Discussion: Faction Setups *Spoiler Warning*

[Clegane]

Hello everyone. 

full plate seems to be very uncommon for the average knight. It's seen in the Dunk & Egg novellas (admittedly, it's quite early, but I'm assuming Westerosi technological development wasn't very quick) that Humphrey Hardyng, who was one of the better knights at the tourney, was wearing mail and bits of plate. There's also the illustration of one of the covers (A Storm of Swords), with Edmure Tully clad in armour that's primarily mail. It seems to me that this indicates either a lack of good armourers in certain regions, or the extreme cost of a good suit of plate.

I agree, i was equipping the last tier mounted knights with a tabard surcoat over mail, no full plate at all. I might give a chance to the pikes and will prolly give some Nordic/Saxon based equipment to the Ironmen or even the North (Talak's Armory has some nice helmets at that).
In the projectile side of the mod i was going to get everyone crossbows and outfit House Martell and Stark with composite bow/longbows respectively.

To make a workaround for Renly's armies i can think of forcing the other houses to fully train a grunt till its last tier(or the one after it might be better) and then there you subdivide til the last infantry tier/first cavalry tier(not light calvary though, more like medium), and on the other hand Tyrell's will have a cavalry tier from the beginning after training a peasant (Scout Cavalry,Light cavalry,Etc).



I would also needs some suggestions on names for the Last Cavalry Tier for each faction (except Lannister with its Lion Guards) and perhaps Dorne(what do you think of Sun Spears?) Bring it on!

[Night Ninja]

I'm of the opinion that there should be an option between large numbers of badly-equipped levies and small numbers of more professional troops.

An example:

Villages: Access to Tier 1 (Recruits) infantry, which can be eventually trained into the higher tiers, but the attrition rate will generally be severe. I think making these guys generic would be good, there's not much difference in the fighting capacity of a peasant levy regardless of his origin.

e.g.
Peasant levy -> Footman -> Veteran Footman -> Sergeant -> Veteran sergeant -> Household Guard
               \                                         \
            Watchman                          Scouts -> Outriders
                 \                                         \
              Veteran Watchman             Light cavalryman -> heavy Cavalryman
                   \
                Guard
                     \
                  Veteran Guard
                      \
                  Household Guard
     
Castles/Towns: Direct access to the equivalent of Tier 3/4 infantry and cavalry. The faction's highest tier units should only be available to the units you recruit from castles and towns (doesn't make much sense for peasants to be elevated to knights ).

I hope that that was helpful.

[Oroonin]

Yup, the problem with MB upgrades in vanilla lies just there, the green recruit who, after seeing a hundred of his fellows fall in a week or two, is knighted. Best way to work around it would be recruitment of knights via conversation one way or the other, at high cost and high relations.

The top-tier knights could simply be named after crest like, Rose Knight/Knight o´ Flowers, Wolf Retainer and so on.

The Vale as a faction of their own is a very good plan. Used longbows, didn´t they? If possible with lords recruitable to either side, as most were more belligent than Lysa, or with scripted events to that end. Or just more claimants.

Plate, though uncommon, seems to figure at a high tech-level, I´m thinking about some of the very elaborated designs described for the Reach and Lannisters towards the end with figurines and enamel.

[Kiado]

I have been thinking a lot on this subject the last couple of days, and been playing some of the mods out there to see what other people are doing.  I have seen some great things done with some of these mods.   Some of them are doing some of the things I was thinking about discussing, mainly the "The Eagle and the Radiant Cross" mod, but that one does it much better than I had in mind.   It is my main influence on what I am about to propose since I found myself loving their troop trees.   I think a similar system of troops would be a great way to do this mod.  I also think it is somewhat similar to what Clegane is working on already.

Edit: I see Night Ninja had the same idea. 

Tier 1 Troops:  Base Troops

These troops are your standard issue troops for each faction.  They are picked up from Villages just like standard recruiting in Mount & Blade.  They are generally weaker than the other tier troops, but they are easy to get and train.   They will have sub-standard to standard equipment with only the finest conscripts getting anything metal.   These will include Infantry, Missile and Cavalry units.   

Tier 2 Troops:  Faction Troops

These troops are the more powerful faction troops available to the player.  These are only available to sworn lords of a faction, so you must be a member of the faction to recruit them.  They will be more costly than the Tier 1 troops to get and maintain, but they will be much more skilled in the arts of war and have excellent gear and armor.  They will be purchased from either cities or castles of their faction.   These powerful units will include Infantry, Missile and Cavalry units.

Tier 3 Troops:  Faction Heroes(?)

I don't have this one totally nailed down, but I have two trains of thought.   These units will either be named faction heros that can only be acquired from the faction leader, or very specialized troops, such as Kingsguard or high end Knights.   They would be extremely expensive and powerful in they were standard units such as a Kingsguard.   If it was a faction hero, say Sandor Clegane for the Lannisters, he would be a fully controllable party member like any other hero.   Just more badass.    Like I said, I had not decided on this, but like the idea and would like to come up with a way to do one or th other. 


Sellsword Troops

I would also like to have a detailed and extensive Sellsword tree for those that don't wish to join a faction to have the resources to compete.   They should be balanced out by their expense to maintain for the higher end Sellswords.  This line will take some thought though, so I will leave any detail to further discussion.   I feel the Sellswords play a fairly large role in Mr. Martin's world, so they should in ours as well. 



Anyways, these are my general ideas on troops.  Clegane, don't hate me if you have done a ton of work already, but I seriously think we should discuss the issue further and come up with a new system if it works well.   I don't think this above system will be too hard to accomplish.   Lets discuss though.  Do we like it or hate it, etc.

[Clegane]

Well we can re-do the entire troops trees better now than later. I like that system so, basically how would the troop trees will be arranged now, i was going with a vanilla like tree but i can see it is nor awesome nor exciting compared to what you guys propose. Also i was having some trouble with the equipment theme for each faction, i supposed they pretty much had the same except Ironmen(Viking theme), Stark(not sure about this one) or Dorne(arab-ish theme).

[Kiado]

There is a lot to talk about if we are going to change it, so we might as well get started.  I would say we probably need to classify a theme for each faction.  I don't know whether to see Dorne as an Arab like empire or a Spanish peninsula type Spanish/Arab hybrid.   Here are my thoughts on themes:

Factions:
King on the Iron Throne = European
King in the North = European or Later Era Danish
King in Highgarden = European
King in the Narrow Sea (Stannis) = European
King of the Iron Isles = Viking
House Arryn = European
Dorne (House Martell) = Spanish/Portuguese or Arab?

Here are some basics on my thoughts on the Troops.   Start small right?  We need to setup a base to build on.  That will make building quicker and easier.

Tier 1 = Level 5 to Level 25 -  Cloth, Leather/Hide, and some Mail Armors - Standard Weaponry - Base cost: 10
Tier 2 = Level 26 to Level 35 - Mail and above Armors -  Better Weapons - Base Cost: 300?/Faction
Tier 3 = Level 38 to Level 40 -  High End Armors - High End Weapons - Base Cost: 1200/Faction/Faction Leader

Sellswords = Level 15 to Level 35

Lords = Level 41 to 45
Non-Lord Heroes = Level 35 to 45

Here is how I see a standard for Tier 1.  There can be many branches, these are just the level standards. 

x	x	Recruit	(Level 4-8)	x
x	Infantry	Level 9-14	Missle	x
Cavalry	Infantry2	Level 15-20	Missle2	Missle Cavalry
Cavalry2	Infantry3	Level 21-25	Missle3	Missle Cavalry2

or

x	x	Recruit	(Level 4-8)	x
Cavalry	Infantry	Level 9-14	Missle	x
Cavalry2	Infantry2	Level 15-20	Missle2	Missle Cavalry
Cavalry3	Infantry3	Level 21-25	Missle3	Missle Cavalry2

I would say that Highgarden troops would be at the low end levels, so Recruits are level 4, Infantry level 9, Infantry2 level 15, Infantry3 level 21.   It sounds good on paper, but I am not sure that a small level difference like that will make much of an impact on the battles.

Tier 2 - These could could include all or none, depending on what we can classify for a special troop for a faction.

Level 26-30	Cavalry1	Infantry1	Missle1
Level 31-35	Cavalry2	Infantry2	Missle2

Tier 3 I am still not sure how we should do. 

[Clegane]

Well Spanish/Portuguese is the same look/equipment as European (France,England,Italy) so Arab (Turkish look perhaps) would be it. We will also need a lot of custom equipment for everyone in general.

[Kiado]

Well Spanish/Portuguese is the same look/equipment as European (France,England,Italy) so Arab (Turkish look perhaps) would be it. We will also need a lot of custom equipment for everyone in general.

Yeah, I guess there isn't much difference.  I guess I just don't see them as Arab exactly, but don't know where else to place them. 

[tommylaw]

shouldn't jaime lannister or sandor clegane be awesome?

[Kiado]

shouldn't jaime lannister or sandor clegane be awesome?

They are awesome. 

What you said there is where my Tier 3 Named Heroes idea hits a road block.  There are some Lords that must be lords to fill out the games armies.  We need quite a few of them and that doesn't leave many options for recruiting heroes.  I am thinking maybe Tier 3 troops should be something along the lines of Kingsguard, Lionguard, Reaver Captain, etc. 

[Clegane]

We should leave Kingsguard ,if they should appear at all, as NPC. Example: Jaime is one of them, though not a good example because he will be a lord of the Lannister faction.

[Kiado]

I am just trying to think of something that makes Tier 3 unique, but not so unique that you need to have them named characters.  Maybe the better idea would be to drop the Tier 3 idea, and just have Tier 1 and Tier 2, but make them pretty expansive and thorough.

I also saw that Garnier has recruitment pools and other things in his mod, so there is a way to limit the number that can be recruited.  So if you had say Kingsguard as troops instead of NPC's you could limit them to only 7 maximum on the map I think.   Then again, I also agree they should be more NPC's than anything, but to what end within the game?  Can the player recruit them or can they travel in the lords party?  As far as I know or have seen (without fact checking) I haven't seen a Lord party with an NPC in it.  Anyone know if that is possible?

[tommylaw]

yes it is, i was mucking around with dialogue, and i managed to 'buy' a lord, he was effectively a companion

[Kiado]

yes it is, i was mucking around with dialogue, and i managed to 'buy' a lord, he was effectively a companion

I know you can do that.  What I mean is could they be a party member of a non-player party? 

[Jheral]

We should leave Kingsguard ,if they should appear at all, as NPC. Example: Jaime is one of them, though not a good example because he will be a lord of the Lannister faction.

Agreed. The Kingsguard guard the king(duh), and the royal family. As such, they shouldn't be anywhere but with the king (well, Jamie doesn't follow that rule much, but even so...). I really don't see any of them running around taking orders from the captain of what is essentially a band of mercenaries (regardless of which flag you fly). I suppose you could make them available to the player if you made it possible to take the Iron Throne for yourself, but going down that route would really wreck the backstory, which, in my opinion, is a bad idea.

-snip-

I think you're drawing the lines between the groups a bit too clearly, there. Were it up to me I would have more overlap between the groups(in part so that you don't end up with only Tier 2 troops). The reasons for this is that I would want to emphasize that these people belong to different 'layers' of society, with some having greater access to training and equipment, but still keep the element of experience, so that high-rank troops from the first tier are still very good to have around, and better than the lower ranks of the higher tiers; just not as good (or as expensive) as the higher ranks.

This might be a somewhat rough outline, but here's what I might decide to do (it would be different for the Ironborn and Dorne; maybe for the North as well):

Tier 1 = Level 1 to Level 20 - "Common" Soldiers, as it were. Lowborn, not especially well trained or educated. Lower ranks would basically be conscripts, higher ranks being veterans who have been fighting for a long time.

Cloth and Leather primarily, some mail/lamellar for the higher ranks of melee infantry and cavalry(might depend on faction, come to think of it). Recruitable in villages, as in native. Favour spears/axes over swords/maces for the melee troops; generally not great weapon/armour quality overall, though should be reasonable good at higher levels(btw, skirmisher, for lack of a better word, is something in-between melee and archer infantry; both melee and ranged capability, but less suited to either than the more focused troop types). 

Level 1	Recruit	-	-	-	-
Level 4-7	Light Infantry1	Light Skirmisher1	-	-	-
Level 8-11	Light Infantry2	Light Skirmisher2	Light Archer1	Light Cavalry1	-
Level 12-15	Medium Infantry	Medium Skirmisher1	Light Archer2	Light Cavalry2	Ranged Cavalry1
Level 16-20	Heavy Infantry	Medium Skirmisher2	Medium Archer	Medium Cavalry	Ranged Cavalry2

Tier 2 = Level 10 to Level 30 - Higher birth, better training and equipment; more professional soldiers, if you would. Only available from whatever faction you're in. Higher maintainance, and not as much diversity, but greater quality in equipment; mail/lamellar and partial plate for the heavier types, better weapon and horse types and quality.

Level 10-14	Medium Infantry1	-	-
Level 15-19	Medium Infantry2	Medium Archer1	Medium Cavalry1
Level 20-24	Heavy Infantry1	Medium Archer 2	Medium Cavalry2
Level 25-30	Heavy Infantry2	Heavy Archer	Heavy Cavalry

Tier 3 = Companions (as in; Heroes) - Generally in the 15-20 level range to start with. Essentially squires and knights of lower rank, though I would make sure to get some other companions in the mod as well; just not as troops recruitable from your faction. These should only be available when the player has both a very high relation with both the faction leader/marshal and the faction, and only one or two of them (and they should leave if you decide to leave the faction, unless they like you a lot). Very good starting equipment, and good weapon skills. Not any characters from the books, though; that way madness and a broken setting lies.


Feel free to complain, criticise or ridicule.