that, if people feel that's ridiculous or game breaking. However, I would need some kind of replacement for that system were I to change it.

Castles currently are staffed with 3/4 cavalry, 1/4 infantry, at around 2000 men. Towns are capping around 4000, with 3/4 infantry and 1/4 cavalry. I had intended the siege changes to take this into account, with 5 or so unfolding stages of attack. Constructing parallels, fortifying them, building demi-lunes and circumvallation and contravallations. The classic Vauban zig/zag trenches would also be present, along with the ability to barrage a fort or city to reduce the strength of the garrison. Only the bloodthristy or bellicose players would actually follow through to a full-on storming of a breech. I wanted players who wanted to have both realistic sieges and the ability to engage in a serious battle available, but also able to be bypassed through successful use of the Siege skill. I realize not everyone has a penchant for hours within a single battle.

Skirmishes in the open between you or other commanders generally have fewer numbers of men and go much faster. I could, theoretically, design a system that prevents you from making every skirmish and battle into an all out "fight to the last man," but I'm only going to do that if there's a large number of people who want it done. It would require me redesigning battles quite dramatically, and one I'm somewhat loathe, but not unwilling, to do. The player feedback means more to me. I have lots of time.

For a game like this (designed for feudal warfare) it will be very difficult to create the game mechanics to simulate the period. I'm sure you have great skills so I wish you all the luck. If you can do it, I applaud you. You might consider a way of getting an entire brigade to move as one unit when on campaign. If you cannot achieve that it will be very difficult to keep the differing units from scattering into the wind when a larger army comes. I have to say nothing irritates me more than when I have a thousand soldiers on campaign divided into smaller units and they all scatter because one of the opposing generals has 300 men and then you end up fighting with only a small portion of your fighting force. For this mod to be effective this will have to be one of the first game mechanic you fixed. I think there was a mercenary mod that allowed smaller units to link onto the army of a Lord, you might look into that as a model for the regiments.

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One of the interesting things about our somewhat realistic city/castle placement is that marshals are able to gather a great deal larger attack force whilst on campaign. All marshals, in native code, generate a radius around them, which others are "sucked" into as he passes, bringing them out of their fortifications. I've seen Bavaria take London with an absolutely massive army several times. It's not uncommon to see Dutch marshals with nearly every AI lord in tow for a rampage. This tends to be far less the case with, say, the Holy Roman Empire, which is spread out enough that the radius is less useful. Doubly so for the Russians. I've not really found it game breaking myself, but I'm always willing to mess with that. Those large masses, in gameplay I've tested, never seem to run from a fight, unless their alone or severely outnumbered. I'll have to look around in the Scripts file (I assume it's there) for the codes that deal with lords and retreating. There's no way I can get this system correct the first time out, and it's going to have a number of revisions before I'm done. Player feedback will be essential (though I hope not rude, which I realize is pointless to dream for, lol) in ensuring I cover all the bases. This is actually more complex than it would appear.

Anyway if you can simulate a brigade then I think you could then have four brigades moving on the map in the form of a division or corp. When two corps clash you would probably just want the fighting to take place in phases. All four brigades would line up on each side to fight each other. In each phase the human players casualties (either to victory or to defeat) would add tactical advantages to the other computer controlled brigades to either increase (add bonuses) or decrease (add penalties) their odds of victory. In this way the human player is only simulated as being in one location at a time and fighting happens in the other brigades concurrently.

I think this would also increase the probability of brigade survival, ie armies could break and run,  or withdraw in order. During the period most armies did not fight to the last man, unless they were significantly outnumbered. Usually an engagement would happen, they would clash, fighting would ensure for a few hour or until dusk and then armies would withdraw, if lucky entact. Very few armies were completely destroyed. Although it was more common to see a leading unit destroyed.

I think on the field the game mechanics would also be very important. You would probably want to set up the means to pass orders to the grouped battalions or regiments, ie you give orders to the commanders vice the individual men. So if you led a battalion you would give orders to four infantry companies or four sqadrons of calvary. This would also play out at the higher command levels. The only time you give orders to individuals would be if you were attempting to rally a fleeing force or if you personally let a company.

Anyway, you all are the experts. I will stop my silly rant. Good luck with the effort. I hope you succeed. I hope you game mechanics are as good as your scenes and models!!! Please suprise us.

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No one's an expert here. I might be a historian and know a lot about coding, but I would never be arrogant so as to claim I was an expert. Even professionals make mistakes. I will what I can to try to make as many happy as I can with the end product, but this engine has a great deal number of limitations that make a project like this quite complex and, at times, impossible to fulfill. But that's not going to stop me from trying my damnedest to get as close as I can. My plan for dealing with battles and battle AI was going to be through the use of PBOD, the new formations added in by the newest patches, and creating new scripts for handling the AI. Getting the AI to not simply charge you at the start of a battle is proving challenging enough. Some things I will simply be unable to do. I don't know that such a complex series of battle simulations would be useful for every fight the player gets into. In the end, like any game, one has to ask if the amount of work to make it is worth it in the end. That, I think, will be for the players of the mod to judge. I wanted to design something I would play, as I grew up on video games that focused on war gaming, table top war games, and still play them to this day. I take inspiration from a variety of games I loved. I think it would be more useful to flesh some of these ideas out with another coder before I can fully realize some of it. I often take graph paper or a notebook and sketch out how I want a script to work after I develop the concept. After that I program it. Slow, methodical, but it's how I was trained. I also have to keep in mind that I don't want to make something so CPU and RAM heavy that only high end game computers can run this, becoming the Dwarf Fortress of the forum, lol.

I will probably send you a PM later (or you can send me one) and see if I can work out a more specific and code friendly way of implementing some of those ideas and see how well they perform in game. They may prove immensely useful. Thanks for posting that. Much appreciated.

Bluehawk said:

Looking at the faction list, I wonder, will Austria be lumped in with the HRE, even the territories it controlled outside of the Empire? Or will it be lumped in with the "Habsburg Spanish" so that they can share the same character as their leader (Archduke Charles VI)?

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At the moment, the HRE is comprised of Hesse-Kassel, Austria, and Savoy. We also have some Hannoverian units. Once I've gotten the nations we have in solidly built, I or someone on our team (it might be someone new), will be adding more uniforms, regiments, and flags. The leader of the HRE is Emperor Leopold I, as our game starts in March 1702.

The full list of commanders and leaders is under this spoiler. Please excuse that due to us using the English version of the Module System, we are unable to suppose non-English characters. Unit names are in their native language, though Anglicized. After we're done, I'm all for having it translated. It would be a great joy to have people able to have it in multiple languages.


I'll be on most of the day tomorrow, as I'll be coding. Feel free to message me if you have questions or thoughts.

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CR

Lovely city you guys built there ... Capua, that is.

You're ambitious. I approve. I look forward to seeing how your elephant develops. That's quite an ingenious idea.

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CR

Volkonski said:

Such a shame that Auldman has stepped down, at least he left the mod in very capable hands  .

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Thank you.

We appreciate that. We will miss him greatly, but I believe we'll be okay.

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CR