Elder Kings 0.1.7 Developer Diary #5 - Altmer, Argonians, and Imperials
- Thread starter Colossal_Elk
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That's the plan. The Reaper's Due didn't alter the game nearly as much as Conclave did and requires far less compatching.
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It's possible in the sense I can always pull a random date out of a hat, but if you want an accurate ETA that's a no-go. Optimally, I want to have something to talk about once a week. But that can always fluctuate because some parts of the mod take longer to work on than anticipated. Others take less time. For example, I wasn't expecting to be able to have the Imperials' new feature finished in time to put together a Dev Diary featuring them, the Argonians and the Altmer, but it worked out exactly that way.
Although I understand that some people may want some cool mechanics for the Imperial Legion, IMHO CK2 core mechanics are more than enough to represent permanent forces of great empires using retinues. I mean, obviously the composition of the armies is up to you, but nobody said anywhere that the Imperial Legion itself didn't change over time; it's just a concept. Playing Elder Kings I managed to increase military technology enough to have several "legions" (I made a standard composition, just for RP) deployed wherever needed. As a matter of fact, I did this not only as Emperor of Tamriel, but with other imperial titles as well (my battlemage aldmeri legion was ultra effective).
Maybe I'm a bit conformist, but I just fail to see the point of trying to implement some overtly complicated mechanics for the Imperial Legion when you can have any "legions" with any country as long as you invest resources, time and tech to get good retinues. If anything, military/crown laws could somehow give more retinues at the expense of levies to represent a more centralized army for Imperial titles. I think I did a small personal mod a while back doing exactly this, and it was fun.
Maybe I'm a bit conformist, but I just fail to see the point of trying to implement some overtly complicated mechanics for the Imperial Legion when you can have any "legions" with any country as long as you invest resources, time and tech to get good retinues. If anything, military/crown laws could somehow give more retinues at the expense of levies to represent a more centralized army for Imperial titles. I think I did a small personal mod a while back doing exactly this, and it was fun.
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A couple reasons. First; the AI isn't that good at working with retinues in an efficient manner. Its not good at working with anything in an efficient manner, but retinues take it especially hard. So a dedicated legion system helps enforce more balance between the player and the AI. Second; retinues cannot betray their user. They can drive them to debt, sure, but they can't betray them. Imagine that each of your legions had a general who could join factions and take the troops with him if he decided he wanted to put your younger brother on the throne. Or that you're in control of a province and now have the option to try to influence half or more of the standing force of the empire. I like retinues, but they don't really hit the half political system of military management that CK2 is designed for. Legions with generals that can be manipulated just fit in much more than an eternally loyal standing force.
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The Vanilla "Assemble Mercenary Company" stuff might work for it. I know I effectively use them as Legions in my vanilla games.
Honestly, as far a balance between work and utility goes, I prefer the way Warhammer does it. You can found vassal regiments (essentially mercenaries) if you're a king or above, and it doesn't take much work from a modding perspective to set up new regiment compositions, as opposed to the vanilla version which isn't quite as versatile (nor as compartmentalized which means its less easy to work with). Also, correct me if I'm wrong, but Assemble does not start with them vassalized, correct?
No it does not, basically how it works is you provide the starting capital and troops and the mercenary captain is expected to remain loyal to you by sending back some of the money they make. It's not a vassal system so much as it is a system of mutual trust: so long as the ruler feels they can trust the mercenary captain to continue to provide them with money, they keep the captain in charge of the company and possibly provide resources when needed; so long as the captain feels they can trust the ruler to provide support and allow them to maintain command, they'll continue to send money back. If the trust is broken, the ruler could replace the captain with whoever they want or the captain might "rebel" and break ties with the nation that formed the company. Outside that, the company can be hired by anyone, even being hired to fight their parent country.
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Okay, I figured, just wanted to be sure. And while that's perfectly fine in plenty of conditions, it doesn't exactly work for setting up a regular standing military.
Honestly, unless they've changed the buildings that make up the Towers, any system to represent an Imperial Legion would be very quickly overshadowed by the retinue available to anyone holding even one fully upgraded Tower and maxed out Military Organization. Just White-Gold alone has a retinue cap that could be used to build an army larger than the levies of an entire Province for instance.
Yeah, that is unfortunate. Any legion system would have to come with a corresponding decrease in retinues. The problem is really that rets are being used to represent standing armies but they're not exactly a good representation of them, so any attempt to introduce proper standing armies is left with the question of what to do with retinues.
Would private armies work? As I think from something in ES mentions that Private armies are allowed within the Empire(memory is shady on that part) the Stormcloaks started as a private army before rebelling.
That's normally how I treat them; less the army of a kingdom or empire and more the army of an individual. Its just not balanced for that by default, and I don't normally bother fixing it for every mod I download since its a pretty major rebalance.
I don't know about the lore on private armies, but it would be very difficult to stop it ("They're not a standing army, they're mercenaries I keep around to supplement my guards"), and even more difficult to even justify stopping it ("So, is the legion going to constantly scour out all the bandits and undead or are you just gonna let me do it?"), so I guess it would probably be defacto allowed if nothing else.
I don't know about the lore on private armies, but it would be very difficult to stop it ("They're not a standing army, they're mercenaries I keep around to supplement my guards"), and even more difficult to even justify stopping it ("So, is the legion going to constantly scour out all the bandits and undead or are you just gonna let me do it?"), so I guess it would probably be defacto allowed if nothing else.
History of the Fighters Guild indicates there was an attempt to replace local armies with the Fighters Guild and its Syffim predecessor, but that it was quickly abandoned. This is of course Potentate-era Second Empire, but it still seems a reasonable indicator.
That's planned as a long-term thing. But we're working on bookmarks in chronological order so it won't happen for quite some time.
Just curious has to how the changes in update 2.6.1 to portraits will affect the mod, as it allowed for more options and custom portraits.