SP Medieval In the Name of Jerusalem II (Devblog 2020/11/3)

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My sacrifice, O God, is a broken spirit;
a broken and contrite heart you, God, will not despise.——Psalm 51:17


It has been a hundred years since Crusaders took over Jerusalem. As time passed, grievances and struggles aroseupon the Eastern Mediterranean.

Two kings of Jerusalem died soon and after. Guy of Lusignan took the throne through royal marriage and was crowned King of Jerusalem. Meanwhile, Saladin in Egypt and Syria rises up as he prepares to reclaim the sacred city of Jerusalem. The Frankish domain in the Holy Land is at stake; while another Crusader state, Principality of Antioch, decided to stand aside from this conflict.

Wallowed in his power, Guy was blinded by personal greed. He could not tame powerful houses under his command due to lack of prestige and strategic mind compared to King Baldwin IV. As the head of warlike lords, Raynald of Châtillon, who thirsts for renown from war; started carrying out provocation. At the end of A.D. 1186 (A.H. 581), he led an army from Castle Karak and assaulted Saladin's caravan, murdered guards and looted valuable goods. Such action led to the end of the truce, as Saladin got an excellent excuse to wage a new war against the Kingdom of Jerusalem.

In the North, the geo-political order of the past begins disintegrates. Since the death of Basileus Manual I, the hegemony of Imperium Romanum started to collapse. In the Balkans, Serbians began leaving the subjection from the Empire and moved towards independence; Bulgarians rose up again with Cumans and started raiding in the region of Thrace. In Anatolia, the threat from Seljuks has been weakened because of internal struggle among maliks over the sultanate. But Turkmens from the East are still harassing the imperial borders constantly. Furthermore, the favor of luck starts shifting toward the Principality of Cilicia Armenia in the corner of Anatolia.

It is the year A.D. 1187 (A.H. 582). A new era is about to break the interminable night before dawn. Who can ever determine their fate?


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Al-Idrisi's world map, A.D.1154 (copied in A.D.1456)
Greeting, warriors of Jerusalem!

Our previous mod In the Name of Jerusalem (INJ1) was officially released on 1st of June 2019. Since 2018, we have received loads of praise as well as feedback and suggestions from many of you. Sincere thanks for your constant support for our project! In return, we will present you with our new mod for Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord — In the Name of Jerusalem II (INJ2)

Our team members spare no effort to describe the historical period in the "Holy Land" around the Third and Fourth Crusade. However, the basic design and modules in INJ1 was based on the film Kingdom of Heaven (2005). It was a good film, yet there were quite some blemishes and misconceptions in historical terms. Thus, we will put more effort in authentic history, and try to reconstruct the historical features of Eastern Mediterranean region based on late 12th century's manuscripts, presenting a magnificent world for players to explore.

There will be more extended content in INJ2 compared to our first project. As our goal is to deliver more systems and features for players to start their own adventures in the Holy Land. But Bannerlord mod developing tools and systems are not stable yet, everything is still pending. As a result, we are unable to inform you of any confirmed features until the later stage of development.

No matter where you come from or what your goal is. You always have a chance to find your opportunity in this sacred land. At the start of the campaign, you will play as a member of the noble family instead of random wanderer, which might save you a lot of time on early game progress and experience the core content of our mod.

The Levant (or Sham) region is still the center of the campaign map. But we expand our world to Caucasia from the east and the Balkans from the west, north to the Black Sea and south to the Red Sea. We also add two new factions — Bulgarian Empire and Grand Principality of Serbia. The time period will set from 1187 to 1204 CE (A.H.582-600), which is between the Battle of Hattin and the Fourth Crusade.


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The campaign map has expanded from red to
blue region in the game compared to previous mod

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Campaign map under development (a)
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Campaign map under development (b)

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QQ20201026082728.jpg

QQ20201025131416.jpg

We will try to update our working progress and release devblog monthly, and introduce mod-related historical background as well. The release date of Beta is not decided yet. We estimate it would take us a year or more to do so, as result, we hope everyone to keep patient and pay attention to our latest progress.

Thanks for your reading. In next devblog, we will introduce our first faction — the Kingdom of Jerusalem.

More devblog and news will see in Moddb

Devblog (1)

Long may you live ——By Team Century
 
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Your warband mod was my favorite crusader mod out there, but there are some things I didn't like which i hope you include in the mod for bannerlord:

1: New Factions like the County of Tripoli with its own unique rooster. if you wish to leave it in the Kingdom of Jerusalem at least improve the rooster like you did with Ibelin.
2:Make it clearer what Cyprus was cause currently it was most unclear.
3: In the warband version you boasted on some new system of Duchies or whatever existing within major factions where the dukes commanded their own vassals, a system which I never got to experience because I never reached day 500 in the game yet, especially with Jerusalem getting eaten up by day 100. Perhaps this time design the entire mod around this system. Make new leaders of mini factions of the Kingdoms, like balian or Raymond, Templars or Hospitallers, and give them their own vassals from the START of the game, and with some proper and USEFUL rooster trees, maybe as useful as Armenia's
4. If you turn characters into mini leaders within major factions, add new characters for them to rule over.
5: Do not make the muslims especially the Ayyubids a juggernaut. There is a fine line between historical accuracy and stealing away the time of a real life person who simply wants to play but cant cause he is destined to suffer the consequences of historical events.
6: Fix naval battles, if there are going to be any since bannerlord doesn't have them yet.
7: Make it clearer to the player EXACTLY how and where to find the troops he wishes to recruit within the system you wish to subject him to based on the feudal system of the time.
8: Revise the troop trees of all factions, and how they compare with each other such as almost all the Jerusalem troops being upgraded and the Byzantine troops not being able to get upgraded at all. Do not have ghost troops, like the Spathariai is still a mystery for me to this day on where you can recruit them.
9: Be fair on troop balancing, you can't have the Jerusalem troops on average being weaker against Muslims as if their armor is made out of paper. Because of this, if a muslim lord of 120 men clashes with a crusader lord of 120 men, 90% of the times the christians always lose cause their troops die like flies. Visually the crusaders knight's armor looks formidable and yet the armenians have meare chainmail on all their troops and they have one of the most OP troop roosters currently, and their troops always win on a 1 vs 1.
10: Make other factions troops trees as useful as Armenia's, or please do something about f**** Armenia. Armenia gets everything they spam heavy cavalry like turks, horse archers like Egyptians. They have OP heavy infantry with better shields than any European and the most Op skirmishers and the only ones who get 2 handed axes as their main weapon. They even get the coolest shield designs.
11: Did I mention balance out Armenia?
12: Give the player the ability to found his own faction. It's his time that he's spending on your mod, he might want to have the chance to recreate the County of Edessa, with its own troop tree, or maybe have the chance to become faction leader to perhaps help out the horrible AI. It's a vanilla feature, removing it is actually more work for you.
13: Do something about repetitive siege scenes, introduce the actual places that existed at the time, to make the game interesting. Players dont play this game to ride around an empty map, they want to say "This is my castle". Most of the castles that existed weren't that large back then anyways.
14: Fix the instructions within the game concepts of the game about your mod.
15: Please correct any english text that exists in your mod, especially about crucial things like instructions. If you only speak Chinese then ask for someone's help.
16: If you wish to have a system about the breaking of weapons and armor, also make a clear system on where the player can go and fix them.
17: Expand your mod options, the player might want to disable Horse slowdown, the breaking of weapons or shield bashing. Currently you have an option which only disables the shield bashing done by the players but the AI continues to bash you regardless.
18: Do something about the bots who spam kick every 2 seconds at the player, which after a while it begins to get frustrating. Every time i enter the tavern with a hashashin even if I have the best armor and weapons in game he kills me every time by spam kicking me. If I try to spam kick him or any bot in battle as well it doesn't work as well as them doing it. How is this fair?
19: If you allow the player to start as a lord or king, do not make him start from level 1. There are some mods which have accomplished this.
20: Starting as a lord at the start of the game gets you bankrupt as it takes a while for income to kick in and takes great skill to get out of it. Perhaps do something about it. And perhaps calculate how many troops a player lord should be given at the start of a game based on his income.
21: Since this is bannerlord, perhaps it's time to focus more on the orders and perhaps add some new ones or improve the roosters of current ones. There is Lazarus, Sepelcure, StJacques de l'Epee and Teutons. And make it clearer to players on how to join them.You could even add special troops on certain locations for them to be recruited, such as royal Jerusalem guards or Eddessan or Antioch guards.
22: Make a clear system for the player on how he can recruit special troops based on region, like Ibelin or Tripoli troops.
23: Fix up the NPC companions, give them a background or make it clear what their talents are. Adding more NPC's wouldn't hurt.
24: Make it clearer on how the Byzantine Emperor Andronicos can get overthrown and be replaced by Komnenos cause currently I don't understand sh**.
25: Make sure you figure out the exact siege weapon system you wish to have, with no bugs and make their necessities clear. tell the player on where to find engineers if you make it a requirement and give the player the opportunity to recruit them more often.
26: Revise the balancing of sides in siege battles. Certain castles can be way too OP for the defender or attacking side especially concerning artillery, making the player lose battles even if he has managed to gather up all the lords of his realm. Artillery used by the AI can be as accurate as cannons in Napoleonic Wars.
27: Make sure the Strategy AI is balanced. You can't have the Ayubbids gather 20 lords effectively and take cities every 10 days and having the kingdom of Jerusalem chasing their tails like dogs, spending 100 days without atleast taking any castle or successfully repulsing a single attack. Currently the AI between the Byzantine Empire and Turks is very well balanced.
28: You need to do something about everyone ganging up on Antioch from the start of the game. Why are they even at war with Armenia from the start of the game. Aren't they supposed to be allies?
29: Revise whether the price of items is fair. So far it's good but I can handle it because i'm old player. Maybe some things are excruciatingly expensive. Its ok for a good armor to be 10 or 20k or even 50k, but 120 and 200k?? Make it clearer to the player on whether horses in your inventory help in travel speed, because so far it's a mystery. If that is so, make horses cheaper, especially since they die so easy in battle with the current system.
30: Also, control yourself when designing custom skins for troops like the Hospitaller order is one example. Maybe red is your favorite color but maybe use more black than red. This is the Levant not Rhodes. Keep designs and crosses simple. Back then they weren't into exaggerated designs and like the templars they mostly had straight, thin red line crosses on their shields. Currently you giving too much red on Hospitallers and too much black on templars.
31: I might be wrong but so far I see grandmasters of orders not holding any special powers or privileges compared to other members. it's time you made them more special.
32: Finally, Do not focus too much on spending hours developing some freelance system when the base game is left broken. Extra flavor features are just a special extra icing , but it's useless without the cake.

If you implement these changes i would be extremely grateful.
 
Your warband mod was my favorite crusader mod out there, but there are some things I didn't like which i hope you include in the mod for bannerlord:

1: New Factions like the County of Tripoli with its own unique rooster. if you wish to leave it in the Kingdom of Jerusalem at least improve the rooster like you did with Ibelin.
2:Make it clearer what Cyprus was cause currently it was most unclear.
3: In the warband version you boasted on some new system of Duchies or whatever existing within major factions where the dukes commanded their own vassals, a system which I never got to experience because I never reached day 500 in the game yet, especially with Jerusalem getting eaten up by day 100. Perhaps this time design the entire mod around this system. Make new leaders of mini factions of the Kingdoms, like balian or Raymond, Templars or Hospitallers, and give them their own vassals from the START of the game, and with some proper and USEFUL rooster trees, maybe as useful as Armenia's
4. If you turn characters into mini leaders within major factions, add new characters for them to rule over.
5: Do not make the muslims especially the Ayyubids a juggernaut. There is a fine line between historical accuracy and stealing away the time of a real life person who simply wants to play but cant cause he is destined to suffer the consequences of historical events.
6: Fix naval battles, if there are going to be any since bannerlord doesn't have them yet.
7: Make it clearer to the player EXACTLY how and where to find the troops he wishes to recruit within the system you wish to subject him to based on the feudal system of the time.
8: Revise the troop trees of all factions, and how they compare with each other such as almost all the Jerusalem troops being upgraded and the Byzantine troops not being able to get upgraded at all. Do not have ghost troops, like the Spathariai is still a mystery for me to this day on where you can recruit them.
9: Be fair on troop balancing, you can't have the Jerusalem troops on average being weaker against Muslims as if their armor is made out of paper. Because of this, if a muslim lord of 120 men clashes with a crusader lord of 120 men, 90% of the times the christians always lose cause their troops die like flies. Visually the crusaders knight's armor looks formidable and yet the armenians have meare chainmail on all their troops and they have one of the most OP troop roosters currently, and their troops always win on a 1 vs 1.
10: Make other factions troops trees as useful as Armenia's, or please do something about f**** Armenia. Armenia gets everything they spam heavy cavalry like turks, horse archers like Egyptians. They have OP heavy infantry with better shields than any European and the most Op skirmishers and the only ones who get 2 handed axes as their main weapon. They even get the coolest shield designs.
11: Did I mention balance out Armenia?
12: Give the player the ability to found his own faction. It's his time that he's spending on your mod, he might want to have the chance to recreate the County of Edessa, with its own troop tree, or maybe have the chance to become faction leader to perhaps help out the horrible AI. It's a vanilla feature, removing it is actually more work for you.
13: Do something about repetitive siege scenes, introduce the actual places that existed at the time, to make the game interesting. Players dont play this game to ride around an empty map, they want to say "This is my castle". Most of the castles that existed weren't that large back then anyways.
14: Fix the instructions within the game concepts of the game about your mod.
15: Please correct any english text that exists in your mod, especially about crucial things like instructions. If you only speak Chinese then ask for someone's help.
16: If you wish to have a system about the breaking of weapons and armor, also make a clear system on where the player can go and fix them.
17: Expand your mod options, the player might want to disable Horse slowdown, the breaking of weapons or shield bashing. Currently you have an option which only disables the shield bashing done by the players but the AI continues to bash you regardless.
18: Do something about the bots who spam kick every 2 seconds at the player, which after a while it begins to get frustrating. Every time i enter the tavern with a hashashin even if I have the best armor and weapons in game he kills me every time by spam kicking me. If I try to spam kick him or any bot in battle as well it doesn't work as well as them doing it. How is this fair?
19: If you allow the player to start as a lord or king, do not make him start from level 1. There are some mods which have accomplished this.
20: Starting as a lord at the start of the game gets you bankrupt as it takes a while for income to kick in and takes great skill to get out of it. Perhaps do something about it. And perhaps calculate how many troops a player lord should be given at the start of a game based on his income.
21: Since this is bannerlord, perhaps it's time to focus more on the orders and perhaps add some new ones or improve the roosters of current ones. There is Lazarus, Sepelcure, StJacques de l'Epee and Teutons. And make it clearer to players on how to join them.You could even add special troops on certain locations for them to be recruited, such as royal Jerusalem guards or Eddessan or Antioch guards.
22: Make a clear system for the player on how he can recruit special troops based on region, like Ibelin or Tripoli troops.
23: Fix up the NPC companions, give them a background or make it clear what their talents are. Adding more NPC's wouldn't hurt.
24: Make it clearer on how the Byzantine Emperor Andronicos can get overthrown and be replaced by Komnenos cause currently I don't understand sh**.
25: Make sure you figure out the exact siege weapon system you wish to have, with no bugs and make their necessities clear. tell the player on where to find engineers if you make it a requirement and give the player the opportunity to recruit them more often.
26: Revise the balancing of sides in siege battles. Certain castles can be way too OP for the defender or attacking side especially concerning artillery, making the player lose battles even if he has managed to gather up all the lords of his realm. Artillery used by the AI can be as accurate as cannons in Napoleonic Wars.
27: Make sure the Strategy AI is balanced. You can't have the Ayubbids gather 20 lords effectively and take cities every 10 days and having the kingdom of Jerusalem chasing their tails like dogs, spending 100 days without atleast taking any castle or successfully repulsing a single attack. Currently the AI between the Byzantine Empire and Turks is very well balanced.
28: You need to do something about everyone ganging up on Antioch from the start of the game. Why are they even at war with Armenia from the start of the game. Aren't they supposed to be allies?
29: Revise whether the price of items is fair. So far it's good but I can handle it because i'm old player. Maybe some things are excruciatingly expensive. Its ok for a good armor to be 10 or 20k or even 50k, but 120 and 200k?? Make it clearer to the player on whether horses in your inventory help in travel speed, because so far it's a mystery. If that is so, make horses cheaper, especially since they die so easy in battle with the current system.
30: Also, control yourself when designing custom skins for troops like the Hospitaller order is one example. Maybe red is your favorite color but maybe use more black than red. This is the Levant not Rhodes. Keep designs and crosses simple. Back then they weren't into exaggerated designs and like the templars they mostly had straight, thin red line crosses on their shields. Currently you giving too much red on Hospitallers and too much black on templars.
31: I might be wrong but so far I see grandmasters of orders not holding any special powers or privileges compared to other members. it's time you made them more special.
32: Finally, Do not focus too much on spending hours developing some freelance system when the base game is left broken. Extra flavor features are just a special extra icing , but it's useless without the cake.

If you implement these changes i would be extremely grateful.
Thanks for the long advices! Trust me, we will do it better this time!
 
this is the only thing keeping bannerlord alive. 90% of players would uninstall if they were not waiting for this mod.

i'm serious when i say taleworld owes team century half the revenue from bannerlords
 
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