Me, Floris

Enewald: You'd be surprised! Actually the AI recruits men pretty fast, and I have still some men in reserve. My reserves are now depleted though, leaving Khudan undefended, so I'll have to refill them. The hardest part will be to find all my lords and gather them for a new round.

Nodscouterr: Me too. They did raid quite some villages in the enclaves though, but didn't munster an attack on them. They tried to recapture their lost lands with just a handfull of men each time.

FlorisDeVijfde: It wasn't indeed their best move. They could've forced me into surrender at that moment. But on the other hand, I had hit their small armies pretty hard: quite some jarls have lost their entire army in these two weeks. And they lost quite some territory: they were in quite a weakened position too. If I hadn't lost my army, I could have easily overrun them, since they seemed not to be able to muster a great army.

Alexspeed: The war changed face almost every chapter. From a Blitzkrieg to a manhunt to a strategic truce. I dodn't think they will be eager too: let's see how much I can prepare in this time.
Thanks! I'm still thinking how I should update all those mods and implement some cool new ones: it's getting quite a complicated story. But more on that when I finished it.
Good to hear that those are save . And that you could easily get your computer back up and running. And well, that quadcore sounds very nice! A little blessing at the misfortune of dead compunents. I bet that on your new system you could easily have battles with a thousand men on full resolution.

Thanks . Although I won't be able to finish it today, since I'll have to prepare for the Dungeons & Dragons session I'm hosting this evening, I'll try to finish it tomorrow.
I've saved the old mods, which I can easily copy if I install 1.125 again, which I saved too. I still have 1.113 and the mods I had used back then . If I want too, I can get easily back to that old days.

Hehe, you won't have any problems! I'd love to see a screenshot once you got everthing running.

Just to let you all know, I've finally updated my game and all the mods I use. I also had to abandon one, but on the other hand installed six new ones, including one I've made myself: Faction Arms Coloured v1.0. It does what the name says: on the TaleWorlds homepage, the arms of each faction are nicely coloured while in the game they are black and transparent. I replaced those ingame arms by the coloured ones.
I'll tell you more about the mods I use now in my next update (since I'll have to work today and tomorrow, I'll guess it will be not before the weekend before I post it).

Dear Diary,

Many good things have occurred during this truce. But now I realise it wasn't enough. Today the truce with the NOrds ends, but what have I done to prepare for a renewal of the fighting? I have squandered the past three weeks with niceties while I should have wondered about the Nords' next move. Will they attack, trying to recapture the two cities I took from them? Or will they wait, slowly building up their forces until they are ready? All I know is that I'm not ready. Not with all the changes of the past month. A revolution has been unleashed, an arms race started. And amidst of this all, I trade, and reform my country even further. Calradia is changing into something new, something no fortuneteller foresaw that it was possible to transform in.

On the positive side, my businessplan has finally come into fruition. I travelled to Dhirim and Veluca, where I told the masters of the local ironworks to stockpile the tools they create. Along with the stockpiling ironworks in Curaw, this will give me a nice edge. Also I rode to Jelkala, where I closed down the tannery, and build a dyeworks instead. It took them a week to get it operational, after which I returned to order them to stockpile the velvet. These four workshops now give a negative profit on my weekly budget reports, but in the long run they will be paying back much more. I just have to visit them once in a while.

Also I finally divided the last of the fiefs I had conquered on the Nords: I kept the five villages for myself. Finally the businesses became really efficient, and the profit they generate isn't lost anymore to that wretched tax inefficiency. These fiefs expand my personal holdings much further while the tax inefficiency can't get much worse than it is already. And my vassals seemed to approve of this thought: no-one protested or got begrudged when I announced to keep the five villages for myself. It did do a lot of good for the budget. Finally I will have the financial means to build the best army in the region.


The weekly budget is getting better, now with a profit of 7768 denars.

Change is the key. Calradia is being reformed. Once again I am more progressive than the other kings. For how long have they struggled in this useless sequence of wars? No-one can recall, they even stopped numbering them. But all is changing. Quite a few times I returned home to Khudan, and discussed this topic with my wife and my close advisers. In the end we came to the conclusion that to effectively govern a Calradia-enspanning empire, I would need to reform the way the government operated. The area is simply too large to be governed from just one place, even if it would lie in the center of it all. I would need small governmental branches to maintain order in the faraway places: I would need to decentralize my rule, even if it means more taxes would be lost due to tax inefficiency. But if I would add more villages to my personal domain, I could neutralize this downside.

At the same time, the people need to see that my reign is a good thing. That can only happen when they prosper, when people smell the riches I bring. After thinking for a while how to make Calradia richer, I thought of the way I found my fortune: by trade. If the people would be free to trade wherever they want, there would be harsher battles for better prices, making everyone richer in the long run. So in my empire people would need to be free to trade. An interesting thougt, although freeing the people themselves is one step too far: Maybe I'll need to tighten their serfness to enforce their loyalty. After we had come to this conclusion, I immediately ordered government officials to set up faraway branches, to start the outsourcing. It would take time for people to adjust, but in the end it would be for the greater good. And better profits.


Once every month I can push my government towards a specified direction. In my case I want to decentralize it fully and at the same time create an absolute plutocracy. Free trade for all, although free people might be one step too far.

But despite my reforms in the government, and the completion of my business plan and true domination of the Calradian economy, the real change came from the military. I had fought the past three years all over Calradia, and had brought new ways to fight both in personal combat as on the battlefield to this place with me. The grandmasters have apparently analysed me, turning me into a subject of study. Or something like that. To make a complicated story very short: they stole my moves, and all the armies started to reform, all with different thoughts about those new possibilities. While I traded in different cities, I kept a closefull watch for those new soldiers, the newly developed techniques and the new possibilities for a better army.

In the end I discovered that the Rhodoks had specialized their infantry further, although they also had grasped the basics of cavalry, that the Sarranids not only specialized their mamlukes even further, but also had incorporated many fled Khergit horse archers into their army, and that my Swadian holdings had sprouted very fearsome longbow archers. Only the Nords seemed to struggle with this reforms. But only time will tell if these reforms are truly good or bad. I'm still training my men.


There are a lot of new kind of soldiers.

How will the war continue? I can't tell it yet. The truce was too short. I haven't even gathered my nobles, so I can't declare war yet. I surely hope the Nords keep struggling with these new kind of soldiers and their new equipment, because it will make the upcoming war a lot easier. But I'm afraid they'll solve their problems just before I start a new campaign, hitting me harder than ever. I'll have to prepare and train further, for war is coming once again.



*****
Gameplay notes
I've upgraded my game from 1.125 to 1.127. Also I've upgraded my mods, and added some new ones. But to make things complicated, I changed some mods, used not everything from some mods and blended some others. I'll try to give you an overview of what happened...
1. Mount & Blade: Warband v1.127 (was 1.125) I made a clean install with the latest version of the game.
2. Warband Battle Size Changer v1.5 (stayed the same) To raise the battles to 1000 men.
3. Diplomacy v2.8 (was 2.2.5) The well-known mod that adds more diplomatic functions.

The following four mods haven't changed for something like two months or are completed. So I combined them in my personal archive into one big 'Floris basic mod pack.' Next time I'll update my game and mods, I'll just mention this pack and you'll know that I still use all these great mods. Thus:
4. Floris Basic Mod Pack 1.0, containing:
a. Arena Overhaul mod v1.0 (stayed the same) The arena's become more divers and challenging.
b. Better Banners Mod v2.0 (stayed the same), along with my custom banners. It does what the name says: adds more and custom banners to the game.
c. Faction Arms Coloured v1.0 NEW! A minimod where the black and transparent faction arms are coloured.
d. Historic Castles Project - the British Isles v1.2 (was 1.1) Some castles have been replaced by historical British castles.
e. Magus Mod v1.7 NEW! Restyles and expands the troop trees.
f. More horses v2.5 (stayed the same) More horses in the game!
g. More Warhorses v1.5 (stayed the same) Even more horses!
h. The Chocolate Box v1.01 NEW! Adds a total of 61 new items to the game.
i. Utrehd's Castle Pack v.0.32 NEW! Quite some castles and cities have been replaced by new models. Unfortunately the download url didn't work anymore, so I took these from El Arte de la Guerra v1.6 (see below).
j. Utrehd's Music Pack v.0.8 NEW! Adds a lot of new and cool music to the game.
I have asked the different authors of the mods from the Floris Basic Mod Pack for their permission to bundle their mods into one pack. As soon as I get it from them all, you can enjoy the pack too. And no, I won't implement the Floris King logo's into the pack: those images resemble too much some copyrighted material from some very large corporations.

5. More Metal Sound Mod v2.2 (was 2.1) There are more realistic sounds added to battles.
6. OSP Warband Item Variants v1.6 NEW! Adds a total of 529 new items to the game.
7. Floris King logo's on taverns. (stayed the same)

Unfortunately the Reworked Armors 1.6 mod doesn't work with versions after 1.125, so I had to abandon this one.
I also tried El Arte de la Guerra v1.6, a mod which combines not only Diplomacy v2.7, More Metal Sound v2.2 and Historic Castles Project v1.1, but also Custom Commander v1.315, Utrehd's Castle Pack v.0.32 and Battlefield Tactics kit v1.0. Unfortunately this mod isn't compatible with the Floris savegame, so I couldn't use it.

Not everything isn't working perfect yet. For example, there are still some conflicts between the Nord troop tree from the Magus Mod and the advisers from the Diplomacy Mod. It might be interesting to have an army of cloned chamberlains, but they aren't very effective in battle. Altough you can have very strange conversations with them. And promote those upgraded Nord peasants to nobility and give them a fief. Just look at this:



Even tough it's funny, I want to solve it soon. I know it's possible, since Pike & Blade and Diplomacy have been merged too. Another funny hiccup I encountered, was with the extra item the Diplomacy Mod provides, the Constable Coat of Arms. While mixing up mods I encountered before that some items - or horses - ended up with the wrong merchants. No big deal for me, but this time I saw something lame:



I didn't encounter any other hickups, so as soon as I solve that small issue with the troops I consider it another well-done mix of mods. Anyway, to get back to business, here is a picture of Floris' current stats:



There haven't been much changes in the territories during the truce. Floris expanded his personal domain. The Nords seem pretty cozy with the Sarranids too, while the Rhodoks also keep quiet.

Nodscouterr: Yes , and it's really awesome!

Enewald: Absolutely!

Alexspeed: And all the difficulties have been solved .

Sorry to keep you all waiting so long for a new chapter. I haven't had the time to play and work on it. But what I did do however, was working on a Floris Mod Pack. I've made two versions:
Floris Basic Mod Pack: This is just fourteen mods glued together into one. It should work on any warband version.
Floris Expanded Mod Pack: I also added Diplomacy 3.1.1 to this one, used the new troop tree from Magus Mod 1.7, gave new items to the troops, added those Floris King Logos, rebuilded the python file for Utrehd's Music Pack and, last but not least, I added Floris himself as npc. Yes, I've written all the dialogue for him. This is the actual pack I'm using myself. I only tested this on Warband 1.131, so no guarentee it works on older versions.
You can download it over here.
I hope you enjoy the packs .

Dear Diary,

Sultan Hakim is smarter than I had thought. Of course I knew that he was maneuvering between the giants, usurping what he could without drawing too much attention towards his actions, but he has now shown his true intentions: peace in Calradia, dictated by him. The endless wars have all taken their toll the past hundreds of years, tearing the land apart and leaving the once great kingdom into shatters. Unlike king Ragnar, who was blind for my weakened state, Hakim saw that the war between me and the Nords was drawing all our resources, and that the fragile truce between us could break any moment. And the final winner wouldn't be quiet for long: whoever would win, would turn his eyes one day towards the Sarranids.

Hakim had seen that, even when I was just busy retreating with the few men left in my army after those bloody victories three months ago. He acted accordingly. I now realise that the countless Sarranid people that swarmed the lands the past months weren't just merchants or loose soldiers: they were all spies, gathering information for their sultan. He used that to shift everyone's political agenda towards his favour. What started with offerings of truces towards both Ragnar and I, ended up in the strong peace that is now in place. But for how long will it last?


There's peace in Calradia, thanks to Hakim's meddling in the international politics.

Looking back, I can only wonder how he managed to pull it off. How was Hakim able to position himself in such a way that no-one wanted to attack him, and no-one dared to attack each other for the Sarranids might aid the enemy? I think his main advantage was the remote location of his sultanate, and the fact that his wars with the Rhodoks never drew the attention of the other factions. He was in the perfect position to just observe the change I brought to Calradia. Three years ago he fought his petty wars, just like the rest of the lords. But then I entered Harlaus' service, and everything changed. Swadia managed to conquer quite a large portion of Calradia, and even though an alliance of others brought the Swadian might as fast down as it had crawled up, it left one very important wildcard: me.

From my first arrival in this strange land till even today, the Sarranids had been friendly towards me. Many of their fierce Mamluke warriors even joined me in my cause. But while Hakim fought countless wars against the Rhodoks in the south, I established a new kingdom in the north. I personally brought down three factions in the process, something that all the others have seen. Each king reacted in a different way. King Graveth hid in his shrunken lands, hoping that no-one attacks him anymore. King Ragnar tried to equal me by conquering his own portion of Calradia, but I corrected his ignorance quickly three months ago. And sultan Hakim... He watched the others all the time and acted immediately at my invasion of the Nords. He has used the past three months more wisely than I have. I haven't said this very often in these lands, but I really admire him.

It took me a while to see what Hakim had done. After my army had been weakened, I needed to rebuild it. Many recruits from all corners of Calradia were lured to Khudan, where I took them on training missions across the country. Two months ago I first started to trade to build up additional funds: the training of so many new soldiers is an expensive business. And even though my income from the many fiefs and businesses is pretty high, the salaries of those hundreds of soldiers are increasing daily, decreasing my profit. By the end of July I first started to notice the oddities in the politics. Still I continue to travel along the countryside and trade and train, but now I gathered info myself too. The past month I thus learned a lot about Hakim and his scheme.


I rode from city to city, trading and training, and eventually also gathering information about Hakim's scheme.

Everything went according to his plan. Right after my short conquest, he offered both Ragnar and me a truce. Of course we both accepted his generous offer: in our weakened states, we didn't want to have to fight another war against the Sarranids. A month passed, and in that time Hakim strengthened his relations. Since I was away many weeks, he spend a lot of time talking to Ragnar. I was thus shocked to hear that both the Sarranids and Nords had formed an alliance. An attack on one of them would mean I'd have to fight both nations. This turned me into the isolated one.

But this wasn't everything. Ragnar wasn't ready for war yet, and I was raising an army pretty fast. I might be able to fence off an attack from both nations. And when that happened, my relation with the Sarranids would be ruined: revenge would be in place. Hakim saw that too, so he also sought negotiations with me. What started with a truce, quickly turned into a nonaggression pact. We both officially decreed that there would be no hostilities between our nations. That also meant that Ragnar couldn't easily use his alliance with the Sarranids in an offence matter. Hakim has positioned both Ragnar and me, Floris, in a position where we rely on him.


Sultan Hakim offered me a nonaggression pact, something I just couldn't refuse.

With these good relations in place, I tried several times to convince Hakim to finally recognise me as a sovereign ruler in Calradia. No-one has officially done yet, although they must deal with my might. Six hundred soldiers in different stages of their training are marching in Khudan, not something you ignore that easily. But even here Hakim schemed: he doesn't recognise me, even though he knows I want it badly. That way he still has leverage over me. The past months have been Hakim's prime. He has brought peace. But can it last? I'm preparing my armies, and Ragnar is doing the same.It's an arms race that can only end badly. And then everything Hakim has worked for, might be in vain. Within a week our pact expires. What will happen? Will Ragnar finally convince Hakim to enter the offensive against me, something he has tried for the past two months? Or will Hakim succeed once more and bring more peace to these lands?



*****
Gameplay notes
It's been quite a while since I posted my previous chapter. But while the adventure was at a pause, TaleWorlds wasn't. I thus upgraded my game to version 1.131. A full list of changes:
1. Mount & Blade: Warband v1.131 (was 1.127) I made a clean install with the latest version of the game.
2. Warband Battle Size Changer v1.5 (stayed the same) To raise the battles to 1000 men.
4. Floris Expanded Mod Pack v1.0 Finally released! There are some small changes tough: More Horses is now v4.0 (was 2.5) and More Warhorses is now v2.0 (was 1.5). I've also added Diplomacy v3.1.1, More Metal Sound Mod V2.2, OSP Item Variants v1.6, Eastern Armor OSP 1.0, HalfCataphract v1.5 and Floris King logo's v1.0 to the pack. From now on I'll only use the Floris Expanded Mod Pack in the following chapters. Any change in my use of mods will result in a new version of that pack.

Here's a picture of Floris' stats:


Since the map hasn't changed much, I'll show you some pretty pictures. They haven't been edited, so you can see how the game looks like with my mod pack.

Enewald: One king to rule them all . That would be nice, one day. But when does that day come... I can't tell.

Nodscouterr: Hakim is aparently the head of the United Factions.
I had finished the chapter just at the moment the forum was down. So I was waiting that whole time to post it, hehe.

Alexspeed: I don't know yet what will happen when Calradia is united. We'll see when I get there.

Sorry for my low activity lately, but I'm working very hard on the next version of the Floris Expanded Mod Pack. 25 mods and several scripts glued together, with items distributed among the factions (for example, certain horses are only available in the Sarranid desert, or the Vaegir snowland) and a completely new troop tree. That's eating all my time now. But rest assure that it's all in the best interest of the AAR: once I finish the next version, I'll use it to create the next chapters.

Also, don't forget to vote in the AARland Choice AwAARds 2010 (Round 3). Me, Floris makes a run for the Favorite AAR, Open Category, and all support is appreciated! Many thanks to everyone who voted already .

Thanks . My first ACA award! This feels good.

Thanks everyone who voted for the AAR!