Game of Thrones Mod

[Geffalrus]

Is anyone working on a Westeros/Game of Thrones mod for FoG2: Medieval yet?

Edit: Not seeing any evidence so far that anyone is, so I'll just plod along until someone yells STOP.

Master Plan

I'll start off making a generic Westeros army list that could be used anytime for the period covering the Blackfyre Rebellions, all the way to the start of hostilities in Clash of Kings. Fortunately, technology doesn't seem to advance very much in the Song of Ice and Fire, at least what we can see in Westeros post Aegon's Landing and the Targaryen Conquest. So that's while I'll start by creating a generic Westerosi feudal army list that could be used by any random lord in the Seven Kingdoms. From there, I'll move to spicing things up by making generic regional armies for the major areas of Westeros, based on what information we can glean from GRRM's works and inspiration from other mods developed for other games (for example: https://www.twcenter.net/forums/forumdi ... -Total-War). Eventually, I or someone else could make army lists specifically for the events of the Game of Thrones (Rob Stark's Army, the Lannister Army, Stannis's Army, Renly's Army, etc).

A Generic Westerosi Army

This army will serve as the foundation upon which I will build all future armies, and will set the baseline for how to translate military concepts from the Game of Thrones universe/books to Field of Glory: Medieval. Disclaimer: I have minimal modding skills, so for now, I will be sticking to editing a copy of the ArmyList document to create new armies that will use existing units found in FoGM. Fortunately, I think the units in FoGM line up pretty nicely with what we see in the GoT universe, though I think Dorne and Essos will have to wait until more DLC come out.

Note about sizes: the generic list here can represent a random minor house feud or a generic house participating in the start of one of the major rebellions. As such, they will use the small unit size that we see in battles between Western European armies in the base game. When I move on to the major regions ruled by the large houses (Stark, Lannister, etc), they will use the medium unit size that I believe we see when Central European armies fight in the base game. And whenever I attempt to model armies from the Major Conflicts (Rob Stark's Army, Daemon Blackfyre's Army, Robert's Army at the Battle of the Trident, etc), I'll use the large unit size that we see in the base game when fighting in Eastern Europe.

The Basics:

The average feudal levy of a random minor house in the Seven Kingdoms relies on a few key components.

1) Knights and their mounted retinue. Armed and armored with the best equipment of the day. May or may not have seen proper combat, but likely to have received formal training from an experienced warrior. Good example is the skill difference Jon Snow demonstrates when training with the other new members of the Night's Watch. Best portrayed by City Knights from FoGM. Knightly Charge, Above Average Morale, Heavily Armored, 62 points.

2) Landless Hedge Knights attracted by the promise of loot during a conflict. At some point they were knighted and formally trained, but they lack the full equipment of the landed knights. They also are unlikely to have trained or practiced with the rest of their unit, so I view them as having the less powerful Lancer impact POA. Best portrayed by Sergeants from the base game. Lancer, armored, Average, 36 points.

3) Freeriders also attracted by the promise of loot during a conflict. Essentially sellswords on horseback, these soldiers are not landless knights, but rather lower class men who took to mercenary work. Wealthy enough to afford a mount and some equipment, and best used for scouting and avoiding combat with proper knights. Edit: after some discussion with Snugglebunny, I've decided to switch this unit from Mounted Crossbowmen to Cavalry seen in the early Polish and Teutonic lists in FoGM. Above average, light spear, protected, 36 points.

4) Men at Arms are common soldiers trained and led by wealthy knights to support them in battle. As such, they have decent arms and training compared to the rest of the feudal levy. I'm going to divide these into 3 units since I can find references to various armaments for Men at Arms in all the books. A) Armored Offensive Spears - 51 points. B) Crossbows - 39 points. C) Archers - 36 points. Crossbows are mentioned in the books, but they don't seem to dominate the battlefield, so their numbers will be kept pretty low. As retainers, these soldiers have the training necessary to formed massed missile troops. Based on further research and discussion with Snugglebunny, I might be switching Archers to Longbowmen, though I need to consider whether or not I want to save that for other units.

5) Poor sellswords are basically freeriders without the means to support a horse. The type of unit that gets more and more plentiful during a conflict. For this generic list representing a "peacetime" levy, I feel that they are best represented by Brigands/Ribauds from FoGM. Pretty weak at 36 points for protected rough ground swords, their main saving grace is that they are mostly expected to be fighting crossbows and archers in rough ground away from powerful knights and trained heavy infantry. However, in future army lists from the War of the Five Kings, I could easily see them represented by Highlanders; gaining impact foot and some bow capability. But for now, in peacetime, they're pretty tame.

6) The Feudal Levy of Smallfolk called up in an emergency and given minimal training. The majority of this levy will be represented by Raw Defensive Spears - 24 points. They have enough equipment and training to form a basic shield wall, but they lack experience fighting in battle. Of course, once this unit saw a few battles and collected some loot, it could easily be represented by 36 point defensive spears or even 42 point armored defensive spears. But that's something for the army lists from the conflicts we see in the main books. The final portion of the basic levy are 30 point Light Archers. These represent woodsmen and hunters called to service by the feudal lord, and assigned to fight in their natural way. Lastly, I'm going to steer clear of Peasant Mobs for now. I believe that unit is better associated with the Sparrows from A Feast for Crows, as well as what a later Feudal Levy would look like for an impoverished noble house during prolonged a prolonged civil war.

Prototype mod versions will be attached below.

Version 0.4 is here and adds the Stormlands, the Reach, and the Iron Islands. No rebalancing of units this time. The two files are here:

Westeros.zip

(137.51 KiB) Downloaded 208 times

MP_Westeros.zip

(137.54 KiB) Downloaded 104 times

Should be as simple as placing the Westeros folder in the Campaigns folder (MP_Westeros goes to the Multiplayer folder) within the main Field of Glory Medieval folder. The module should be named "Game of Thrones".

[Geffalrus]

The Starks

Initial thoughts on the North:

My best recollection from reading the books and some of the supplemental materials is that Westeros, north of the Neck and south of the Wall, is geographically as large as the rest of the 7 kingdoms put together, but much less densely populated and economically developed. The only major urban centers are Whiteharbor, the home of House Manderly, and Winterfell, the seat of House Stark.......and those locations are both smaller than the major urban centers of the south like Kings Landing, Lannisport, and Old Town. In other words, the North can only compete politically and militarily by marshalling the resources of a large, dispersed area. Such are the considerations when adapting the Generic Westeros army list to match what we can know and guess about the armies of House Stark and the northern bannermen.

Unique Features

One way I'm thinking of modeling the different character of the North is giving them access to Early Knights (72 points, Knight Impact, Superior, Armored, 16 AP). In other game modifications I've seen Northern knights depicted as favoring furs and chainmail over the more expensive plate armor of the south. This does not mean that no one in the north uses plate armor, however. High lords like the Starks would likely use the best equipment available due to their relative wealth, as would their most powerful retainers. In particular, the knights of House Manderly (by virtue of the wealth of Whiteharbor) would likely maintain the armament customs of the south from which they originally came. As such, the House Stark army would have a smaller core of Middle Knights (74 points, Knight impact, Superior, Heavy Armor, 12 AP), backed up by a good number of Early Knights.

Interesting tidbit is that in the books, northern nobles outside of House Manderly (who have southern origins) are not technically knights, as they are not anointed according to the Faith of the Seven like nobles to the south, instead revering the Old Gods and the Weirwood trees. Practically speaking, though, they have the same training, and most of the same equipment, so for our purposes, they're knights.

One final point about Knights is that House Stark and the rest of the Major Houses will have access to superior quality knights and average quality defensive spears that you don't see with the generic list. How many is a question I'm still debating, but the general idea is that the major houses have greater access to experienced soldiers/warriors than some random house. Even in peacetime, there are still small wars and conflicts that consume men and regurgitate veterans. And the major houses are the natural place for such men to congregate. So when a major house goes to war, they will be picking from some of the best in their realm. Better knights for sure, and slightly better smallfolk levies. At least at first. Things will of course shift dramatically throughout the course of a long conflict like the War of the Five Kings.

In keeping with the theme of the large but not as wealthy north, compared to what some of the southern major houses will look like, I don't see the north as having quite as many Man at Arms units. Especially when compared to the wealth Westerlands, Crownlands, and the Reach. To compensate somewhat, I foresee House Stark as having better access to Woodsmen from the large forests of the north, as well as specialized unique units provided by House Reed that would be ideal for fighting in rough ground and marshes.

House Reed

Possible units for rough ground and marshland domination:

- Free Canton Spears (39 points, medium foot, offensive spears)

- Irish Foot (33 points, medium foot, unprotected, heavy weapons)

- Light Javelins

- Peltasts/Velites (light javelins with light protection and 50 sword POA)

- Light longbows

- Light crossbows

The Free Canton Spears were historically very good at fighting in the marsh, though in this game, offensive spears suffer when they're disrupted by marsh terrain (might be remembering incorrectly). They do absolutely destroy massed archers, crossbows, and Ribauds in rough ground. So until the Free Folk and Mountain Clans are added, they'd be hard to fight in rough ground. Irish Foot are also rather good at fighting in rough ground - and - I don't think they get quite as disrupted in marsh terrain or forests (benefit of heavy weapon POA).

The main fight scene we see for House Reed in the core books is in Dance of Dragons where Theon Greyjoy visits the Ironborn garrison of Moat Caitlin to obtain their surrender for Ramsay Bolton. The Ironborn, despite their strong position, are clearly worn down by constant sniping from the local marsh folk of House Reed. Poison darts in particular. Clearly specialized light troops would be their absolute specialty. Light javelins are a solid choice for close range work, while Greek Peltasts have the melee POA to dominate most other light troops. Longbows and xbows are certainly scary when they're hiding within a marsh or forest, though their emphasis on anti-cavalry effectiveness is not necessarily what we see from House Reed in the books. Perhaps Cretan Archers would be a hybrid option between the ranged danger of longbows/xbows and the melee potential of peltasts or velites.

Update: After thinking things over some more, I am currently leaning towards the following two units as the House Reed contributions to the generic Stark host.

1) "Marsh Guard" - ?? points, light spear, protected, sword, medium foot, Superior or at the very least, Above Average. I view these as essentially the foot nobles of House Reed sent to support the Starks. We don't see a lot of the Reeds in the books in a military capacity (yet), so this is a lot of guess work. But from what we've seen, they are adapted for marsh fighting, and struggle in the open. Meera Reed certainly shows an affinity for the trident and the net, described as traditional Crannogmen weapons. Those are inherently individual weapons rather than a massed formation, so I'm portraying them as light spear and sword rather than offensive spear, which is a massed formation. In terms of practicality, this unit will do well in rough ground vs. most units, and won't lose as much effectiveness in marsh as offensive spear medium foot.

2) "Crannogmen" - ?? points, light spear, light armor, 50 sword poa, either sling or javelin. These units will either be Velites equivalents, or if I can make sling work, something new. Having range of 2 instead of 1 would open up some useful sniping ability in line with their description of tormenting the Ironborn at Moat Caitlin. Otherwise, the idea is that this combo makes them well able to clear out basic light archers occupying marsh and other very difficult terrain. Light foot with melee poa and/or armor should be relatively few and far between in this mod. Currently the only light foot beyond woodsmen archers are Free Folk units, Night Watch Rangers, Dornish border guards for the Reach and Stormlands, and Dornish light foot (probably basic javelins).

Generic Stark Army List

Picked Bannermen - 74 points, Superior, Knight, Heavily Armored.......House Stark wealthy bannermen

Bannermen - same as generic, just much fewer in number......representing House Manderly

Northmen Banners - 64 points, Above Average, Knight, Armored (modified Early Knights).........less wealthy northern bannermen

Hedge Knights - same as generic

Freeriders - same as generic

Men at Arms (Spears) - same as generic

Men at Arms (Crossbows) - same as generic

Men at Arms (Archers) - same as generic

Experienced Northern Levy (shieldwall) - 39 points, offensive spear, protected, Average. Testing the idea of Major Houses having some Average quality feudal levies to represent their larger population being more likely to have recruits with some battlefield experience. Also testing the idea that the North uses old fashioned shield walls similar to what we see with the Scandinavians in FoGM.

Northern Feudal Levy (shieldwall - 27 points, offensive spear, protected, Raw. The larger the levy, the poorer the quality.

Woodsmen Levy (Archers) - same as generic for now, but with increased numbers to represent the large forests in the North.

Marsh Guard - as described

Crannogmen - as described

The Free Folk

This could be a very fun list to fill out. I'm starting with Baltic Tribes as an inspiration, and building on from there. The Free Folk horde will have no formal cavalry other than light chariots provided by the Ice River Clans. They will predominantly be a medium foot/warrior army backed up by some light foot and some power units.

Generic Free Folk United Army List

Free Folk Warband - this unit represents the average unit of angry Wildlings gathered together by a King Beyond the Wall. So impact foot, medium foot, swords, warband size of 720, and armor 25 at most. Maybe I'll even drop sword to 50 to really represent how under-equipped they are compared to the rest of Westeros. Good charge vs. infantry, but struggle in prolonged melee, and extremely vulnerable if caught by Westerosi knights in the open.

Free Folk Raiders - this unit represents picked bands of Free Folk organized around a chief to go on raids south of the Wall for supplies. As such they will be medium foot, but normal size, impact, swords, protected, and superior. Picked Baltic Foot in other words.

Ice River Chariots - British light chariots.

Mammoths - can't miss these guys. Obviously, they're gonna be Elephants and only in small numbers.

Thenns - relatively disciplined Wildlings armed and armored in Bronze. To emphasize their uniqueness, I'm modeling them as protected, superior, offensive spear, heavy infantry. Veteran Muslim Spears essentially.

Giants - very tricky unit to model in this game. For now, I'm starting with Berserkers and switching them to heavy infantry to represent their sturdiness. That +1 to cohesion combined with their insane morale will make them tough to pull down. A real wrecking ball of a unit.

The Nights Watch

Initial Thoughts:

On paper, the Nights Watch is supposed to be based around a few things. 1) They are theoretically full time soldiers unlike most feudal fighting men in Westeros. Emphasis on "theoretically." 2) They are supposed to either be defending fortifications or operating in rough terrain (snow, forest, mountains, etc). 3) Because of tithes from the rest of the Seven Kingdoms, they should have access to better equipment than the Free Folk north of the Wall. The Nights Watch that we see at the start of the main books is widely acknowledged to be at a low ebb; they are not as numerous or powerful as they once were. The NW can no longer man all the forts along the Wall, and pretty quickly within the books, they suffer serious losses removing some of their most experienced and competent soldiers. I am not yet sure how to properly portray that with an army list that is remotely fun or interesting to use, so I'm going to start with a generic NW list that dates to before the books when the NW had more manpower and resources.

No matter what time we're talking about, though, the Nights Watch is a small organization compared to the Seven Kingdoms or the united Free Folk under Mance Rayder. As such, they will also use the small unit size like the Generic Westeros list, and I will aim for hybrid units that are more expensive than equivalent specialist melee or ranged units.

Internally, I'm organizing the Nights Watch according to their three main professions: Rangers, Stewards, and Builders.

Rangers

These are perhaps the easiest to conceptualize. Rangers will constitute the cavalry of the NW and provide the army list with its main field advantage over the Wildlings. Heavy cavalry knight and lance tactics are formidable when facing the Wildlings as Stannis showed in Book 4, but that's not something that the NW can maintain. Heavy horses are expensive to support, and lancer tactics require special training and practice that don't mesh well with everything else Rangers have to do. As such, I feel that Hungarian Szeklers are a good starting point for the Ranger cavalry. The unit combines some level of cavalry impact with evasion and ranged capability. The medium version would represent Rangers joining together for a relatively heavy formation more capable of threatening Wildling hordes directly. Rangers also operated in small bands, so the light horse version would also be appropriate, as would a light foot version. Light archers initially, but I'm also considering making a light archer unit with some level of swordsman poa and/or some level of armor. Taken together, all of these units would be relatively expensive multipurpose units that result in an army that is relatively small and expensive without relying too much on Superior or heavy armor to boost that cost.

Builders and Stewards

There's not a lot of information about how these elements of the NW would fight independently. Certainly, all NW trainees go through much of the same training regimen, but once they've been assigned their role, it's less clear that they maintain those skills. During Jon Snow's defense of the Wall, we see him organize the non-Rangers as bowmen, which I think would make sense for earlier times. As such, the Builders and Stewards will provide massed foot archers of some sort. There are a few templates to use from FoG2, and I think I'm going to settle on something like Sparabara or Assyrian foot for capabilities, but Skutatoi for what the unit looks like. In other words, the foot troops of the NW will be a combination of bow, light spear, swordsmen, protected, medium foot. Again, a relatively expensive unit since it's covering multiple roles, but providing some nice flexibility for an army operating in a wide variety of situations.

Generic Pre-War Nights Watch Army List

Ranger Cavalry (Szeklers)........ 4 - 0/8

Ranger Outriders (light Szeklers)....... 2 - 0/4

Builders and Stewards (Sparabara)........ 0/12 (light spear, swords, bow 50%, armor 67, average morale, medium foot)

Ranger Scouts (light archers with swords)......... 0/8

[Geffalrus]

House Lannister and the Westerlands

Initial Thoughts

The Westerlands are defined by a few things:

- Impressive mineral wealth
- Lannisport, one of the larger urban centers in Westeros
- Predominantly hilly terrain paired with a decent amount of fertile land
- Primary threats are conflicts with the Reach over fertile land in the south, and Ironborn raids on the coast and Fair Isle

Taken together, this results in a few important differences for the Generic Westerlands/Lannister Army:

- Small increase in amount of Wealthy Bannermen due to the fertile lands and the region's gold income.
- Small increase in amount of Men at Arms to represent the wealthy lord's ability to support their retainers.
- Substantially Increased amount of sellswords and hedge knights drawn by abundant coin flowing out of mines.
- Small decrease in amount of Woodsmen levies as forests are less prevalent, and available archers are trained as Men at Arms.

Additionally, the armies of Tywin and Jaime Lannister will likely have access to improved versions of these units, and Tywin in particular will have:

The Mountain's Men - unit of Elite morale Wealthy Bannermen, possibly backed up by high quality mounted Men at Arms.

The Brave Companions (Bloody Mummers) - a sellsword company brought over from Essos by Tywin. Are described using quite a motley assortment of equipment, so I might portray them as 1 unit of hybrid lancer/bow/evade cavalry like Mongolian Best Equipped Cavalry, and 1 unit of hybrid spears/bows like Skutatoi + Archers.

Tywin's army will be one of the best in Game of Thrones, reflecting his solid logistical preparation, control of his realm, and leveraging of his wealth to acquire specialty units. Other top tier Westeros armies will likely be Robb Stark's North/Riverlands host, and Renly Baratheon's combined Reach/Stormland army (though it obviously never saw proper combat as a united force).

Building the generic Westerlands list off of the existing minor lord list will be pretty easy, so next update will likely include the Riverlands as well. The tricky part will be building the War of Five Kings armies, as that will require cross referencing the performance of various noble houses within the armies (Freys, Boltons, Blackwoods, Brax, etc).

[Geffalrus]

The Riverlands and House Tully

Background

I really find the Riverlands to be quite the interesting area because besides the Wall, Winterfell, and Kings Landing (and wherever Danny Targaryen is each book), it's the most explored realm in the books. Sitting pretty close to the geographical center of Westeros, crisscrossed by rivers that restrict army movement, and allied to the tragically doomed Stark protagonists (I guess???), the Riverlands see a LOT of military action. And that was true well before the books. The decisive Battle of the Trident during Robert's Rebellion is located there, the Second Blackfyre Rebellion was squashed there, the Ironborn created a shortlived empire there before Aegon Targaryen arrived, and House Mudd held out there as the last of the First Men kingdoms south of the Neck during the Andal Conquest.

A lot happens in the Riverlands. And perhaps because or in spite of this, the Riverlands features a sizable number of strategic fortifications. In the southern part sits the unlucky massive castle of Harrenhal, while in the north sit the Twins and Seagard. The seat of the powerful House Frey, the Twins controls one of the two major crossings of the Green Fork of the Trident, protecting the Riverlands from attack by the North or the Vale. Seagard and it's Booming Tower exist to warn of Ironborn attack and ready the local war galley fleet of House Mallister.

In addition to their military application, the rivers of the realm contributed to the economic prosperity of the region, enabling commercial transport by river barge, toll collection at crossings, and enhancing the fertility of the farmland. Unlike the Lannisters, the wealth and power of the region is more evenly divided between the major vassals of the Tullys. Rivers and fortifications probably helped decentralize power a bit, and at the start of the books, the Lord Paramount of the Trident Hoster Tully is sick and bed-ridden. What this likely means is that on paper, the Riverlands can have a powerful army, but any list dating from the War of the Five Kings will be weaker due to the lower skill and charisma of Hoster Tully and his heir Edmure.

The Tully Host

- Compared to the North, the Tullys will have a larger amount of Wealthy Bannermen, easily on par with the generic Westerlands, to represent the wealth of their lands and market towns.
- The Tullys will have more Men at Arms than the North, though this will be weighted in favor of bowman formations.
- The Tullys will have increased access to Hedge Knights, but not as many sellswords as the Westerlands.

Unique Units

Riverland Bowmen (longbows) - the idea of this unit is that it reinforces the defensive aspect of the Riverland strategic situation. At the battle below Riverrun in Clash of Kings, the Lannister forces suffer under prolonged archery bombardment while trying to cross the Red Fork in multiple places. This unit will be the first to feature the Longbow trait (perhaps a nod to the weirwood bows used by Bloodraven's elite guard and other characters associated with House Blackwood), making them decently effective vs. mounted knights, and they will have 50 sword POA like crossbows, making them........really scary at close range where normal massed archers/longbows take a ranged damage penalty. This unit will replace the normal Men at Arms (Archers), and be available in larger quantities.

Scorpions (light artillery) - the other key component of the Riverland defense of the Red Fork against Tywin Lannister were scorpions and various bolt throwers stationed on the riverbank. These sorts of weapons don't get mentioned a lot in the books, but their utility in this sort of defensive situation makes a lot of sense. As such, I will be saving this unit specifically for the War of the Five Kings army list(s) for House Tully. Fortunately, the Timewarp Module already has Roman light artillery that I can borrow.

Taken together, the Riverland/House Tully generic list will have a strong basic cavalry component, backed up by a strong, but expensive, ranged medium foot component provided by the Riverland Longbows. The North will have more aggressive levies and light troops, while the Westerlands will have more heavy men at arms (the armored spears) and cheap sellswords.

Bonus:

One additional thing I might do is have a special Riverlander list or lists to represent one of the major minor (lol) houses like House Frey, House Mallister, House Blackwood, and House Bracken. This would further highlight the power dynamic of the Riverlands where much more of the military power was held by these vassals. Compared to the Tully list, these lists would have fewer bannermen and more levies.

[Geffalrus]

The Vale of Arryn

Otherwise known as:

Isolationists Sometimes Make for Boring Armies

To be brutally honest, the Vale just doesn't have much action in the books. You get a good few scenes in book one and then a couple interesting bits with Littlefinger/Sansa/Lords Declarant in book four, but that's really it. Not much in the way of battlefield tactics or army structures. As such, my inclination is to make the Vale pretty close to the Generic Westeros army list, with a few more knights and men at arms to represent the relative wealth of the Vale of Arryn. The Mountain Clans are potentially interesting as unique elements of the Lannister army in book one, but I've yet to see evidence that they ever composed any portion of the Vale army.

Aaaaaaaand that's it. On to the Crownlands!

[Geffalrus]

Reserved for the Crownlands

[Geffalrus]

"Ours is the Fury!"

The Stormlands

Rather than reinvent the wheel, I'm just going to defer to Horde's research and description of the Stormlands as relatively poor and rural compared to regions like the Riverlands, Westerlands, and the Reach. There are some strong similarities to the North, and despite having a better overall climate, the geography and smaller size of the Stormlands in comparison results in them generally being assumed to have a smaller total levy than the North. The only thing close to an urban settlement that they have is Weeping Town on the Sea of Dorne, and most populations of any size are clustered around the local fortresses of Bronzegate and Storm's End. The Stormlands contain two large forests (Kingswood and Rainwood), a plethora of mountains, and a rocky coast. The storms of the Narrow Sea that give the land its name, prevent the region from fully benefiting from its proximity to the trading centers in Pentos, Tyrosh, and Myr.

It's a bit of a mystery as to why the Stormlands have remained as powerful as we see them in the lore. From a purely logistical perspective, they would seem unlikely to have the resources to compete with the far more prosperous Reach, Riverlands, and Westerlands. And yet a Baratheon sits the Iron Throne at the start of the books, so clearly the region has something going for it other than the acting presence of Mark Addy. I agree with Horde that the answer lies in the learned aggressiveness of the people, and the constant warfare seen on the Dornish Marches even during times of peace. In particular, I think that GRRM is drawing heavily from the experience of the Welsh Marches in English history (and then dialing things up to 11). In short, the Welsh Marches were a semi-autonomous region in early Anglo-Norman history on the border with the Welsh Kingdoms. The lords of the march had broad legal powers and autonomy, and spent most of their time building a ton of castles (motte-bailey variety) and fighting the Welsh. In the case of Westeros, replace the Welsh with the Dornish, and you have much the same situation. And to tie it all back together, the Lord Paramount of the Stormlands had the largest number of marcher lords in their vassalage.

The Army List

Looking at what we can learn from the lore, I am currently envisioning a generic Stormlands army list in the following fashion:

- A slightly smaller total amount of wealthy and regular bannermen, with a strong emphasis on regular bannermen at the expense of the wealthy.

- Like the North will not have any additional Men at Arms beyond the generic amount, but will exchange some crossbows for more longbows.

- The main unique feature of the Stormlands will be their selection of Border March units.

- There will also be a special Marcher Lord army list that will have even more Border units and fewer traditional units.

War on the Dornish March

Before we get into what the March units will look like, I think we need to do a quick overview of what the Dornish threat looks like. Dorne, according to GRRM, is inspired by Wales, Spain (Andalusia I'd guess), and Palestine. As such, Dorne is described as hot and dry, with the only desert on the continent, and cultural elements more in common with Essos across the sea. The desert of Dorne occupies the center of the kingdom, but the border with the Reach and Stormlands is mountainous. So Dornishmen from the desert and farther east will look a lot like a lightly armored Muslim army from FoG2 and favor evasive cavalry, the Dornish of the mountains will provide quality light and medium infantry. During the First Dornish War, we see many instances of ranged attacks from above during the day and close combat attacks in the night (and general avoidance of dragons when possible). Agility, ferocity, and ranged weapons seem to be the most important elements.

In Field of Glory, we can model those aspects with units that are impact medium foot with and without longbows, as well as plenty of light infantry with longbows and swords. So let's take a proverbial stab at some units:

Border Retainers - Superior Medium Impact Foot with longbows. 60 points?

Border Levy - Average medium impact foot. 42 points

Border Ambushers - Superior longbow light foot. 40 points?

Border Horse - Lithuanian Light Horse (average javelin, spear, sword) 28 points

The Border March is expressly stated as producing some of the finest longbowmen in Westeros, so they will get both longbow capability and one of the few native superior ranged units. In other words, superior class ranged units that aren't part of a specific named army (ex: Tywin Lannister's army). These Border march units will also be available to the Dornish army list, as well as the Dornish Marcher Lord unique list. This could make for some interesting fights between House Dondarrion and House Yronwood. The Reach will have a small contingent of these units as well, especially any army associated with Lord Randyll Tarly.

[Geffalrus]

"Growing Strong"

Background

Once again, hat tip to Horde for an excellent characterization: the Kingdom of the Reach is best viewed as a form of Medieval France. Like Medieval France, the Reach is rich and agricultural, and has an impressive urban center (Oldtown). It is known for the wine produced in one of it's sub-regions (the Arbor). And it is viewed as the home of Westerosi Chivalry. Plus, the Reach also has a mountainous border with an "exotic" cultural region much like the Pyrenees between France and Muslim Spain (their part of the Dornish March). In the books, you even have House Florent kind of acting like the Burgundians, where a major noble house allies with a foreign enemy, except that instead of it being Henry V's English, it's Stannis Baratheon. Anyway, there are probably even more if you keep digging, but that's enough for now. All things considered, the Reach is pretty straightforward to model in FoGM.

The Army List

- Due to the wealth and population of the Reach, they will have the largest total number of Bannermen, and the greatest proportion of Wealthy Bannermen.

- Similarly, they will also have a large amount of Hedge Knights to represent landless knights flocking to the Reach in hopes of winning land.

- For now, they will have no special extra amount of Sellswords to help differentiate them from the Westerlands.

- They will have a slightly increased amount of pike and crossbow men at arms to represent organized infantry coming from Old Town.

- And they will have a small amount of Border March units to represent the contributions of House Tarly and the Marcher Lords.

- Eventually, there will be a unique House Tarly army list that will feature more Border March units combined with all that nice Reach cavalry.

All in all, the goal is to have the Generic Reach army list focus on cavalry power with some interesting infantry options to back them up. That's all for now. The Reach is pretty simple as the Stormlands did all the heavy lifting on figuring out what the Border units are like. We shall see what happens when we start building specific armies from the books.......

[Geffalrus]

"We Do Not Sow"

Who Are They?

They're Vikings.

I guess technically they are Martin's version of the Kingdom of the Isles and Mann covering the Isle of Man, the Hebrides, and the Shetlands and Orkneys founded by the Vikings in the ninth and tenth centuries. Their lands are poor except for iron mines, the seas are rough, and their population is small but fierce. They worship the Lovecraftian Drowned God instead of the Faith of the Seven or the Old Gods of the First Men. The trees they harvest from the Kraken Coast of the North are turned into longships that allow the islanders to raid the western coasts of Westeros whenever the central authority of the Seven Kingdoms is weak enough. Prior to the Game of Thrones, the last Reaver Lord to live by the Old Ways (reaving and raiding) was Dagon Greyjoy during the Second Blackfyre Rebellion seen in Dunk and Egg Book 2.

The Army List

Due to substantial differences in culture, history, and geography, the Ironborn army will not look much like the rest of Westeros. They lack horses and they don't operate in the same sort of feudal society. In some ways, they are more like a pirate collective where each "noble house" is counted according to its ships and raiders, rather than its land and knights. Fortunately, FoGM already has a Scots Isles army list for us to work with and serve as a template. The Scots Isles list features a lot of heavy infantry, a small amount of light infantry, a large medium foot component, and no cavalry. The heavy infantry is split between offensive spears and heavy weapons, which matches the two main weapons we see associated with the Ironborn (other than the longboat): the shieldwall, and the axe. So with that in mind, let's match those unit types to the social system seen in the Iron Islands.

Iron Retinue - Superior, heavy armor, heavy weapons, heavy infantry, 78 points. Finally we see the triumphant return of the Dismounted Late Foot Knight. Absolute beasts on the battlefield, these are the toughest infantry in Westeros, provided they don't get ground down by repeated Knight charges. These are the wealthiest of the Ironborn, whose faith in the Drowned God makes them happy to wear heavy armor even during ship combat, as see in Victarion Greyjoy's battle with the Shield Islanders of the Reach.

Iron Retainers - Above Average, armored, heavy weapons, heavy infantry, 60 points. Essentially Huscarls with their morale decreased a bit. These are the main nobility of the Iron Islands, who lack horses, but have no trouble accessing arms and armor.

Iron Raiders - Above average, some armor, heavy weapons, medium foot, 50 points? These are the lesser nobility of the Iron Islands, and the most desperate to plunder as a means of increasing their status. They use a less dense formation than the higher nobility in battle, making them better able to raid inland after the boats reach the shore.

Iron Islands Levy - Average, protected, offensive spears, 39 points. These are the common folk of the Iron Islands, so to speak. They make up the crew of the longships, and thus have some experience in combat before they're summoned by the Lord Reaper of Pyke to make up the main part of the Iron Islands host. Much like the Northmen, they use an old fashioned shield wall that allows more aggressive action, especially against infantry.

Mounted Raiders - Below Average, light spear medium cavalry, protected.....32 points? These are Iron Raiders mounted on captured horses or local garrons. At home on the sea, they make for rather poor horsemen, and are unable to stand against most Westerosi cavalry. To keep them from becoming overpowered like cheap Indian Cavalry were a couple years ago, they will be very limited. Scouts and rout chasers, but little else.

Ironborn Scouts - Average, light archers, lightly protected, 34 points? The idea here is that these are ship crew members armed with bows and deployed as skirmishers and ambushers. Limited in number.

So that's the Ironborn. They have some tough heavy infantry, some decent medium infantry, no cheap/raw infantry, some terrible cavalry, and some okay light infantry. Unlikely to be too dominant of a faction, though the FoGM knight meta is still in flux, so who knows. Their complete lack of xbows or longbows could potentially be a huge problem for them in the open, but considering that they're supposed to be an aquatic raiding faction, that's not crazy. We'll see how it all pans out. For the Game of Thrones timeline, they might see an alternate army list for Theon and Asha with a greater focus on Raiders and Scouts compared to the heavy infantry fielded by the Lord Reaper.

[Geffalrus]

Reserved for Dorne

[galahad14]

Looking forward to the release!

[Geffalrus]

New Update coming soon!

Additionally, I wanted to post a link to one of the resources I've been using for my research beyond re-reading parts of the various books:

https://acoup.blog/tag/game-of-thrones/

Based on that research, I will be rearranging some things for the Generic Westeros list. In particular, here is how I'm thinking of handling Westerosi Knights.....

1) Retinue - relatively rare units that represent a lord's closest friends and vassals. Close friends of a feudal lord would have the necessary wealth and land to pay for the best arms and armor (plate in this case), and support the care of the warhorses necessary to carry such a warrior into battle. And as the lord's most important supporters, they'd be the most likely to see repeated military service, demonstrated by their superior morale. These would be the 74 point Superior Heavy Armor Knights.

2) Wealthy Bannermen - 62 points above average morale heavy armor knights. These units represent the next tier of nobility down from the lord's closest vassals. They have the wealth necessary for the equipment, but are not as experienced or motivated as the Retinue. Wealthier kingdoms like the Westerlands or the Reach will have greater numbers of these units.

3) Bannermen - 60 points above average armored knights. Continuing the trend, these are the next tier of nobility, and they don't have as much wealth or land, and thus are not equipped as well as those above them.

4) Hedge Knights - for now I'm sticking with the current system where they are 36 point average armored lancers. The main difference is that their available numbers will be increased in general. Certain regions and time periods will have even larger access to Hedge Knights to reflect events or dynamics there. After all, men in search of employment move where prospects are better and away from where they are worse. An example can be seen in the Dunk and Egg series where Arlan of Pennytree stays away from the North as "there are no hedges there and the woods are full of wolves." In other words, a large and sparsely populated region is not a place to look for employment.

I'm also taking a closer look at Men at Arms and dismount capable knights. In the case of Men at Arms, the books mention everything from bows/xbows and spears all the way to polearms and longaxes. I might end up with a situation where Northern Men at Arms use the offensive shieldwall as that's specifically mentioned for Ironborn at Torrhen's Square and Northmen at the Green Fork, while Southern Men at Arms might use heavy weapons. There are currently no Medieval mixed foot units, so I can't really experiment with that option just yet.

[Horde]

Thanks for working on this mod! I have a couple of questions/suggestions about the lists you posted, just my opinions. Since I have read the books in Spanish, I will try to provide quotes to justify them, but I have to try to find extracts in the web, so perhaps I won´t provide all the sources. Please understand that I don´t want to impose you my views, is your mod.

The basics: I think that peasant mob should be present.Let´s see the description of levies that gives Septon Meribald, a former camp follower: "Almost all are common-born, simple folk who had never been more than a mile from the house where they were born until the day some lord came round to take them off to war. Poorly shod and poorly clad, they march away beneath his banners, ofttimes with no better arms than a sickle or a sharpened hoe, or a maul they made themselves by lashing a stone to a stick with strips of hide. Brothers march with brothers, sons with fathers, friends with friends. They’ve heard the songs and stories, so they go off with eager hearts, dreaming of the wonders they will see, of the wealth and glory they will win. War seems a fine adventure, the greatest most of them will ever know." In the novella of The Sworn Sword we also see that very raw troops are used in low-scale feudal warfare. Now, I don´t think that it´s very realistic, but if you want to go "by the lore" I think that you could include them.

Also, I think that retainers could include pikemen, as they are described to exist: "“ord Walder’s bastard son Ronald rivers, leading a long column of pike men, rank on rank of shuffling men in blue steel ring mail and silver grey cloaks". Now, you included offensive spearmen as retainers; perhaps what you can include is deep formations. As low countries spearmen. They are thought to repel cavalry and form squares, as I will quote in the next paragraph.

Perhaps give the bowmen longbowmen capability and/or sword 50%, as crossbowmen. As we see in a Lannister army, "“Quivers hanging from their belts, the foot archers arrayed themselves into three long lines to east and west of the road, and stood calmly stringing their bows. Between them pike men formed squares, behind were rank on rank of men at arms with spear and sword and axe. ", so formed shooters they are deployed in the front. They seem professional to me. Also, in the description of the Golden Company, we see that they have "1,000 archers, a third of these archers are listed as crossbowmen while another third are said to be using double-curved horn-and-sinew bows of the east. The final part of the archers consist of men with Westerosi blood who use big yew long bows, and fifty Summer Islanders using great bows of Goldenheart". Perhaps include the normal archers as levy and others as professionals?

As you said in your last post, you could also include heavy weapons in the retainers, to represent this "spear and sword and axe".

House Reed: They are never described fighting a pitched battle, just skirmishing from afar, so I think that they should be represented as something like numidians, an army composed basically with heavies. But this wouldn´t be very fun, so I understand why you included spearmen and heavy weapon formed foot.

Starks: They are also described using pikes: "“larger part of the northern host, pikes and archers and great masses of men at arms on foot, remained on the east bank under the command of Roose Bolton”", so again deep offensive spearmen. I don´t think they are described using great amounts of crossbows, but they have archers, as I quoted, so perhaps they could substitute all retainer crossbowmen with longbows. I think it gives them a "fringe" feel.

Also, I´m not sure about they should have offensive spearmen as levies, instead of defensive, and I think that the experienced levy should be at the latest stages of the war.

Free folk: I agree with dropping sword to 50.

Night Watch: Even if I like szeklers (I used them to represent Kurgan tribes in my Warhammer scenarios) I think that the Night Watch cavalry is not shown shooting from the horse. We know that sometimes are mounted archers in Westeros, as in a Lannister army we see that there are "“not only knights now but freeriders and mounted bowmen and men at arms in jacks and kettle helms, dozens, hundreds of men”", but I think that they dismount to shoot. It´s a rip-off of the Roses War, after all! Also, they can disrupt Wildlings at a charge, or they think they can, so I would represent them as lancers. But it´s a tricky list.

[Geffalrus]

Thanks for working on this mod! I have a couple of questions/suggestions about the lists you posted, just my opinions. Since I have read the books in Spanish, I will try to provide quotes to justify them, but I have to try to find extracts in the web, so perhaps I won´t provide all the sources. Please understand that I don´t want to impose you my views, is your mod.

The basics: I think that peasant mob should be present.Let´s see the description of levies that gives Septon Meribald, a former camp follower: "Almost all are common-born, simple folk who had never been more than a mile from the house where they were born until the day some lord came round to take them off to war. Poorly shod and poorly clad, they march away beneath his banners, ofttimes with no better arms than a sickle or a sharpened hoe, or a maul they made themselves by lashing a stone to a stick with strips of hide. Brothers march with brothers, sons with fathers, friends with friends. They’ve heard the songs and stories, so they go off with eager hearts, dreaming of the wonders they will see, of the wealth and glory they will win. War seems a fine adventure, the greatest most of them will ever know." In the novella of The Sworn Sword we also see that very raw troops are used in low-scale feudal warfare. Now, I don´t think that it´s very realistic, but if you want to go "by the lore" I think that you could include them.

Also, I think that retainers could include pikemen, as they are described to exist: "“ord Walder’s bastard son Ronald rivers, leading a long column of pike men, rank on rank of shuffling men in blue steel ring mail and silver grey cloaks". Now, you included offensive spearmen as retainers; perhaps what you can include is deep formations. As low countries spearmen. They are thought to repel cavalry and form squares, as I will quote in the next paragraph.

Perhaps give the bowmen longbowmen capability and/or sword 50%, as crossbowmen. As we see in a Lannister army, "“Quivers hanging from their belts, the foot archers arrayed themselves into three long lines to east and west of the road, and stood calmly stringing their bows. Between them pike men formed squares, behind were rank on rank of men at arms with spear and sword and axe. ", so formed shooters they are deployed in the front. They seem professional to me. Also, in the description of the Golden Company, we see that they have "1,000 archers, a third of these archers are listed as crossbowmen while another third are said to be using double-curved horn-and-sinew bows of the east. The final part of the archers consist of men with Westerosi blood who use big yew long bows, and fifty Summer Islanders using great bows of Goldenheart". Perhaps include the normal archers as levy and others as professionals?

As you said in your last post, you could also include heavy weapons in the retainers, to represent this "spear and sword and axe".

House Reed: They are never described fighting a pitched battle, just skirmishing from afar, so I think that they should be represented as something like numidians, an army composed basically with heavies. But this wouldn´t be very fun, so I understand why you included spearmen and heavy weapon formed foot.

Starks: They are also described using pikes: "“larger part of the northern host, pikes and archers and great masses of men at arms on foot, remained on the east bank under the command of Roose Bolton”", so again deep offensive spearmen. I don´t think they are described using great amounts of crossbows, but they have archers, as I quoted, so perhaps they could substitute all retainer crossbowmen with longbows. I think it gives them a "fringe" feel.

Also, I´m not sure about they should have offensive spearmen as levies, instead of defensive, and I think that the experienced levy should be at the latest stages of the war.

Free folk: I agree with dropping sword to 50.

Night Watch: Even if I like szeklers (I used them to represent Kurgan tribes in my Warhammer scenarios) I think that the Night Watch cavalry is not shown shooting from the horse. We know that sometimes are mounted archers in Westeros, as in a Lannister army we see that there are "“not only knights now but freeriders and mounted bowmen and men at arms in jacks and kettle helms, dozens, hundreds of men”", but I think that they dismount to shoot. It´s a rip-off of the Roses War, after all! Also, they can disrupt Wildlings at a charge, or they think they can, so I would represent them as lancers. But it´s a tricky list.

This is fantastic stuff. Let me digest it and get back to you. I'm more than happy to get some new perspectives and change my lists accordingly. They are starting points after all. I've definitely struggled a bit with exactly men at arms look like.

[Horde]

Regarding men at arms, in Spanish, "hombre de armas", it is polysemic in the modern language. Sometimes is used to denote a heavy cavalryman, sometimes heavy cavalrymen that are not knighted, sometimes other feudal troops that fight at foot but are not specially trained. I think that there´s the same confusion in English language. I think that you shouldn´t be burdened by the term; it just means a man with arms, and can be employed to denote a wide range of categories of soldiers, and in reality the categories are often blurried as well.

For instance, in the second novella of Dunk and Egg (I am translating here from Spanish, so perhaps I make mistakes), we see a Lady that has crossbowmen with her ensign in their jerkins. They are seen guarding a disputed dam, and two spearmen with the same insign protecting the access to her castle. In the fortification we see some knights practising with the lance, a squire and the Lady herself shooting with the bow, and when she goes with her troops to settle a border dispute, she arrives with half a dozen knights, half a dozen squires (so heavy cavalry) and a rearguard of crossbowmen at horse. The author says: "a total of 33 men at-arms", and I pressume this includes the knights.

So, as I see it, in Westeros there are some troops that serve the lords and are not expected to fight as heavy cavalrymen:

-You have guards in castles and cities. The most famous are the garrison of Kings Landing, but we see plenty of them in other locations. Usually they are holding spears, but others have crossbows. At least in some cases, they live in the castle and their need are provided by Lord. Along with retainers that fight as knights, they are the "standing army"

-I have read in Asoiaf that there are some troops that are semi-professional, that have fields given by their Lords in exchange of having . But I can´t provide the source. I think that some of the reasonement behind was from a conversation between Jaime Lannister and a man at arms.

-Also there are troops that are levied and have no experience whatsoever. From the forum of Asoiaf: "And yet there was sense in what they said. This host her son had assembled was not a standing army such as the Free Cities were accustomed to maintain, nor a force of guardsmen paid in coin. Most of them were smallfolk: crofters, fieldhands, fishermen, sheepherders, the sons of innkeeps and traders and tanners, leavened with a smattering of sellswords and freeriders hungry for plunder. When their lords called, they came … but not forever. - Cat VIII AGOT ". You can represent them as raw spearmen, as you did, or as peasants, or as raw archers. I suppose that you can see all types depending of the scenario or the list. Raw spearmen can represent troops that have been conscripted or recruited and had some unit training together, or more motivated fighters. There is also proof that they receive some training. Again from Asoiaf: "He watched Ser Gregor as the Mountain rode up and down the line, shouting and gesticulating. This wing too was all cavalry, but where the right was a mailed fist of knights and heavy lancers, the vanguard was made up of the sweepings of the west: mounted archers in leather jerkins, a swarming mass of undisciplined freeriders and sellswords, fieldhands on plow horses armed with scythes and their fathers' rusted swords, half-trained boys from the stews of Lannisport … and Tyrion and his mountain clansmen. - Tyrion AGOT VIII"

-Also, Martin said that the infantry is more common in Westeros armies than the cavalry, that they are mostrly undisciplined, and that the Lannister have better troops:

"Infantry outnumbered cavalry by a considerable margin, but for the most part we are talking about feudal levies and peasant militia, with little discipline and less training. Although some lords do better than others. Tywin Lannister's infantry was notoriously well disciplined, and the City Watch of Lannisport is well trained as well... much better than their counterparts in Oldtown and King's Landing."

Source: https://www.westeros.org/Citadel/SSM/Entry/1174/

-So you can imagine all kinds of things, from soldiers that man the walls of fortifications and go outside to fight in the wider war in the season of war, to some yeoman with wider fields that fight in exchange for an exemption in taxes, to militia that man the castles seasonally and have some training, etc. But the thing is there is "best infantry" made from semi-professionals and "worst infantry", made from levies. We know that the mounted warriors are the better part of the army, "certainly the most feared component" as Martin says in the link I included, but good infantry can repel charges.

-Mechanically, I think that from the lore point of view this "best infantry", in larger battles, should have a disadvantage against infantry provided by companies of mercenaries and bigger cities, even if they aren´t better individual fighters. Why? Because if you have unit of 500 soldiers, many of them will be ad hoc aggregations of bannermen from different parts of the countryside, while mercenary companies have men that live and train together in long periods of time. So mercenaries, and elite groups as Lannister infantry, should not be undrilled; it´s like the difference between city hoplites and mercenary hoplites in Ancients. This can be lessened as the war advances, in armies that retain cohesion from long periods of time.

-Finally, perhaps I´m wrong, but I wouldn´t include units of dismounted knights as in the base game. I feel that in this way you can have ahistorical large amounts of elite warriors in proportion to other infantry; I get that it´s a point-balance system, but even them I don´t like it and I think that at least they should be make less than Superior or have worse armour.

And I repeat, these are just my views-suggestions, feel free to ignore them, it´s your mod and your work and I don´t want to be annoying.

I have one question. I made a copy of the campaign folder and tried myself to edit the archives to include a couple of new units. I did it by just copying units that I wanted to replicate in the squad archives and editing the names and ID. I did it succesfully in the archive that is a single column, but in the other, even when I included the changes, next time I open it the new units have dissapeared.

[Geffalrus]

Busy day and still digesting your excellent suggestions. Just want to see if I can help with your final question.

So what I did to create the mod was make a new folder and copy over the Army List doc, Text2 doc, and the CSV Squad files. Then I deleted most of the Army List and Text2 entries, leaving just enough to form a template. Then I slowly added new entries to both files to create the army lists and custom names.

To make custom units, I took existing units and altered some of their values in the CSV Squad file. So a new unit is basically an old unit with new Text2 entries and some altered stats in the Squad file. Never tried to make completely new entries in the Squad file.

Hope that helps?

[Geffalrus]

Alright Horde:

Peasant Mob - excellent suggestion backed up by evidence from the books. Will include them as Untrained Smallfolk Levy. Currently, I am making them mandatory for the generic minor noble list (to represent the extent to which a non-major house would need to augment their numbers in such a fashion. Major houses have them as optional because they - should - be able field a large army without relying on a peasant mob. At least for the generic major house lists.

Pikemen - yes, I was aware of mentions of pikes in the books, and have been struggling with how exactly to include them. Their use in battle as a pinning force seems in line with Hellenistic practice, yet Martin is clearly basing his works in a pseudo-War of the Roses universe. And then you have the game which bases it's pikes on late Medieval Swiss pike blocks and Spanish tercios which don't actually match how they were used in Hellenistic times particularly well. Then there's the question about whether I use current FoGM Deep Spears or FoG2 Pike Phalanx (which look incredibly out of place). And finally, there's the question of whether they should be a dedicated pike block or a hybrid pike-crossbow unit similar to what we see in Pike and Shot. Currently, I am leaning towards using Low Country Spearmen to represent the pikemen we see in the books. If DLC comes along that adds a better unit, I might switch then.

So basic deep spears are 54 points, off spear, protected. However, I've been using Armored spears for the heavy infantry component of the men at arms contingent. The question then becomes, do I make the deep spears armored too? The crossbowmen and archer men at arms are currently only protected and unarmored respectively. Maybe the larger question is what armor level do I apply to Westeros Men at Arms in general........?

I was going to ask what regions get pikes, but if Lannisters (wealthy and centralized), Starks (poorer but centralized), and Tullys (wealthy but decentralized) are all capable of bringing pikes, then pretty much every major house should be capable. However, I'm not sure the unit fits with House Greyjoy and House Martell. The Ironborn are oriented around fighting at sea, where pike formations don't make sense, and they are mostly described as using a shieldwall. Similarly, the Dornish are described as fighting with spear, javelins, and lighter armor. If they do have a deep spear unit, it would be more like the lightly armored Welsh Spears. Anyway, I'm waiting for the next DLC to do Dorne properly.

Longbowmen - I've been hesitant to apply longbow to all Westerosi archers because I want to leave myself room to emphasize differences between regions and such. There are obviously ways to make differences between longbow units, which I am starting to explore. I'm also nervous about bringing too much armor piercing capability, because my initial experience with FoGM showed how powerful crossbows are vs. knights. However, part of what makes crossbows and massed archers so strong is how cost effective they are. Adding more POA, armor, morale, etc that makes those units more expensive would at least make it harder to mass those units. One of the great dangers in FoG is when you can bring large amounts of cheap units with decent combat abilities and/or morale. Anyway, I'll take another look at Men at Arms (Archers).

House Reed - yup, for now, I'm just portraying them as unique unit flavor for House Stark. Eventually I might make a special army list for them. Probably experiment with some wacky unit ideas.

House Stark - happy to put more emphasis on longbows over crossbows. The offensive spear focus is for three reasons: 1) that's how FoG handles the Viking Shieldwall, and the shieldwall is what they are described as using, plus it would give them an "old style" flavor with the Ironborn as they're descendants of the First Men, not the Andals, 2) Northmen have an aggressive reputation in battle and this is a low key way to show that, 3) makes them more expensive and thus harder to outnumber an opponent with.

Night Watch - fully agree that in retrospect, they should not have mounted shooting. I'm switching them to Armored Lithuanian Cavalry.

[Horde]

Busy day and still digesting your excellent suggestions. Just want to see if I can help with your final question.

So what I did to create the mod was make a new folder and copy over the Army List doc, Text2 doc, and the CSV Squad files. Then I deleted most of the Army List and Text2 entries, leaving just enough to form a template. Then I slowly added new entries to both files to create the army lists and custom names.

To make custom units, I took existing units and altered some of their values in the CSV Squad file. So a new unit is basically an old unit with new Text2 entries and some altered stats in the Squad file. Never tried to make completely new entries in the Squad file.

Hope that helps?

Thanks! I have found the problem. The issue was that my Excel is in Spanish, and that language doesn´t recognize the CVS, you just open it and all the data of a particular troops is aggregated in one cell (I don´t know if that´s the term in English). So you have to do a lenghty process every time you open the file.

Regarding the discussion about the pikemen.

And finally, there's the question of whether they should be a dedicated pike block or a hybrid pike-crossbow unit similar to what we see in Pike and Shot.

I think that they should be a dedicated melee troop; in the disposition of Lannister troops that I cited before we see the bowmen first in a different formation, then the pikemen in blocks.

And then you have the game which bases it's pikes on late Medieval Swiss pike blocks and Spanish tercios which don't actually match how they were used in Hellenistic times particularly well.

I´m quite interested in this, if you can point me to some sources about the differences between late-Medieval and Macedonian pikes i will be grateful.

I was going to ask what regions get pikes, but if Lannisters (wealthy and centralized), Starks (poorer but centralized), and Tullys (wealthy but decentralized) are all capable of bringing pikes, then pretty much every major house should be capable.

I also think that pikes should be in most kingdom armies. From the first book, we see that they, along with knights and bowmen, are regarded as the troops that you "need" to have in an army. In a battle where Tyrion is deployed with raw troops, we read: "“Crow food,” Bronn muttered beside him, giving voice to what Tyrion had left unsaid. He could only nod. Had his lord father taken leave of his senses? No pikes, too few bowmen, a bare handful of knights, the ill-armed and unarmored, commanded by an unthinking brute who led with his rage . . . how could his father expect this travesty of a battle to hold his left?"

Currently, I am leaning towards using Low Country Spearmen to represent the pikemen we see in the books..

I also think that offensive spearmen is the most accurate way to represent pikemen. It seems that there is not a clear division between pikemen and spearmen. As we read about Stark troops" "A crescent of enemy spearmen had formed ahead, a double hedgehog bristling with steel, waiting behind tall oaken shields marked with the sunburst of Karstark". So Martin writes "pikemen" to talk about formations of disciplined men with long spears, with shields or not, that can deploy in deep formation (as shown with the blocks). So, think scottish schiltron, etc.

Anyway, they can repel charges of heavy cavalry if attacked from the front: "Gregor Clegane was the first to reach them, leading a wedge of armored veterans. Half the horses shied at the last second, breaking their charge before the row of spears. The others died, sharp steel points ripping through their chests." But then Gregor manages to rupture the shieldwall. They disorder and get destroyed.

The question then becomes, do I make the deep spears armored too?

In different times they are seen using shields or mail, but I think that they should be less armored than heavy cavalry, as the mounted units are the best part of the army, where the most socially relevant men are. Even in the North, I think that mounted troops, where you have lords and their families and more trusted (and rich) retainers, should be better equiped than their infantry, and I think that there isn´t instances of infantry with plates, which are fairly common amongst knights.And in FOG Medieval the same level of armor is more benefitial to infantry against shooting.

So, if you ask me, I think that perhaps you can give protected to Starks and poorer kingdoms (or substitute their men at-arms with their elite levy if you prefer that interpretation); richer kindoms can have their men at arms with an armor in the middle between protected and armoured?

I don´t know about Dornish and Ironborn. There´s a book about the history of House Targaryen that perhaps can provide some insights.

I've been hesitant to apply longbow to all Westerosi archers because I want to leave myself room to emphasize differences between regions and such. There are obviously ways to make differences between longbow units, which I am starting to explore.I'm also nervous about bringing too much armor piercing capability, because my initial experience with FoGM showed how powerful crossbows are vs. knights.

That´s true, and perhaps having melee capability is too much. I found a quote of a small skirmish in A Storm of Swords: "A few last arrows sped harmlessly past; then the bowmen broke and ran, the way unsupported bowmen always broke and ran before the charge of knights". But I think that the lore supports that the bows used in Westeros are of high power draw, and, as I´ve said before, they are regarded as an important part of any army. In the same book, Westeros bowmen are cited using longbows (once again, War of the Roses feel): "tall yew longbow.", "He watched from the trees as the fat boy wrestled with a longbow as tall as he was, his red moon face screwed up with concentration.", "The last of the three was a youth as skinny as his longbow, if not quite as tall", "Anguy let Arya try his longbow, but no matter how hard she bit her lip she could not draw it.".

The northerners have longbows as well: "Bolton’s voice was soft, but certain. “I left six hundred men at the ford. Spearmen from the rills, the mountains, and the White Knife, a hundred Hornwood longbows, some freeriders and hedge knights, and a strong force of Stout and Cerwyn men to stiffen them", and the Night Watch: "The smaller horn-and-wood bows of the free folk were outranged by the great yew longbows of the Night’s Watch".

As a side note, they are carried by squires: "Clegane drew the wayn to a halt and waited patiently on their pleasure. The knight bore spear and sword while his squires carried longbows.", and nobles learn to use them too. And they import Dorne yew to made them; I think that English imported wood from the Mediterranean countries as well.

So I think that men at arms could have longbow OR 50% bow and 50% longbow, to minimize their anti-armor capability, but no swordsmen (and it can be reserved to special troops). Welsh longbowmen are not overpowered in the base game, I think.

One of the great dangers in FoG is when you can bring large amounts of cheap units with decent combat abilities and/or morale.

That´s so true. The problem is that armies of cheap but decent units in pre-Industrial period were not so feasible because of logistical constrains: I suppose that it was always better to bring a lower amount of better soldiers to a campaign, because if not you have to convince or press more people to join your army, and then pay them, provide them food and shelter, organize them, deal with the stress that it induces in home, etc. So in Medieval times the French monarchy didn´t recruit tens of thousands of barely trained soldiers. This weekend I played a couple of small battles with the mod, and found that you have to chew your way through great amounts of raw spearmen fighting against the generic list. As in the base game, they can surround better troops and I think that are extremely cost effective. They are quite good against the Starks, because their offensive spearmen is usually not a big deal and cost points that the southerners can spend in surprisingly good chaff!

I think I will submod them to decrease their defensive spearman capability to 75 and make them medium foot (not raising the cost), or even reducing their defensive spearmne capability to 50 and make them cheaper, because to me they don´t feel like levies.

By the way, the Starks seem to have other advantage against the list, because I think that their armoured knights are more cost effective that the heavily armoured ones, but I´m not so sure about it.

The offensive spear focus is for three reasons: 1) that's how FoG handles the Viking Shieldwall, and the shieldwall is what they are described as using, plus it would give them an "old style" flavor with the Ironborn as they're descendants of the First Men, not the Andals, 2) Northmen have an aggressive reputation in battle and this is a low key way to show that, 3) makes them more expensive and thus harder to outnumber an opponent with.

That´s actually quite sensible. You didn´t have to convince me, but I´m convinced anyway!

[Geffalrus]

Excellent, deep spears with at most Some Armor (aka armor 67) sounds good to me. Now we will have up to 4 types of Men at Arms (semi-professional retainers drawn from non-nobles): pikes, spears, crossbows, and bows/longbows.

I like that 50 longbow 50 short bow idea. I'll think a bit about where they could fit in. There could be 3 tiers of longbow men at arms independent of the usual morale measurement: longbows with 50 sword for close shooting, those without, and those 50/50 long-short bow.

It's funny how often raw units have had to get tweaked to balance them. Raw spears used to still get the +1 cohesion for heavy infantry, after all. Glad to hear you've been testing out the lists, rough though they may be. I was kind of hoping that the raw spears would be easy meals for the knights. Now that peasant mobs are back in, maybe I dial down the raw spear numbers a tad. Of your suggestions, dropping spear to 50 caught my eye. Normally spears beat swords in melee due to the 50 melee penalty for swords, representing the spearwall's ability to keep the swords at a distance. However, it makes sense to me that poorly trained spears would be less effective at making full use of that advantage. Granted, they'd have their price decreased further in that case. Another way to alter their cost has been to make them 720 sized. For now, I'm going to rein them in by capping their total numbers and making up the difference with peasant mobs.

[Horde]

Yes, perhaps what I´ve perceived is that raw spearmen were too prevalent in the army list. I´ve just opened the game to take a look: with small size, the generic list has 3 raw spearmen that you must take, an up to 11. But then, I understand that this list is the generic one, a local lord that has to raise the local levy, and that the armies that participated in the war will have higher proportions of men at arms. this is tricky, because in Game of Thrones, as in real life, armies change a lot, even in the same campaign. I think that some hosts, like the army that Stannis brought to the North, shouldn´t have untrained levy, and perhaps not even the trained one; meanwhile, the northern troops that are amassing at the end of the last book to fight against the Bolton are described using very raw troops, many of them old and young men that had to take a spear after the death of the war-fitting ones. But mind that I´ve just fought a couple of battles and I have my anti-chaff bias anyway.

About the archers, if you are worried about the anti-armor shooters, perhaps you can make normal crossbowmen without the swordsmen capability, at least in some least. I haven´t read anything that indicates in Westeros they are better armed, more disciplined or more capable in hand to hand combat than longbowmen. Perhaps crossbowen from the Free Cities should retain the trait, though.

By the way, I had read Fire and Blood, the book about the history of the Targaryen in Spanish but I looked for quotes about battles in English. It´s an in-universe book, and describes events that are a couple of centuries older than the story of Game of Thrones, and of course the whole of it is fiction, but let´s be boring with quote after quote:

-There´s a numerical description of the army of two kings that faced the Targaryen conquerors in a great battle: "From Highgarden marched Mern IX of House Gardener, King of the Reach, with a mighty host. Beneath the walls of Castle Goldengrove, seat of House Rowan, he met Loren I Lannister, King of the Rock, leading his own host down from the westerlands. Together the Two Kings commanded the mightiest host ever seen in Westeros: an army fifty-five thousand strong, including some six hundred lords great and small and more than five thousand mounted knights." A nine to one ratio of knights and the rest of the army seem sensible as a rule of thumb. We see similar proportions in other armies: "Orys Baratheon led one thousand picked knights up the Boneway, whilst Aegon himself marched through the Prince’s Pass at the head of an army thirty thousand strong, led by near two thousand mounted knights and three hundred lords and bannermen."; "Jason Lannister had assembled a formidable host in the western hills; a thousand armored knights, and seven times as many archers and men-at-arms."

-We also see the schiltrons of spears and pikes together: they seem to have the same tactical use in Westerosi warfare. "Aegon Targaryen drew his own men up in a rough crescent bristling with spears and pikes, with archers and crossbowmen just behind and light cavalry on either flank." Note that the shooters seem to be deployed in different units.

-Since you mentioned that "Southern Men at Arms might use heavy weapons", I tried to found some quotes, but there isn´t many mentions of polearms separated from spearmen, or polearms at all. Let´s see an army which is unusually described unit-by-unit: "When Ser Criston left the lake behind, striking out overland for the Blackwater, he found them waiting atop a stony ridge; three hundred mounted knights in armor, as many longbowmen, three thousand archers, three thousand ragged rivermen with spears, hundreds of northmen brandishing axes, mauls, spiked maces, and ancient iron swords." So, if I had to make it an army in FOG terms, one unit of knights, another of longbowmen, six of archers, four deep spears... and well, or offensive spear, because northmen are offensive spears.

But you can argue for heavy weapon too. Heavy weapon doesn´t only mean weapons that you use with two hands, also heavy cutting ones like axes and heavy swords, so I think that the "evidence" can support troops with this capability. In the Lannister army we see "Between them pike men formed squares, behind were rank on rank of men at arms with spear and sword and axe". Why are they in different units from the pikemen? Well, we can imagine that they have a different combat role, that of engage their enemies in a more personal combat with anti-armor weapons. I think that this interpretation is specially useful if you include deep offensive spearmen; another unit of non-deep offensive spearmen adds less variety than heavy weapon.

-A quote do defend the pressence of light bowmen or longbowmen: "Archers hid amongst the trees, picking off outriders and stragglers with their longbows."; it´s against a marching army and not in an open battle, though.

-We see again half-trained spearmen in some armies. "The Vulture King had twice as many men as his three foes combined, but most were untrained and undisciplined, and when faced with armored knights at front and rear, their ranks shattered. Throwing down their spears and shields, the Dornish broke and ran", and untrained men that are not spearmen at all. "His untrained and undisciplined followers, clad in boiled leather, roughspun, and scraps of rusted steel, and armed largely with woodsmen’s axes, sharpened sticks, and farm implements, proved utterly unable to stand against the charge of armored knights on heavy horses."

-That said, head-on charges are costly against prepared infantry. From the north came a host that "was made up of grizzled greybeards in old mail and ragged skins, every man a seasoned warrior, every man ahorse. They called themselves the Winter Wolves", but when they went to battle "The most grievous losses were suffered by the northmen, for the Winter Wolves had begged the honor of leading the attack, and had charged five times into the ranks of Lannister spears. More than two-thirds of the men who had ridden south with Lord Dustin were dead or wounded."

-In the civil wars, the Westerosi are known to have used light artillery against the dragons. Didn´t seem to be used very frecuently against human soldiers, apart from special ocasions as you have posted. "Drums beat out a command, and archers rushed forward, longbowmen and crossbowmen both, filling the air with arrows and quarrels. Scorpions were cranked upward to loose iron bolts of the sort that had once felled Meraxes in Dorne."

A friend has the book of the World of Ice and Fire, which is just lore and explains the history of the Seven Kingdoms. I will take a look, because perhaps there´s useful information about the differences in warfare amongst the kingdoms.