[Werthead]

Some of the guys over on Westeros.org have been working on a Seven Kingdoms-based mod for Medieval 2: Total War for the past year and have released the initial version. Whilst not fully complete yet (only the Tullys, Starks and Joffrey's forces are fully skinned), the mod is already in a state of advanced playability. Details here on how to get hold of the game.


To show how it works, this is an account of my first campaign, with lots of links to screenshots:

This was the first go as House Stark. I decided to be bold and replicate the Stark strategy from the books: advance as fast as possible with the starting armies and kick some arse. Since House Stark has virtually no money and is in the red within 3 turns of starting the game, it's not like I had anything else to do

So, I rapidly advanced down the Neck and combined my three armies (under Robb, the Greatjon and Roose) for an attack on the Twins. I possessed overwhelming superiority of numbers and due to engine limitations the Twins are nowhere near as formidable as in the books, but the Freys' defensive position was still strong.

Battle was joined and I breached the gates in short order. The struggle inside the gates was bloody as I was charged by the Frey cavalry, but I emerged trimuphant. The surviving remnants of the Frey host took shelter outside the castle, but this strategy proved inadequate.

After savouring the moment I continued the advance. I split my forces, Roose Bolton taking the bulk of the foot and the archers down the Trident towards the ford, whilst Robb and the Greatjon pressed on into Tully lands, sweeping past our allies in Riverrun. Obviously the advance had been so fast the Lannisters had not had time to begin the siege, and I was able to identify Jaime Lannister's position near the Golden Tooth. I besieged his camp but the Lannisters rallied and hit me from all sides.

Although the numbers were against me, they arrived on the battlefield in piecemeal fashion, and I was able to bring my full army against each group in turn, destroying them in detail. Jaime's forces arrived on the battlefield and as his and my infantry and supporting cavalry engaged one another, I spotted his bodyguard and had Robb charge him. This proved unwise and Robb had his arse handed to him. Luckily, the Greatjon spotted his lord's peril and rode into the fray, killing Jaime Lannister in the face. I would have preferred to ransom him, but that's the way battles go sometimes. The butcher's bill was heavier this day, and Jaime killed about 30 of those men by himself, but victory had been achieved.

Although my forces had been decimated, a severe lack of funds and a lengthy reinforcement distance (the Twins was my nearest base and was a good 3-4 turns away) meant I had no choice but to press on and besieged the Tooth. Fortune smiled on me when it turned out that Tywin himself was within the castle with only a modest force to defend him.

Meanwhile, in the east Roose Bolton met with Arryn diplomats near Saltpans and forged peaceful trading relations between them and the Starks, before crossing the ford, brushing aside one of Joffrey's forces which had been skirmishing up towards Harrenhal (which remains in Tully hands) and launch an exploratory reconnaisance towards King's Landing. Whilst I doubt I have the men to take the city, I may have enough to besiege it.

All to play for next time

This post has been edited by Werthead: 30 September 2008 - 02:21 AM

[caladanbrood]

Awww crap, now I'm regretting not bringing up my gaming PC to uni... this would have been so awesome to play.

Any screenshots of the maps from a distance? Quite like to see what the regions etc look like.

[cerveza_fiesta]

very entertaining!

can't wait to see how it all unfolds

[Lisheo]

Imagine that kinda thing with Malazans, the Apocalypse, the Pannion Domin, Crimson Guard etc... woah... so awesome.

[Bauchelain the Evil]

Yah no kidding! But the Westeros thing seems cool also.
Only a question Werthead:why would you choose the losing side?

[Lisheo]

Cus their culer. Id sure as hell choose the Army of the Apocalypse or the Pannion Domin if we had a malaz one.
Not because I like the killing and eating and dead seed business or any of that. I just like the name. and kicking the crap out of Tiste Emos, and possibly going after the Mhybe... take that, you annoying bitch lol...

[Werthead]

A Malazan version would be possible, but at the cost of having no magic. The Medieval II game engine simply doesn't allow for it, unfortunately. That's why Westeros: Total War doesn't have the Others, the Wall or the dragons (although having said that, there is a possible way of doing the dragons that the modders are looking at for a later version).

However, Moranth munitions should be possible to duplicate, since firearms, primitive grenades and even flamethrowers are achievable in the engine, and it may be possible to use the cannon animations to replicate blasting units apart with magic, but certainly no teleportation or invisibility magic would be possible.

Bauchelain the Evil, on Oct 1 2008, 05:09 PM, said:

Yah no kidding! But the Westeros thing seems cool also.
Only a question Werthead:why would you choose the losing side?

Because in the game, they can win

I took the Tooth and killed Tywin. Unfortunately, I lost a lot of men and couldn't hold it, with Sandor Clegane and Devan Lannister bringing up reinforcements from Casterly Rock, so I burned down every building in the castle and fled. Disaster struck when the Lannisters cut off Robb and the Greatjon from Riverrun. They manage to escape south through the mountains, but were finally cornered by a much vaster force outside Hornvale and brutally slaughtered, although they did kill the Hound in the process. The crown passed to Bran, who was all the way up north at Last Hearth, well out of danger, and Roose Bolton assumed command of my main army in the field.

Roose besieged King's Landing, seized the capital and then held it against a ferocious storm of counter-attacks by Joffrey (who had eluded capture to make his new main base at Duskendale). I sent a scout ship down the coast, and was amused to see Renly and Stannis slugging it out for control of the Storm Coast. The Tyrells made alliance with me and the Tullys won several decisive blows against Joffrey. Joffrey was forced to sue for peace, which I accepted. With the Martells a very distant and remote threat, Stannis and Renly preoccupied with one another (guess Stannis forgot to hire Melisandre this time around) and the Tyrells, Tullys, Arryns and even Joffrey on my side, peace descended. The Tullys were able to turn their full attention towards the Lannisters and I took advantage of the lull in combat to rebuild my forces. Back home in the North Bran sent forth several lesser armies to seize the Dreadfort from the Bastard of Bolton (who had rebelled) and pacify several other rebel castles, such as Widow's Watch and Barrowton. However, White Harbour was attacked by a large force of brigands. They beat off the attack after taking some significant losses. More serious was the arrival of the Grejoys, who landed in force along the west coast and seized Flint's Finger. Luckily, I had been mustering reinforcements at Moat Cailin and was able to march west to meet them. That battle should be fought tomorrow and should prove most interesting.

[Abyss]

I'm confused - why has no one, at any point, sheboinged Cersei?

- Abyss, thought this was Westeros...

[Lisheo]

Well, in many books, the mages state their only purpose is to negate the other armies magic, its only in special wars where annihilating magic gets used, so I don't think that would be too unrealistic, Wert. Might be worth a try, if I knew what I was doing.

[Cause]

Sounds awesome. Listening to you describe it, it feels like a real story. Not nameless egyptian general approached from some town somewhere and I kicked his ass.

Seriously though what on earth are you doing? Get roose killed and quick. Dont give him command of your largest army! Im curious did they manage to give the generals special traits. Id be interested to know what he has?

[Werthead]

Roose has lots of Dread, Command and Intimidation points. He also gets lots of bonuses to command and administration.

The game took a turn for the tedious as I got bogged down in lots of siege warfare. Roose killed Joffrey and forced Tommen to surrender Rosby and become a vassal. At the same time, the armies mustering at Moat Cailin and the Twins retook Flint's Finger, but faced a full-scale ironborn invasion. The Greyjoys swept into both Tully and Lannister lands whilst they were busy fighting one another, seizing Seagard, the Banefort and the Crag in short order.

My counter-attack saw Seagard and the Banefort captured. Unwilling to tolerate further ironborn depredations, I ended up in a bizarre alliance of convenience with the Tyrells and Lannisters as our ships and ampihibous assault forces stormed the Iron Islands in a kind of medieval replay of Iwo Jima and Guadalcanal. I finally took Great Wyk, but four assaults on Harlaw were repulsed (although Victarion, Balon and Theon were killed) with ludicrously heavy losses. I finally abandoned the attempt to take the islands (Pyke was simply impregnable, with there actually not being enough room to land an invading army: all the tiles on the island were taken up with full-stack Greyjoy armies) and settled for blockading the ports and preventing them from attacking the mainland.

In the east, myself, the Tullys and Tommen ended up repeatedly invading Crackclaw Point in an attempt to knock out Stannis' mainland base of operations. Things should have gotten easier when Renly took Dragonstone, but instead Stannis kept getting huge reinforcements and massive morale bonuses in combat which made armies twice the size of his rout (I think this is supposed to be the in-game effect of Melisandre's magical aid, but I'm not sure). After a good 30 turns trying to break the back of Stannis' forces, I finally succeeded and killed Stannis and Alester Florent in what may be the longest single battle of Total War I have ever fought. It was draining and the loss of life was ridiculous.

Back in the west, I launched the much-dreamed-of full-scale invasion of the Lannister lands. I went down the coast whilst my Tully allies advanced through the mountains, taking the Golden Tooth and Hornvale before hitting Casterly Rock from the east. I was going to attack Kayce, but it was almost undefended whilst the Rock was heavily fortified. Whilst the Tullys besieged the Rock, I positioned my army to lend support should the Lannisters try to sally out or send in a relief force, although they haven't got much territory left (the Tyrells had also taken some territory from them in the south, although luckily the Tyrells had sat most of the northern wars out in favour of a long, gruelling invasion of Dorne). So, with any luck, one large battle at Casterly Rock should end the campaign once and for all (I'm not sure if I have to destroy what's left of Tommen's forces, which is basically just Duskendale; I think having him as a vassal counts as the same thing).

This post has been edited by Werthead: 02 October 2008 - 11:15 PM

[Lisheo]

I think a few of the guys are working on a malaz game actually, Silencer had a forum about it a while back... But Id love a Malaz:Total War game.

[Silencer]

Check the sig.

*is in progress*
We haz a forum there. Designing. Mal's in on it too.

MMO style.

Although, reading this, I can see that it would be epic to convert the mod to a Malazan one!

[Lisheo]

Could you do the job with that mod, Silencer? id try it myself, but Im useless at stuff like that, basic HTML and Javascript website design is the best I can manage lol

[Werthead]

I would point out that to get Westeros: Total War even to this unpolished state, it's taken two teams almost two years of constant work, and that's without reskinning entire factions, creating new models or putting in new non-human races or introducing concepts like magic.

For a Malazan strategy game you'd probably need a totally different game to base it off. Maybe Battle for Middle-earth or Dawn of War? The other option would be to wait until Empire: Total War comes out in February and see if the modding tools in that allow for greater flexibility.

[Silencer]

As Wert has said, a single person to do the entire thing??!?!?!



But Empire would be even less suited to Malazan (although....naval combat ftw!), not enough focus on swords, too much on guns. Hmm....still, it could be possible.

Oh, and did anyone else notice the Morrowind mod called "Moon's Spawn" by some guy named caladanbrood?


-Sorry for hijacking your thread, Wert....

[mocker]

awe i want a malazan one oh dear fuckin god i really fuckin want a malazan one!!!

[RodeoRanch]

Nifty!

[Mushroom]

Lol, I've played as Stark for a little bit.
Played for Greyjoys for a fair bit.

But played with the Lannisters the most.
I think it was only once I had conqured the Greyjoys and most of the Tullys that It said I had already 'won'. I didn't see any point in continueing from there.
Though I'm tempted to say play as Stannis because I know that one would be difficult. All in all it was a bit of fun though. It should take longer to win the game though.