Game of Thrones mod

[Cabezaestufa]

My take on Essos is that if we absoultely have to include that narrative bog in the mod we should wait until basically everything else is already working and Paradox has released DLC making Muslims and republics playable and interesting. If it was up to me, I wouldn't include Dany and her dragons either until all the basic mechanics and interactions for Westeros are working, and would implement her and their troops just like Mongol hordes, using events.

Amazing job. However, I'm in disagreement about the groupings. Condensing the Shield Islands is not a terrible idea, but I think that if we're grouping them together, we might as well group much more as well.

That brings up another good point. Should I, in fact, have grouped more things together? Thing is, we are still keeping the old mindset where more provinces = stronger, but now that there are baronies that's not necessarily the case. The Riverlands being weaker might be simulated by, for example, giving them more crappy towns (which give little to no troops) and less castles. And apart from that, we are going to have to come up with a lot of towns and baronies to fill the whole thing, unless we are lame and just give one town or castle to each county. Seeing as it wasn't possible to find canon names for even a third of the counties, that's going to be pretty hard.

After all, I'm positive that the Shield Islands are more economically valuable than much of the lands beyond the Wall. They do, after all, compose much of the Reach's naval forces (ignoring the Arbor's), which likely double as its merchant marine.

The lands beyond the wall should be poorer indeed, but they should also be quite a bit more populous. After all, there are a real bunch of Wildlings up there... But on second thought, it's probably true I should have split the Shield Islands. After all, I didn't group the Sisters together, and they should be even crappier.

Speaking of the lands Beyond the Wall, they have twenty-two counties, which mean a minimum of twenty-two holdings. The Iron Islands have seven counties. While the Iron Islands should be weak, I think it's a bit much to make them that weak. They did, after all, manage to conquer and rule the Riverlands up until Aegon's landing. This said, I'd split the Shield Islands back into four counties, and maybe split up some of the larger Iron Islands to buff them a little. They should still be the weakest of the seven kingdoms, but they should be able to contend, at least, with a weakened kingdom. At the moment, I'm not sure they could even do that. Either that or some of the provinces should be grouped to bring those two places up in economic/military might.

Well, the Riverlands are supposed to be very densely populated (that's why the concentration of provinces is higher there, I'm loosely basing it on a rough estimate of population density), and keep in mind that the Iron Isles would have a lot of baronies in each province. Riverlands might be weakened, apart from the above mentioned towns-instead-of-castles thing, by making a number of their provinces independent from the Tullys or subject to different nobles... But if I were to give the Ironmen a few more provinces, how many and where would you guys suggest I make them?

To emphasize: again, amazing job even so. Bravo, ser.

Thanks, and thank you for the constructive criticism too.

Edit: re Dragons: We could also make Dragons a battle tactic, boosting an army's offense by some absurd amount to deal bunches and bunches of casualties. And then add in a couple siege events too. The events about surrendering to someone with dragons is not amiss either.

Edit2: I'd avoid "Freylands" as a name, if only because it wouldn't make too much sense if the Freys ended up losing the Freylands. Could you add an asterisk to all of the non-canon names? It'd help

I'd like to change it, too; please, guys, think of something better Apart from that particular instance, thing is, there are quite a bit more places which are named after their masters. That doesn't have to be so bad: there are even canon examples where a place was named after their former lords and then somebody else took it (Harrenhal, Lord Harroway's Town, Tarbeck Hall...). If we decide to axe them, we better come up with even more names to replace them all...

About canon names: they are in the minority, and most of the canon ones probably aren't even in the "right" place. There is precious little geographical information on Westeros... Basically, if a name is not in the map from the books, you can probably change it.

 

[Taiisatai64]

You can change province names like in EU3, I think. Have an event where if the Freylands are no longer controlled by the Frey's, the name gets changed. Simple?

 

[yourworstnightm]

Freylands isn't that terrible a name really. We won't be able to avoid names like that for some areas anyways.

 

[the_hdk]

The Iron Islands are really underrepresented in provs. But we could solve that by giving them a few more castles per province (and thus more troops)

 

[eliphas8]

The Iron Islands are really underrepresented in provs. But we could solve that by giving them a few more castles per province (and thus more troops)

I would just add more of the other types of baronies. Giving them lots of Castles would give them huge amounts of heavy infantry and heavy cavalry that would make them overly powerful and would make attacking them ridiculously difficult to attack

 

[Nick B II]

I'd prefer the Iron Islands to have more one-Barony provinces to giving them rich provinces.

The Iron Islands are supposed to be a hardscrabble place whose power comes from it's former glory and it's mastery of the sea. The former glory is well-represented by giving the Greyjoys a King-tier-title. The mastery of the sea should mean they get a lot of ship-levies.

But there's no way in hell they should have the manpower to challenge any other Lord Paramount in battle on land, and they should probably be a lot weaker on land then any Duke-tier Lord.

Nick

 

[vanin]

I'd prefer the Iron Islands to have more one-Barony provinces to giving them rich provinces.

The Iron Islands are supposed to be a hardscrabble place whose power comes from it's former glory and it's mastery of the sea. The former glory is well-represented by giving the Greyjoys a King-tier-title. The mastery of the sea should mean they get a lot of ship-levies.

But there's no way in hell they should have the manpower to challenge any other Lord Paramount in battle on land, and they should probably be a lot weaker on land then any Duke-tier Lord.

Nick

I would agree with this, the Ironmen weren't powerful enough to take even a emptied North by force, their strength lies in their mobility at sea.

On that note, is there any type of naval combat in the game or will opposing navies just sit idly looking at eachother if they are in the same naval zones? No Let's Plays I have seen have showcased any naval combat.

 

[eliphas8]

I would agree with this, the Ironmen weren't powerful enough to take even a emptied North by force, their strength lies in their mobility at sea.

On that note, is there any type of naval combat in the game or will opposing navies just sit idly looking at eachother if they are in the same naval zones? No Let's Plays I have seen have showcased any naval combat.

No naval combat as far as I know.

 

[FrozenWall]

I would agree with this, the Ironmen weren't powerful enough to take even a emptied North by force, their strength lies in their mobility at sea.

But the Ironmen did not attack the North in full force, did they?

They are supposed to be fairly analogous to Norweigan vikings, their great advantage being that there was little difference between farmers/fishers and warriors as well as their reliance on fishing meant less of a need to be home for harvest. This can fairly easily be acomplished by giving them that "Warrior culture" bonus the pagans got in the LP. Give the Ironmen culture provs a bonus to HI levies and a malus to Knights/LI, and give the other kingdoms far less ships than the Ironmen.

 

[Cabezaestufa]

I just wanted to say, I love the new impassable borders

Expanding on the Iron Isles thing, how many provinces would you guys say we should give them?

 

[FrozenWall]

Expanding on the Iron Isles thing, how many provinces would you guys say we should give them?

We know they were historically capable of taking the Riverlands, and they got 40 provs to the Ironmen's 7, I'd say split the small islands in half and the bigger in 3, so 15-20.

 

[Andrzej I]

I'd double it, give or take. Additional holdings in each province should help, but it'd be good to make at least most of the Ironborn houses playable

 

[Cabezaestufa]

Ok, I'll see about giving the Ironmen a few more provinces, but I'm not sure I agree with doubling their number.

- First of all, it's true we know a lot of noble houses from the Iron Isles, but I'd say this is because of the nature of the narrative that relates to them, and particularly the Kingsmoot. Given that this is basically a meeting of all the nobles in the isles to choose a new king, it's kind of a given that Martin would give us much more detail about their heraldry that he otherwise would have, and as a result we probably know more about Ironmen nobles than from any other place in Westeros. It doesn't mean there are roughly as many noble houses from there as in any other "Kingdom", as the wiki could lead one to believe. Houses like, say, the Stonehouses would probably be equivalent to a number of obscure Riverlands barons.

- They "do not sow". Hence, I propose the following: Let's make the Iron Islands more distinct by not giving them any towns. All of their holdings could be castles (and maybe a few religious holdings for the Drowned God?). That way they would get less money but more military power than the usual (which IMO would represent them quite nicely, particularily if we made special events for them to get money from raids, similar to these berber pirate event chains from Magna Mundi). If we do the opposite to the Riverlands (more towns but precious few castles, and some of them independent), their huge perceived difference in power could become less so. Still, I don't think the Iron Islands would have been a match for the Tullys at the time of Robert's Rebellion, even if the Ironmen ruled the Riverlands in the past. They seem to have declined a lot since then, and don't forget that the Ironborn dinasty who took over the Riverlands was not limited to the Iron Islands: they were known to hold territories all over the western coast of Westeros.

- The Isles themselves are small. Trying to cram a bunch of provinces there could result in gameplay problems: selecting them could be hard (particularly with soldiers present), sending troops to an specific province might be difficult, etc. I'll probably try to fix this by making them larger than they actually are, though, but still trying to split such a small place as, for instance, Old Wyk or Saltcliffe will be a problem no matter what.

Given this, I'd just split Harlaw, the Great Wyk and Pike, possibly Orkmont too. That would leave them with 11-12 provinces, and by giving them about a couple of castles in each, you'd have a nice 22-25 castles which would account for most of the Ironborn houses we know. That would already be too much for them in my opinion, but apparently I'm not in the majority with this.

 

[Andrzej I]

Nah, the smaller number sounds good to me. Here, now having a bit of time, I'll list out which island the various noble houses are on, less important houses in italics:

Blacktyde - Blacktyde
Botley - Pyke (Lordsport)
Codd - ???
Drumm - Old Wyk
Farwynd - Great Wyk (Sealskin Point) / Lonely Light (which lies NE of Great Wyk)
Goodbrother - Great Wyk (Hammerhorn / Corpse Lake / Crow Spike Keep / Downdelving) / Old Wyk (Shatterstone) / ??? (Orkmont)
Greyjoy - Pyke
Harlaw - Harlaw
Humble - ???
Kenning - Harlaw
Merlyn - Great Wyk (Pebbleton)
Myre - Harlaw
Netley - ???
Orkwood - Orkmont
Saltcliffe - Saltcliffe
Sharp - ???
Shepherd - ???
Sparr - Great Wyk (near Hammerhorn)
Stonehouse - Old Wyk
Stonetree - Harlaw
Sunderly - Saltcliffe
Tawney - Orkmont
Volmark - Harlaw (Volmark)
Weaver - ???
Wynch - Pyke (Iron Holt)

So, with this list, I'd recommend the following for counties and some baronies (lands that need names in parenthesis, baronies in brackets):

Pyke - Pyke [several baronies], Iron Holt, Lordsport [a sept]
Great Wyk - Hammerhorn [Corpse Lake, Crow Spike Keep, Downdelving], Pebbleton, Sealskin Point [Lonely Light], (Sparr)
Old Wyk - Old Wyk [Shatterstone, Stonehouse]
Harlaw - Harlaw [(Kenning), (Myre)], Stonetree, Volmark
Saltcliffe - Saltcliffe [(Sunderly)]
Blacktyde - Blacktyde
Orkmont - Orkwood [(Goodbrother), (Tawney)]

Then toss Codd, Humble, Netley, Sharp, Shepherd, and Weaver a barony somewhere, I guess. That should make it fourteen counties and upwards of thirty holdings, depending on how many we give Pyke, which might do nicely

Edit: And I'd give Lordsport a town, what with it being the main port for Pyke. A town for Hammerhorn too, since it has very profitable mines. But yes, the rest should likely be castles

 

[Galle]

I like the general idea of depriving the Iron Islands of towns and other economy, but it does raise the question of how they're going to afford ships. Perhaps there's something we could do to lower ship costs for them?

In fact, now that I think about it, maybe access to free and/or cheap ships should be a "perk," of sorts, for worshiping the Drowned God. The Old Gods get you Wargs, the Seven have their knights and holy orders, and R'hllor gets you Red Priests, so the Drowned God ought to give you something.

 

[Cabezaestufa]

I like the general idea of depriving the Iron Islands of towns and other economy, but it does raise the question of how they're going to afford ships. Perhaps there's something we could do to lower ship costs for them?

In fact, now that I think about it, maybe access to free and/or cheap ships should be a "perk," of sorts, for worshiping the Drowned God. The Old Gods get you Wargs, the Seven have their knights and holy orders, and R'hllor gets you Red Priests, so the Drowned God ought to give you something.

I had thought of the following:

- Watching let's play videos I noticed that pagans have a special kind of building called "Warrior Culture" which doubles their levies. I'm assuming this building is tied to culture and/or religion, either way we could use this mechanic to give the Ironborn whatever bonuses we deem appropriate. Obvious ones would be more ships and cheaper manteinance costs for them.

- About income, the Ironborn are supposed to get most of their income from raids (remember, they "do not sow"). Since I believe there are no mechanics for this on CK2, we could use events. Even better, have you seen these decision chains where you can organize a feast or go hunting and then you get some events as the feast/hunt/whatever goes on? We could give something like this to Ironmen: "Go on a raid to the Reach/Westerlands/up the Mander/etc" decisions, where you start the raid and then various events like "Successful raid on Greenshield!" or "Disaster at Lannisport!" begin to pop up on the following months (and the victims would of course get their own "Pirate raid!" events too). If they go well, these events would give you lots of money and maybe some prestige, and if they don't, you might lose manpower or even have a chance for your character to die. No matter what the outcome, they would cost you piety either way. What's worse, if you choose a particularly bad time to raid the wrong place, you could find yourself at war against the Iron Throne.

To reflect the situation from the beginning of the books where the Ironmen had been subdued, we might make it so you could only do these raids if you aren't a subject of the Iron Throne or if the Iron Throne's authority is low.

 

[c92nichj]

We know they were historically capable of taking the Riverlands, and they got 40 provs to the Ironmen's 7, I'd say split the small islands in half and the bigger in 3, so 15-20.

I believe the solution is to reduce the number of provs in the riverlands, thare seem to be quite a few of them that are very small..

 

[yourworstnightm]

I had thought of the following:

- Watching let's play videos I noticed that pagans have a special kind of building called "Warrior Culture" which doubles their levies. I'm assuming this building is tied to culture and/or religion, either way we could use this mechanic to give the Ironborn whatever bonuses we deem appropriate. Obvious ones would be more ships and cheaper manteinance costs for them.

- About income, the Ironborn are supposed to get most of their income from raids (remember, they "do not sow"). Since I believe there are no mechanics for this on CK2, we could use events. Even better, have you seen these decision chains where you can organize a feast or go hunting and then you get some events as the feast/hunt/whatever goes on? We could give something like this to Ironmen: "Go on a raid to the Reach/Westerlands/up the Mander/etc" decisions, where you start the raid and then various events like "Successful raid on Greenshield!" or "Disaster at Lannisport!" begin to pop up on the following months (and the victims would of course get their own "Pirate raid!" events too). If they go well, these events would give you lots of money and maybe some prestige, and if they don't, you might lose manpower or even have a chance for your character to die. No matter what the outcome, they would cost you piety either way. What's worse, if you choose a particularly bad time to raid the wrong place, you could find yourself at war against the Iron Throne.

To reflect the situation from the beginning of the books where the Ironmen had been subdued, we might make it so you could only do these raids if you aren't a subject of the Iron Throne or if the Iron Throne's authority is low.

The Ironmen also went raiding south, near the Stepstones. Could be the more expensive, but safer raids (no risk of war).

 

[Lord Tywin]

There are som interesting discussions about the army discussions like this http://asoiaf.westeros.org/index.php/topic/45763-relative-army-strengths-of-the-great-houses/ and this one which I think looks fairly good concerning the army sizes of the different houses http://asoiaf.westeros.org/index.ph...ze +great +houses__fromsearch__1#entry1631454 except for maybe the ironborn which probably should be something like 10-15 thousand men.

 

[Nick B II]

We know they were historically capable of taking the Riverlands, and they got 40 provs to the Ironmen's 7, I'd say split the small islands in half and the bigger in 3, so 15-20.

Keep in mind we have no idea what the political situation was in the Riverlands at the time. If the Riverlands did not have a King-tier character they would have been broken up into a multiple feuding Duchies, and a King-tier Iron Islander with seven provinces could take them.

What's really impressed me about this conversation is that half the people on this thread have a very strong view that the Iron Islands have significant military strength on land, but the other half seem to believe they're useless for anything but raiding. In other words some think the King of the Ironmen should be able to actually conquer territory on the continent, therefore they think he needs dozens of provinces, and they need something like the Warrior Ethic trait or they won't provide enough troops to conquer the Riverlands.

I'm firmly of the conviction the Iron Islands should be unable to conquer any competent Duke-tier Westeroi noble. Most of the Ironmen in the books seem to agree with me, thus when Theon takes Winterfell their reaction is not "wonderful, the Kingdom has grown," or "great, we'll be able to trade this for significant territorial concessions," it's "Theon, you moron, we'll never hold it." And they don't hold it.

BTW, what actually makes you guys think the Riverlands are weak as territory? I can't think of anything in the books that indicates the Riverlands are anything but a fairly rich territory, ruled over by a fairly competent if not very ambitious guy. Since he's not ambitious he doesn't declare himself King, but he does manage to bring all his lords with him when he pledges to the Starks.

Nick