Europe 1080
This summary will be done entirely without screenshots [added screens] , as I can't be bothered to get an ImageShack account.Mount & Blade: Total War
I felt that the title was appropriate, as that is pretty much exactly what this mod is, minus the family trees, strategic combat, ruling from the outset and generally ruling the world.
But enough of that. Europe 1080 does borrow the map and factions from M2:TW with a few ommissions such as Egypt and Portugal. However, the essential factions are there.
The factions include:
England (Yay)
Scotland
France (Boo)
Holy Roman Empire
Spain
Milan
Venice
Papacy
Denmark
Poland
Hungary
Turks
Moors
The Byzantine Empire
Sicily
This makes for a good variety of troops and wars. However, such is the case with Mount and Blade that with loads of troops comes loads of unbalance.
As an example, I had a group of 5 English Knights that I took against a group of 12 French Knights in a deserter party. Logically, the 12 knights should win, but oh no. My knights vastly overpowered them and took them out in 6 minutes without a loss.
Also, due to the random nature that M&B picks it's wars, you inevitably see that most conflicts have no real reason and, actually, no combat. In my game, England were at war with 2 people. Scotland, which is fine and actually accurate, and then Hungary, which just doesn't make any sense. I know i'm niggling, but it breaks the immersion, and it meant that after Scotland were inevitably defeated after about 40 days I had to trawl all the way to Hungary to find any real challenges, as i had over 100 men by then and fighting deserters was boring.
There were more things that broke immersion for me. Firstly, everything was in english. While that isn't a bad thing, it would be nice to see a bit of French, German, Spanish or Italian in the troop names, but there wasn't with the exception of the Imperial Zweihander. This made the troops start to feel a little bland. Also, despite english being used, it's deployment wasn't very good. Every W was replaced with double v, so you ended up with Norvvich, Warsovv, Glascovv etc. and places such as Edinburg missing letters or places missing accentations such as Lodz (should be