Can a ship be a horse archer? This is one of many maritime reflections. Mount & Blade II: BannerlordThe developers had to face a problem when forming the fleet of ships that make up the War Sails expansion, dedicated to naval warfare.
Ahead War Sails will be released on November 26th.I talked to a couple of its developers. Naturally, I wanted to hear how the process of assembling the expansion armada was going. A special challenge as each of the historically inspired nations of Calradia has access to unique ships.
“We always had this idea [that] If the Calradian Empire has a flagship—that best ship—it will be Dromon,” Gökçen Karaagbreve heads the Taleworlds design team; real Byzantine fleet as their main craft.
“The Aserai will try to match everything the Empire does,” says Karaagbrevech, explaining that they reflect the two sides in the conflict. Wars of the Arab and Byzantine navies. Meanwhile, the Vlandians, a Norman faction whose equipment includes some later medieval technology, have a sort of “circular ship to galleon”.
Karaachach admits that the team did not attach itself too strongly to naval history. “The Ghurab, or what inspired the creation of the Ghurab, the unique ship of the Aseraev, is in its essence completely different from the ship that the Byzantines called Dromon,” says Karaagbreveach. “So we had to distort the time frame to fit things together. Once it was all in place. Even though they're kind of an anachronism, they still fit.”
Even so, choosing ships is only a small part of the puzzle. “The detail, the balance and how we put it all together.” [came later]” says Kayas.
While the team spent years mulling over their factions' naval pairings, that doesn't mean every ship was in port and ready to sail from the start. “The Khuzait unique ship, the Kalguk, and the Battan ship, the Birlinn, were the last two ships we identified.”
The problem for the Mongol-inspired Khuzait is that the historical people from which Taleworlds draws are not known for their shipbuilding. “They usually requisitioned or used other people for their fleet, or their naval experience came much later,” Karaagbreveach says. “We wanted to give them not a mediocre ship, but a ship made with the right intentions. [with] some strange results. So, their unique ship Kalguk takes inspiration from the much more modern ship Shebek. But he is adapted to the current time frame and plays the role of a horse archer on a ship.”
Kalguk “trades on his ability to transport large numbers of troops, his durability, and really high speed or carrying capacity to fulfill the role of a horse archer.” This may not quite fit the historical period that Fairytale Worlds is usually drawn from, but it fits the character of the faction. “It's not true, but as soon as we can find a meaningful reason to have such a ship, then it will do,” Karaagbreveach says.
Battanian Birlinn then faced another problem – Taleworlds knew that they wanted the faction's ship to reflect the country and lake geography, but they didn't have an actual ship to think about visually.
“Since they are at the top of this plateau, [the Battanian] they don’t have very easy access to the sea,” Karaagbreveach explains. “They are known to raid rivers and use their inland sea, but they are not known for seafaring, so we didn't want to give them this huge Battan ship. We found a document about this river flat-bottomed ship near northern France, in a swamp. We said 'this sounds and feels like a Gaelic ship that someone from Gaul or a Celtic people might have used', so we tried to use as much as possible.”
Add these to the many other unique ships Taleworlds has developed for other nations and you have an intriguing selection of multi-oared flagships for each fleet, which can then be surrounded by a mixture of clones or other boats for battles involving up to eight ships on each side. Be sure to keep an eye out as Kalguk does his best impression of a perfect shot while riding a colt amidst the chaos.
