La Guerre de Cent Ans

La Guerre de Cent Ans
Platform	Medieval II: Total War
Mod Type	Overhaul
Era	Hundred Years War
Mod Leader	on a mountain
Release Status	0.99
Forum / Thread	Here
	Campaign Map:;

Description

The Hundred Years War is a mod set in western central Europe in the years between 1337 and 1453. The main focus of the campaign is set on the warring factions of France and England against the background of the French throne succession, which was claimed by the English King Edward III. As a successor of Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine he considered himself a rightful heir to the French crown as the only living male descendant of his deceased maternal grandfather, Philip IV. Additional reasons for war were continuing French raids on southern English ports, and the French alliance with Edward's scottish arch-enemy David II. Around this main plot, we find a multitude of minor actors (Bretagne, Scotland, Flandres, the Holy Roman Empire, Savoy, Burgundy, Navarra, Aragon, and Castille). All these players intervened at some point or another on behalf of one of the main contrahends, obviously to more or less openly promote their own agendas. The Hundred Years War is the classic conflict of the Middle Ages. It has everything: Heroes, villains, huge battles, sieges, devastation, intrigues, death, and highly unlikely outcomes.

Features

A complete new campaign map. Even though the map only holds France, England and adjected territories this map is 20% larger than the original MTW2 map, with considerably more landmass. Fight in real mountains and navigate your navies on to four large rivers in mainland Europe. A great deal of time and effort was spent to make this the most beautiful of all modded M2TW maps (in our humble opinion).
Twelve factions included, Ten to play with: England and France fight against eachother and ten other combatants, HRE, Aragon, Flanders, Savoy, Burgundy, Scotland, Navarra, Brittany, Castille and Wales. All factions have new or revamped unit rosters.
Several new or re-skinned units to fight with.
Units will only be recruitable from castles. In order to be strong you have to defend tactical points on the map while attacking as well. Professional armies offer little choices, but you can always rely on mercenary companies to bolster your lines on the battlefield. Around 50 mercenary units included.
New models on campaign map.
The game starts in 1337. It ends in 1453, with two years per turn, this gives you 232 turns to gain victory over your enemies. You will enjoy several upcoming events, such as the Welsh uprising, and the come of Jeanne d' Arc.

The Team

Teamleader:

Main modders:

Skinning:

Historical battles:

Many important contributions:

Naked Fanatics clan, including B5Draal and Flimmeister

Included Mods

History

The mod started out as a crazy idea of on a mountain in the summer of 2007. The first thing to be finished was the map work, which already looked 90% of how it looks now back then. This is the main reason, by the way, why it is a M2 and not a kingdoms mod.

Very soon theStig began contributing regularly, and a bit later Vas. The mod almost came to an end during the winter of 2007/2008 because its member were all bogged down in real life work. Also, the task of actually putting all the details in seemed enormous and insurmountable. It was Vas who resurected the effort in the spring of that year, and stig followed suit. On a mountain only very reluctantly rejoined the effort, but was coerced to it in the end, as the makers decided that we might have a working version by the end of the year.

The strategy was to first put in the main factions and then add more and more components and complexity. So, England and France were taken over almost as they were. Burgundy and Aragon were included, and then Savoy and the HRE.

TheStig hat a simple and brilliant idea for the conception of the factions: the developers would strip them down to a few essential units. Simultaneously they would make mercenaries available, in a way not seen in M2 or kingdoms. This was to reflect the style of war then effective. Furthermore, cities would be reduced to villages, to give the player a lot of financial difficulties in the initial phases of the game. These simple implements gave the mod, from the very beginning, a very different feel to other mods.

During the course of 2008 on a mountain bought reams of books that covered the war, and read his way through many biographies and accounts of battles. This was to serve as the base for the large family trees featured in the game, and for a variety of historic descriptions.

Simultaneously, Vas did an incredible amount of his own brand of byzantine artwork, while stig was busy with the mercenaries, making large lists of possibilities and regionally diverse fighters.

The map saw a succession of mutations. Smoothing of coastlines and mountains, implementing resources, and eliminating dead-ends and overlaps. Early tests also showed that the number of provinces had to be increased, mainly in the north, to slow the advande of english armies.

Despite the efforts and hundreds of hours of work invested, the mod was far from the goal of our ambitions by the end of 2008. Nevertheless, early versions were published and tested on twc. With the advent of 2009 theStig was forced to reduce his contributions as his real life became more demanding. Nevertheless, the remaining members began with the implementation of Flandres and the most ambitious task to date, which was the appearance of scottish hordes from the north. The style of raids were taken over from the mongol faction in M2TW, which essentially is what we used as Scotland.

In the meantime huge lists of names were sieved through, mostly from old archives of actual inhabitants of cities of the time. For instance, aragones names were taken over from birth records of citizen of Barcelona from the relevant years.

Vas did monstruous amounts of coding and cleaning up. By the end of 2009 it actually looked like we could finally put the longed for 1.0 online. But several massive bugs hindered the work, the game kept crashing for no (apparent) obvious reason. Also on a mountain had put it into his head to expand the game by more satellite factions splitting Aragon into Aragon, Castille and Navarra. Vas implemented Bretagne and Wales as new factions. When work looked finished, the effort dwindled down once again. Vas had to join the greek military for an inhuman amount of time, and on a mountain got disillusioned and hampered by recurring bugs and crashes.

Once again it was Vas who saved the effort. Once he was back from the military in the spring of 2010 he took over and finished the thing. He published 0.99 recently, and it finally looks like we might get a grip on those mysterious and elusive bugs.