Woo, someone different!

Question - are these chaps strictly the Berbers of the desert, or the Mauritanians as well. Adding a bit of Roman influence through the Mauritanians could provide an interesting mix.

And we HAVE to provide a better building tree than vanilla BI.

Yay! New faction!

I'm getting kind of tired of the Roman influence bit with almost every single faction we've worked on. Even if the Mauritanians are included in the Berber faction, I suggest an AoR/Merc presence.

RE: Berber Trader building chain

Perhaps add a unique public order bonus on top of the regular trade and agent recruitment functions? It just seems to me that the nomadic Berbers rely quite heavily on these traders as a social gathering venue. And/ Or we could copy the coffeehouse from Muslim factions in M2TW while we're at it, eh?

I really just meant making them considerably more 'civilised' than their Vanilla peers. And giving them an ok naval capacity to represent the ports of Mauritania and the shipbuilding prowess their.

Some sort of crazy desert tribe berserker could be fun... although I'm not sure exactly what basis there is for that. I just remember some source somewhere talking about a 'Saracen' slitting a man's throat and drinking the blood. Not the Berbers, necessarily.

... allready during Justitians rule the country (Spain) was suffering from raids of the Berbers of the desert.

Although Justitian didn't rule Spain at the start date of this mod, it might still be interesting to place a (light) Berber raiding army already in Spain at the start of the game to symbolise this.

About the buildings: maybe the "building" called oasis? it requires the resource desert and acts like a farm?

I really just meant making them considerably more 'civilised' than their Vanilla peers. And giving them an ok naval capacity to represent the ports of Mauritania and the shipbuilding prowess their.

Works for me!

Some sort of crazy desert tribe berserker could be fun...

Nah, a tribal champion unit, maybe, or a retinue member, but a desert berserker unit doesn't sit well with me.

Putting a Berber raid army in Spain sounds exciting, with some ships to support, of course.

Don't know about building an oasis, since they're naturally formed rather than man-made... maybe something closer to a oasis settlement or an oasis village?

Don't know about building an oasis, since they're naturally formed rather than man-made... maybe something closer to a oasis settlement or an oasis village?

One has to find the oasis first, somebody can make a drawing of a route to an oasis. The oasis settlement/village can be second tier. Or we just give them a well.

Another thing we can do is give an extra requirement to the barracks. Desert area's aren't inhabitat by a lot of people. The most of the people live by a well/oasis/river. So we can give the higher tier barracks the requirement of water nearby.

Alternatively, limit construction of farms in desert regions for all factions, but give the Berbers an 'Oasis settlement' tree that provides population growth in desert regions, a small trade boost and then enables some camel units or something? And maybe caravans.

Giving an advantage to desert natives on their home turf over outsiders? Won't say that's a bad idea.

Camel Traders as one of the tiers of the Trader tree could be another idea, no?

That could work, yeah.

Incidentally, vanilla recruitment list:

Peasants
Berber Axemen
Hillmen
Mountain men
Desert Archers
Camel Raiders
Berber Lancers
Moorish Raiders
Horse archers
General


Or at least I think that is fairly comprehensive. A total rewrite of their names list is fairly important too, as is a new faction symbol. I propose a camel with some stuff of its back, or a man leading a camel.

How about two humps under a crescent moon?

Incidentally, vanilla recruitment list:

Peasants
Berber Axemen
Hillmen
Mountain men
Desert Archers
Camel Raiders
Berber Lancers
Moorish Raiders
Horse archers
General

Did the Berbers go for ranged before melee? Cavalry before infantry? BI made them seem like a slightly beefed up Numidia, with proper melee cav and good missile support. Infantry is still a mess though and I'm not quite sure if they've managed to change that by 500. I can see them keeping a strong guerilla-style presence though.

From what little I have read of them in the time period, they were nothing special.

Let us not use too much time and thought with these people- they are basically a filler-faction for the Caliphate to wipe out, while keeping the Copts and Vandals in check for a bit.

Perhaps have a Berber Brigand/Pirate unit? Slightly higher than normal attack, poor morale and poor armor. Recruited from the harbor.

And perhaps give the Berbers additional, beefed up units if they capture cities with barracks/stables that are of the Caliphate type. Caliphate arrives, builds cities with it's type of buildings (are they unique or just another Eastern style culture?) and if the Berbers capture a settlement with a Caliphate barracks, they get Berber Spearmen, which would have decent stats.

I like that idea- Berbers can build up to Level 2 barracks, but have troops up to Tier 4- which means the only way they can get those troops is when they take a city that has a barracks of that level already built.

This would simulate their rise from desert nobodies to the powerful tribes they became under Islam.

I do wonder if we should be changing the starting date of this mod, sometimes...

We don't want to limit the Berbers too much; they are meant to be a difficult to eradicate pain in the backside for the Visigoths and the Vandals, not to mention fun to play!

Why waste a proper faction slot on a "filler-faction"? Although you're quite right in that our time and effort can be better spent elsewhere - this whole planning and research part will have gone on for an entire year come September, and I'm not even sure we have enough skilled labour to commence production at the end of it.

As for the Berbers (who did eventually turn into the Moors in a way), I support Punic's ideas.

Got any other interesting ideas to share, anyone? If not, let's just move on, shall we?

So why don't we just open ALL the threads already??

The General unit definitely needs changing. And I think SOME heavy units are in order...

We do not open all the threads already because that would make a moderator mess and create massive confusion as people read in one thread and reply in another, plus making it very difficult to keep everything straight.

Not everybody is as brilliant as you. A chain is only as strong as its weakest link- in this case, me. And I like to keep things orderly, else a big mess results.

So two at a time, as we already decided, please.

Jajaja, brilliant is not a word I would use to describe myself. And I appreciate the issues with keeping many open - even with our few we've had some overlap.

But the fewer we have open, the slower we progress and the faster we lose participants... which slows down the process even more! Very soon list of participants will read Terikel, GKA, Drak...

Particularly when the threads are as uninspired as this one. I don't think it's finished, but I think we should leave it and come back to it later.

I think as long as we still post regularly, others will post too aside from the regular 20-posts-per-topic posters.


Anyone have any ideas for an intro?

Well they turned into the Moors......after the were conquered and converted to Islam.

I remember reading somewhere that traders and caravans were often thieved off of by members of some tribe...but I can't remember the name. So maybe, give the Berbers a smaller unit specializing in ambush and surprise, like the arcani or praeventores.

I'll try to write up a intro sometime before Monday.

We are many peoples, different, yet the same. Some of us rose to become the Phoenicians, who spread their colonies far from the Levant to dot the coasts of the Middle Sea from East to West. Others, like the Carthaginians, rose from these colonies to found great empires. And others, like the Jwara, never became more than a tribe of nomads wandering the desert searching for sustenance. Yet the great ones fell to the Romans one by one, leaving those desert-dwelling tribes the last of our people.

Five centuries of Roman rule along the coast changed nothing. Our people still dwell in the desert, in the thousand-mile swath between Roman North Africa and Roman Egypt, and in the sandy hills of what was once our kingdom of Numidia and west to The Great Ocean where once Atlantis rested upon the waves. We exist also in the Roman territories, though those there are not as free as we of the desert.

The Vandals came and replaced the Romans in old Carthage, while the Copts in Egypt plot to throw out Byzantine Orthodoxy and replace it with their own brand of Christianity. This will lead to a struggle, one which we desert tribes await with fierce glee. This is our coming moment, our chance to swarm out of the desert to the coast, and make the Berber Nation again widespread and this time, prosperous as well.

Intro done.

Cut!

This is a wrap!

Haven't been looking at this mod for quite a while.

What's the unit roster for the moors in mtw2? Maybe some of those can be used. I believe there were some tuareg camels or something like that.

btw, I agree with those how say this mod progresses to slow. This mod was started at the same time as my age of empires 1 mod, and that mod has already had it first two playtest rounds. And I made most of the ideas and do most of the work myself. Maybe that's what makes it faster. Less discussion, more actual working.

We haven't even moved out of the discussion phase. We get tied down with nitpicks, and the infighting lessens the appeal to those not involved in the spats.

But on the other hand, a lot of that nitpicking results in some really killer ideas!

I admit my part in the slowdown- as one can imagine, I have become rather heavily involved in other matters, and nobody has stepped in to take up the slack and keep it moving forward.

I will try to fix that soon. I have about another two weeks of heavy duty work elsewhere to do, then I will try to kickstart this Harley and get her moving.

Perhaps move through the ideas a bit faster. When you start to actually playtest your mod, you will see what works and what doesn't. And you can always change/add/remove units and buildings in later versions.

I admit my part in the slowdown- as one can imagine, I have become rather heavily involved in other matters, and nobody has stepped in to take up the slack and keep it moving forward.

To be fair Terikel, there are three of us regularly involved in discussion, and all three of us have been flagging recently. We all play a part in the slowdown.

Plus, well, things haven't been fast since the Norse and the WRE, some months ago now.

This faction is done, so I shall close it.

This may be re-opened upon request.