It looks interesting, I'm a more of a Modern military person, but when this is done I will definitely download it.

I must ask, will this be a mod that replaces normal RON or a mod put in the mods folder?

Introducing a new terror on the high seas:



More to come soon!

[This message has been edited by VelvetClaw (edited 03-16-2012 @ 06:03 PM).]

It should just be a mods folder mod. The biggest changes would be replacing the interface file if I want to make new unit icons. However if a CTW is made for this I'll post two versions: the non CTW version and the CTW version. The CTW version will require you to replace data and tribe files which I'll provide backup for.

For now though it is purely for the mods menu.

Man, You see I like making scenarios, and nobody makes mods that replace the files so i can do that, Oh well, I will enjoy it anyways. Good work guys, cya later.

So are you saying you would rather have a mod that replaces files? If so, I have a plan!

Its very easy to make a file replacing mod. All you have to do is move the data and tribes files that I've modded into the main data and tribes folders. That should then work. Once you do that you can make some scenarios for them, post them, and I'll include them with my mod. I will upload it as a mod-menu mod but I'll give instructions so that a person can use the mod as a non mod menu one so they can play your scenarios and hopefully a CTW if I get around to it. This gives them the choice of using my mod as a file friendly quick battle only mod or a file replacing one that enables tons of extra goodies.

Okay, I guess I should own up on something.

I was never a good artist. I haven't really gone past ligne claire, and have been trying HARD to escape it myself, but seeing the detailed work we're doing for Rise of Kings and Rise of the Ancients, I realised it's not helping my case.

So here is the second instalment of concept artwork for Rise of Kings, featuring none less than 4 naval units: (from clockwise bottom) dromon, sloop, lantern galleys, corsair —


Our naval system has an interesting approach, where the most powerful ships require non-library research in order to be built, and that with the right research, players can build combinations of up to 4 light and heavy ships — this being 2 low-cost, lower-tier ships and 2 high-cost, higher-tier ships. However, for the latter, a certain government upgrade is required, meaning that most players must be careful of the effects their governments have on their navies: totalitarian governments will be able to impress crews for heavy ships, while more liberal ones will have to call upon privateers to furnish their light fleets.

This means that you have a choice of massing flotillas of cheap units (consisting of war cogs and sloops) or you can invest in more modern warships (which have a higher cost, but are more effective at the roles they are specialised in). For instance, you could build up a fleet of war cogs and sloops, and then choose either Absolutism (replacing Socialism) to create lantern galleys to mass sea power, or you can research Legalism (the [3] green government upgrade) and rely on very fast ships to harass your opponent's merchant fleet and destroy his far inferior light ships and fire ships.

During the Dark Age [1], the only vessels that all nations may build (except for a few) are dromons and fire boats. Dromons are ranged oared vessels that for the backbone of the navies of most nations in the Dark Age, roaming the seas looking for intruders and fire boats, against which they are extremely powerful because of their high fire rate and speed. However, in later ages, all factions can upgrade dromons to barques, which have fewer oars but better tack and speed, or elect to construct siege ships (with very powerful attack and range, but poor rate of fire) or heavy ships (which are highly adept at destroying all other ships except fire ships).

In the Imperial Age [3], light ships become smaller and are no longer oared vessels, but have better sails and are speedier. The sloop is the [3] upgrade of the [2] barque, and is more powerful as a result. However, it is not the ultimate light ship. That role rests with the brig (not shown).

Lantern galleys are the most powerful ships in the Imperial Age, especially favoured by Muslims and Christians for naval supremacy in the Mediterranean and the Baltic. They are all considered as a "war cog deluxe", in that while they are slightly more resistent and faster than war cogs, their greatest asset is in their greater cargo space and length, allowing for a complement quadruple forward-facing cannon, which are drastically powerful with respect to their payload and their reach. One galley could easily take on two or three war cogs in a shot-for-shot battle, and a mass of them can take on Venetian galleasses.

The downside is that lantern galleys cost a great deal more, and are only available to totalitarian governments due to the need for impressment of rowers and centralisation of power to provide the manpower for this mighty vessel, and it is still just as vulnerable to fire ship attack as its lesser sister, the war cog and its predecessor, the roundship. More relaxed regimes might settle for the brig, which is the antithesis of the lantern galley.

Corsairs and fustas are light ships built by the Christian Siclians and their neighbours, the Moors of Northern Africa. They are similar to brigs (which are the fastest mainstream warship) and sloops built by other nations, but come with a difference: they deal greater damage, and produce loot from sinking the opponent's shipyards, transports and civilian shipping.

Unlike brigs which require Age [3] green government upgrades, the corsair can be built immediately once you have upgraded your Age [2] barques to the lower-tier fustas. This makes the Moors and Sicilians dreaded opponents at sea as they can build both light and heavy higher-tier ships, while most nations are generally constrained to just one.

[This message has been edited by VelvetClaw (edited 10-31-2010 @ 08:30 PM).]

More concept art for Rise of Kings:



IMAGES from left to right: Muslim jundi; Slavic axeman/Lithuanian(and Armenian mercenary)/Saracen mamluk

Islamic armies have always been known for two things: raiding and guerilla tactics, and being adepts at desert warfare. Muslim infantry and cavalry often come with less armour than other nations, but their ability to perform operations in areas with high attrition costs makes them invaluable.

This is a jundi, an Arab soldier. Jundis are known for bearing less armour than their European rivals into battle, but have the ability to resist attrition, making them useful for raiding and plundering, but poor at taking This warrior may be either the Moorish jundi champion, or serve the Saracens as a jundi dromedary or a jundi pikeman.

Slavic axemen are Polish unique units which replace the light swordsmen employed by many other contemporary nations in the Dark Age.

In the Castle Age, Armenians by a select number of nations. They share the same equipment as the Slav axeman

Although he does not train as fast, he is known for his massive amount of hitpoints, thus making him a bit of a moving mantlet. Fortunately, Polish players can rely on spearmen and Georgian auxiliary archers (by virtue of their ability to generate food and wealth better than others) in to survive the first few moments of the game, so they can be confident that once they train a body of axemen, they can use them as the advance force to form a shield wall against the enemy's archers and pikemen, with cavalry in escort.

Similarly, players using Armenian mercenaries can use them as a shield wall in order to interdict enemy archers and cavalry, until they can muster new units to the fight.

The Saracens, following Turkish fashion, have the ability of replacing jundis with Mamluks in the Imperial Age. Mamluks are tougher than Jundis, and share their penchant for being more lightly armoured than other units, but have the ability to resist attrition, making them useful for raiding and plundering. This warrior may be a mamluk dromedary or a mamluk pikeman.

[This message has been edited by VelvetClaw (edited 12-02-2010 @ 08:27 PM).]

Here's the Venetian/Byzantine temple.



This temple/cathedral is the culmination of several influences - Byzantine, Middle Eastern and Roman.

Hello, more concept art for European [3] units:



- arbalest archer;
- English champion knight; and
- espadachin

The advent of the use of gunpowder on the battlefield and the chaos of plagues and warfare in the 13th to the 15th centuries now means that many European soldiers have now abandoned use of plate armour and instead adopted more cheaper equipment.

Espadachines are inspired from the Spanish use of rodeleros: swordsmen equipped with a large shield. This type of warrior is equipped with a brigandine jacket made of metal plates, studs and leather as well as parts of armour salvaged from feudal knights which were too damaged for further use. He also has traded in his square shield in favour of a buckler for speed and mobility.

Espadachines are the mainstream [3] unit of most nations, yet they are quite fragile if fighting against their less lightly-armoured Muslim counterparts, the Moorish jundi, outside of their home borders, and can be easily overwhelmed by masses of suicide soldiers (who although weaker are easier to amass) and landsknechten (who are stronger and are trained faster).

The 13th to 15th centuries saw an increase in the use of plate armour and advancement of armour techniques, which were then adopted eagerly by both the English champion knight and the French gendarmes of the Hundred Years' War.

This man is armed in a slightly modified form of the so-called "Italian-style" white armour. In addition to plate mail sections, he also wears chainmail to protect other parts of his body which cannot be effectively mailed. He also wears a surcoat (depicted in white here).

British champion knights are some of the best light infantry units there are in the game. Although slightly less resistent to the impact of a heavy lance from a knight, they do well in fending off attacks from light cavalry and archers, and in large numbers should give any pikemen or halberdiers some reason for pause...

The arbalest is a more sophisticated form of the crossbow, equipped with a trigger mechanism. Its bearers also have equipped themselves in a fashion similar to that of their light infantry counterparts to counteract the challenges faced on late Medieaval battlefields. Like all archers, the arbalest is extremely subceptible to melée cavalry.

[This message has been edited by VelvetClaw (edited 11-15-2010 @ 08:07 PM).]

Hungarian Dark Age rider: the Avar

It was always thought that the first Hungarians were descended from the Huns who invaded sometime in the 4th century AD. Although this man is not a Hun, he still is somewhat biologically and linguistically related to them and his Hungarian descendants. His belt is of fox-fur, and he bears a wicker shield.

Hungarian Dark Age Avars are cheaper than most heavy cavalry units, but have no armour. This means that although they perform well in an anti-infantry role, they cannot take on heavy cavalry or infantrymen unless with proper escorts, and should never be relied on wholly.

Russian medieval heavy rider: this guy should be the [2] boyarnik, but once you see the next piece of art you might think otherwise....

The Russian bogatyry or heavy cavalry was commonly staffed only by nobles, with heavy cavalry requiring those with greatest influence and prosperity due to the heavy costs of the upkeep or their equipment. In the beginning there was an elite guard called the druzhina, which were mostly a ruler's picked bodyguard who were wholly bound the prince or kynaz whom they were supposed to protect. By the time of the Mongol Occupation, however, the druzhina had been replaced with landed nobles known as boyars.

Russian heavy cavalry, unlike their commonplace vsadniky counterparts, are known for being substantially faster to train, but tend to be slightly slower than other units, especially Byzantine Companion cavalry.

[This message has been edited by VelvetClaw (edited 11-17-2010 @ 08:54 AM).]

MAGYAR LANCER and ARAB DARK AGE BOWMAN

This is the new lineup of units for this week!

DARK AGE ARAB BOWMAN

I kinda overdid the leg hair there, but nevertheless, this is your average Dark Age archer employed by the Turks and Moors (Saracens employ zanji archers instead). He is armed with a medium-length bow, and has an appliqué belt that serves to protect him from missiles and to ease the strain of moving and removing things from his sash.

This cavalryman is a Hungarian, and also reflects his Avar predecessors in his facial features and his helmet - he is distinguishable on the battlefield by his tall straight plumes. His horse is covered with appliqué armour, most useful against missiles but he still does not wear a great deal of armour, so he is slightly weaker than most nations' other heavy cavalry - he is more of an offensive unit suited to rushing as opposed to a defensive role, like the Avar.

hey velvet and super!

look what i find about the Tercios



perfect guide ride? i will make the skins with this base... because the only images i find are this guys...

what do you say?

Hi,

Thse look a tad modern, Andres....be wary that we also have a French musketeer, too, so you'd best be careful.

But I note that these could do well as the Spanish Yellow Guards for the Rise of Empires mod... for practice, try tinkering with the tercios musketeer and the tercios pikeman, and maybe the French Royal musketeer corps too. See what you can do.

Note that we are reusing the old arquebusier skin for all European gunpowder infantry, so if you are going to produce skins for the French and Spanish musketeer UUs, you should be careful. The French and Spanish musketeer UUs must be sufficiently distinguishable from the gunpowder infantry units of other nations.

Also, can you help out super7700 by reskinning the European heavy knight to form the following units?

Royal Gendarmes (French)
Grunenwald veteran (Polish)
Hospitaller knight (esto es el Gonfalonero)

[This message has been edited by VelvetClaw (edited 11-22-2010 @ 09:18 PM).]

The Tercio musketeer can be similar to the vanilla tercios and same with the French musketeer. Would that work?

Super7700, that was what I was thinking. When I used to play Cossacks, the musketeer unit used by Austria and Spain resembled that of the tercio unit from RoN and the other musketeers (save for the Netherlands) used the self-same image as the guys in black hats
that means, you can use the tercios skin for the rodelero, the tercios pike and the tercios musket, leaving the French to use the musket skins from Andres' work (add a cross somewhere and he forms a French musketeer, awesome!)

Btw, what units can I give you now? I suppose...

Dark age infantry skins - taken care of for now...
Medieval age infantry skins - easily taken care of.
Imperial age - done!

Dark age cavalry:
This one is difficult, since you don't have a javelineer model, and I am unsure if you like having a turcopole skin for the cavalry archer.... but we could well agree that a norman knight should be used for the dark age heavy cav unit.
Medieval age cavalry:
The knight is the French classic age chevalier. The light cavalryman is the medieval skin....(which leaves us with skirmishers and cav archers again >.< )

Imperial era cavalry:
Heavy knight skin, and elite light cav skin. Easy.

So that means I owe you 6 cavalry units. I guess it should be easy, especially if you would like to recycle the light cavalry skins for the javelineer. Also......I think I will have to work out the cavalry archer, as his horse is being used by the Hungarians and the Russians too.

[This message has been edited by VelvetClaw (edited 11-26-2010 @ 03:13 AM).]

The French Chevalier wouldn't work for a Castle Age knight in my opinion; I think we can just use the vanilla medieval age knight. What is the rodelero?

Hi,

Rodeleros are Spanish sword-and-buckler infantry. They are fast-moving units, and are the only light infantry unit specialised for taking out gunpowder infantry. You do not neeed to do a lot for rodeleros - just take the tercio skin, and give it a small shield and a sword, like the espadachine.

Is the Rodelero for your mod because there are no Spanish unique light infantry guys for my one?

looks cool, when do you think we will get to play it.

It will take a while, especially since it is one of my first mods but I will be fine. I will start it in the Christmas holidays so maybe in January or February I will release a beta. However I haven't decided on which nations to include for the beta. Probably the nations from one of the regions such as Asia and the Arabic region.

Here is the main Rise of Kings page where you can find out more about this mod idea.

Hi,

the office has been laying it thick on me, so it will be difficult for me to provide illustrations for all, but can we recycle some skins for the following units:

[2] cavalry archer
Since these are in fact turcopole units, can we give the [2] cavalry archer the Georgian cavalryman skin featured elsewhere in the forum? I am intent on using him as an archer unit, too, but seeing that we have so many unit designs all over the place, I suggest taking him, and then combining him with the Hungarian [1] unit - a cav unit - to form a cav archer. His horse like the Avar has a bear/wolf skin for a caparison.

As for the [3] cavalry archer, I think it won't hurt to re-use the [2] Hungarian UU, minus plumes.

I am currently working on the Georgian archers as well as the skirmishers and the jinetes line, but it is hard having only 1 day of weekend as opposed to 2 last time. Stay tuned though.

So you want to have the horse archers use only one skin across all nations using that unit for each age? For the age 2 or 3 mounted skirmisher we could use the vanilla medieval age horse archer skin. Also in the UU list can you make a small change? Just make the

[This message has been edited by super7700 (edited 12-01-2010 @ 11:05 PM).]

YEs, because we are already swimming in unit models. While it is good to distinguish both sides, however, I think that the cavalry archer used by certain states can use one single skin, since the Turks dominated cavalry archery in a good part of the world.
These are the nations (currently) with cavalry archers:

Burgundy
Sweden
Russia
Turkey
Japan
Hungary
Poland
Bohemia
Byzantium
Sicily

(UU cavalry archers: Mongols, Saracens. Javelineers used by everyone else; Andalus, Spain and Portugal recruit jinetes cavalry)

Make a change? you want to create 2 separate cavalry archers, ie:

Western cavalry archers: mounted ceithernn => hobelars => Irish cavalry

Eastern cavalry archers: Caucasus horse archer => Turcopole archer => Palace Gamekeeper?

[This message has been edited by VelvetClaw (edited 12-02-2010 @ 02:33 AM).]

whoops I forget that I was writing something! Well when writing that post I realized I wasn't so sure about what I was writing if it was right and looked up some stuff and came back and saw the reply and posted it thinking i had it finished with it.

What I was saying about the change is that for the unit lines instead of having the fire lancers as the age 3 chinese unique crossbowmen, they should be the age 2 unique gunpowder infantry that upgrades to Jiao's Matchlock guards in age 3. Does that mean we give China an Age 3 unique crossbowmen?

And no don't worry about that europe and asia horse archers. But if the mounted skirmishers don't work at all we may have to resort to using horse archers for all nations.

For cavalry strategy I was thinking of making it something like the following situation: so in the Dark Ages the light cavalry and skirmishers are fast moving but weak raider/scouting cavalry good for skirmishing and raiding undefended enemies (remember the skirmishers have a bonus against civilians). The lancers are reserved for the big battles because they have better attack and armour. However in the castle age light cavalry become stronger and better armoured but they are a bit slower due to all the armour meaning they are useful in proper battles while skirmishers, still lightly armoured but very speedy are best for, well, skirmishing. In age 3 skirmishers are still best for raiding but have similar armour to the light cavalry making them much more useful in proper battles. So in age 1 units are better suited to what players usually do in the early parts of the game: raid. In age 3 though the units are suited for mass scale warfare because the later stages are when players are able to build huge armies.

[This message has been edited by super7700 (edited 12-02-2010 @ 04:09 AM).]

Hi,

That would be quite complicated, but let me think for a while...

Normally, like all gunpowder units, Jiao's Matchlock Guards would cost food and knowledge, and require some science upgrades before they can be deployed. Would that mean that the Fire Lance would also have to be subject to the same? I was really hoping that the Chinese could at least have one more [3] unit other than the light infantry and cavalry archer line :P

ALSO, found some artwork for the [2] siege unit for the Bohemians: