Rise of the Mongols - v0.4 beta released. (Nov 20, 2015)

[BiteNibbleChomp]

You'll be pleased to know then that the walls of Delhi are crumbling!

_delhi.JPG (173.54 KiB) Viewed 6472 times

Also, if you have any wounded units by the end of the Punjab scenario, be sure to bring them to the next one - I give you a chance to heal them (fresh recruits found at the kirultai for Ogedei's promotion to Khan) in the Throne Claims mission.

- BNC

[BiteNibbleChomp]

Attend the kirutai to ensure that Ogedei becomes Khan!

_throne map.JPG (96.13 KiB) Viewed 6458 times

- BNC

[BiteNibbleChomp]

Ever wondered what the entire Mongol horde could look like upon Ogedei's election?

_80coreunits.JPG (170.74 KiB) Viewed 6443 times

I think this is pretty much the largest the horde will ever become (there are 80 in the picture, out of a maximum 90 deployable and 103 total)

This should also be the last of the desert until the Egypt/Middle East mission.

- BNC

[captainjack]

When you say horde, you mean horde!

[BiteNibbleChomp]

When you say horde, you mean horde!

Somehow I don't think anyone will ever keep that whole mighty force together after Persia!

Now i'm working on Kaifeng - China has not been defeated yet!

- BNC

[BiteNibbleChomp]

https://www.mediafire.com/?ax1daewfpnvykau

v0.3 has been released!

The main focus of this update was to bring the Turkic Regions into the campaign, and so you get missions in Persia and India as well. Campaign now lasts until 1227, the death of Genghis Khan.

As usual I will find it helpful if you post your core force once you finish Throne Claims (I think its the 11th mission), so I can balance later ones (Korea especially) to fit in with everyone's average core. Though I don't expect many of you will survive Persia

- BNC

[Ice5643]

Hey BNC,

Just played up to the Great Wall today. So far Ive only lost a core melee cav unit, though this is because I only really use my horse archers and replayed a mission where I lost 2 of them. One thing to not with this mod is that first strike capability seems to be everything. This is because the horse archers are incredibly effective and there is no reinforcement so you have to crush as much of the enemy force as you can in the first turn of the engagement otherwise you take unsustainable losses. Its an interesting shift from the dynamic of the "normal" Panzer Corps, though my one criticism would be is that it makes badly damaged units pretty much worthless. This is not entirely realistic cause you should be able to combine damaged units into healthy ones (I understand that this is an engine limitation of course).

[captainjack]

Scout well, concentrate, strike hard and run away.
And repeat.

If you could find a Mongol training manual it would probably say pretty much the same, but these were also pretty much the tactics for all mobile missile troops from Egyptian chariots onwards.

It's pretty good going to develop a mod that rewards historic tactics!

As for no repair or recombination of damaged units - that's one of the things that encourages the use of the hit and run tactics.

[BiteNibbleChomp]

Damaged units can heal at a position in the Throne Claims mission (11), so damaging your units isn't the end of the world. Horse archers are effective until they fall below 5 anyway and with careful use won't suffer much damage anyway, so only peasants and melee cavs should be at serious risk of dying. However, peasants arrive from time to time anyway.

Good Luck at Beijing

- BNC

[BiteNibbleChomp]

The horde is back in force. Reports from the front say that the Jin emperor is trying to escape Kaifeng.

_kaifeng1.JPG (177.79 KiB) Viewed 6135 times

As always I am interested to know how people are coping with the campaign.

- BNC

[BiteNibbleChomp]

With the Emperor out of the way, the fall of the Jin dynasty is inevitable...

_caizhou.JPG (171.21 KiB) Viewed 6106 times

- BNC

[BiteNibbleChomp]

I should add that I'm testing with the assumption that no-one is losing anything and that all hidden reinforcements are collected. I often end up losing significant amounts of stuff so it seems unlikely that I could complete the whole campaign (up to England) using the normal rules. I intend to make the missions after 1241 quite difficult (and you thought Persia was nasty!), so it will be interesting to see how far people can make it!

- BNC

[BiteNibbleChomp]

Is there any samurai icons around here somewhere?

- BNC

[Akkula]

I could try to make some if you want Bite.

[BiteNibbleChomp]

I could try to make some if you want Bite.

I'm interested to see what you come up with

- BNC

[Akkula]

[BiteNibbleChomp]

Onward to Japan!

korea padimg.JPG (50.76 KiB) Viewed 6040 times

Technically Japan is a bonus area in the Korea map, where you can capture some Samurai that will be very useful in Europe. (Horse Archers aren't amazing against the 30kg of armour worn by knights!)

- BNC

[Ice5643]

Are any of the briefings in yet (I've decided to play the mod again after that happens so I get more immersed in the campaign)? I also just wanted to add that testing with a corps that suffers no losses may not be the best idea. Its more appropriate when you can reinforce anywhere rather than just in special reinforcement scenarios. This is because in this campaign I may not lose a unit, but if it drops below 5 points of strength its pretty much useless for a fair number of missions. I get the temptation to make the mod hard, but in the interests of average players (like me) you may want to test with that assumption that several units get damaged every mission, and that some non-mongol units even get destroyed completly. This may prevent players running up against a wall later in the campaign.

[BiteNibbleChomp]

Are any of the briefings in yet (I've decided to play the mod again after that happens so I get more immersed in the campaign)? I also just wanted to add that testing with a corps that suffers no losses may not be the best idea. Its more appropriate when you can reinforce anywhere rather than just in special reinforcement scenarios. This is because in this campaign I may not lose a unit, but if it drops below 5 points of strength its pretty much useless for a fair number of missions. I get the temptation to make the mod hard, but in the interests of average players (like me) you may want to test with that assumption that several units get damaged every mission, and that some non-mongol units even get destroyed completly. This may prevent players running up against a wall later in the campaign.

Historically the mongols only made it 2/3 the way through the campaign (to the Poland-Hungary mission), and their dwindling amount of forces was an important factor in this. Also, each mission only allows you to deploy 20-30 units out of a maximum 170 (or at least that is how many can be acquired by the point I am up to making!), so it is mostly peasants (which are plentiful) that will die - horse archers tend to do better and these are the main offensive unit for the campaign.

Again, the mongols could not reinforce from 'anywhere' - when campaigning in Europe they were 10,000 km away from their homeland - and in the days before jets and trucks it is very difficult to get a large amount of soldiers that sort of distance in the time of a scenario (usually ~2 months).

Instead I give you enormous amounts of peasants (44 up to Xiangyang), which are well suited to the cannon fodder role - even the real khans would agree to that. Most scenarios give a decent amount of reinforcements that are added to your core in place of your losses, with some more powerful ones rewarded for capturing more difficult regions (it is possible to capture some War Elephants in 'Throne Claims', and when I release Horea you can invade Japan for a stack of samurai!)

Although the mod is not meant to be hard for the sake of a difficult campaign, the nature of the time will require it to be so by the end - the final 7-8 missions revolve around an invasion of Europe - and general belief (from a 1000 post long thread I read a few weeks ago) is that the Holy Roman Empire would be a nightmare to invade. After Holy Rome you take on the Mamluke and Ayyubid empires, which were as close to a superpower as you can get in Medieval Europe, and then the pope will declare a crusade against you. None of these would be easy ventures - so the point of the campaign is simply to take as much land as you can!

As for testing, it is nearly impossible for me to track losses as well as reinforcements - and I'm not a very good player either (so will be massacred before 'average' ones would). Since the Kaifeng mission I have only been deploying 1/2 of the maximum amount of horse archers though, replacing them with peasants, melee cavs and the elephants - so it is unlikely that I have a brutal force that can wipe anything off the map. And how am I meant to test with damaged units - it is very easy to lose track of which unit was weak at the start of the map compared to the end?

Overall, I'm releasing the campaign in stages so that I can get feedback on how quickly the difficulty is ramping up (so I can make adjustments if necessary). No-one has told me much about anything after the Great Wall though - so I'm just guessing my way through China and Korea until I can be informed on where everyone is at! As a result of this, the mod is technically unfinished (probably Q1 2016 for the full thing), and so sounds, briefings and special graphics will wait until then.

- BNC

[BiteNibbleChomp]

Anybody home?

_03.JPG (48.69 KiB) Viewed 5903 times

- BNC