Rudyard Kipling once said of the French; “War is their business, and they do their business”. Disingenuous humour by most of the english-speaking world aside, the last 600 years of French military history have been truly terrifying to anybody who isn’t French, no more so than during the time of both Master of Fortresses games. However, while MoF1 presented France as a military power in decline; falling apart under a corrupt monarchy and overwhelming debt, the French Army of MoF2 will be the army of the Sun King, a revolutionary, unstoppable fighting force which eventually propel France to the position of most formidable land power in Europe.

By the mid-1600s, France could already look back at a long history of professional soldiering. King Charles VII’s Ordinance Companies (Compagnies d’Ordonnance) were one of the first modern standing armies in Europe. It was the eternal rivalry between French and Spanish armies that would spur the Habsburg Emperors to pioneer the Tercios. In response to this, the French Army made changes to its own infantry doctrine based on the Dutch model. Unlike the Dutch Republic, however, the Kingdom of France was more than capable of recruiting and supplying a large army recruited off their own soil. As a result, French light infantry are not militia, but Fusiliers; professional soldiers equipped with a light firearm (a fusil) and well-trained. While not as tough as the Tercio arquebusier or as fast as the Warder, a unit of Fusiliers is still a solid group of fighting men. Fighting in a linear formation as per the Dutch style, Fusiliers served as the bulk of the French army and would eventually evolve into the Line Infantry of the next century.

Above the Fusiliers, at the very top of the army’s hierarchy stood the legendary Mousquetaires de la Maison Militaire du Roi, The Musketeers of the Royal Household Guard. Established by King Louis XIII in the 1620s, the Musketeers were to serve as the King’s personal guard. Like the many other so-called “guards”units to follow, that meant they were also occasionally required to represent the King’s dignity on the field of battle as a force of elite infantry. I have to admit here that the inclusion of the Musketeers as an elite heavy infantry unit comes more from Dumas’ description of the storied unit as a force of swaggering, dashing, mustachioed badasses than any particular historical event. In game, the Musketeers are more than capable of holding their own against rival heavy infantry units, but they are not the be-all, end-all of French doctrine, or even its lynchpin.

No, that would be the French Artillery. Any student of military history would know that the French love their big guns. From the first primitive firepots used to evict the English during the Hundred Years’ War to the 12 pdr Napoleon to the motorcycle mounted anti-tank guns (yes, you read that right, look it up) used in Algeria, the French have had a long and open love affair with artillery. At no time was this more evident than the 17th century. The cannon was THE symbol of French military might. Louis XIV would have the words “Ultima Ratio Regum” (MoF2′s original subtitle, by the way) inscribed on his big guns, proclaiming them to be the last resort of kings.

French Artillery in MoF2 is just better. They do more damage, they fire faster and their great numbers make them cheaper to deploy en masse. It might even be possible to play an entire game as the French armed with nothing but heavy guns. The French special unit takes this concept and runs with it. There is a reason why France had such a wealth of mathematicians during this time: they were all busy advancing the science of ballistics. The French put a great deal of effort into getting the most out of their cannon. The French Master Gunner is there to provide the fruits of those efforts. A veteran of many sieges and campaigns, the Master Gunner will coordinate the efforts of your gunners and provide them with firing solutions quickly, increasing the rate of fire for any gun crew within a certain distance.

The combination of these components created one of the most fearsome fighting forces in Europe, one which would fight wars against both the Spanish and the Dutch and make a fine account of itself, before graduating to fighting most of Europe simultaneously during the Wars of Spanish Succession. Perhaps the best example of this would be the Battle of Rocroi in 1643, when a French Army under the command of the Duke of Enghien was able to use his cavalry and infantry to outmaneuver a Spanish tercio before blasting it to pieces with his artillery. While the Tercio would continue to be a formidable force on the battlefield, Rocroi destroyed the myth of Spanish invincibility forever.

Rocroi was just one of many famous French victories of the period, its hero, the Duke of Enghien, later elevated to the Prince of Condé, was one of many great French generals of the time, standing alongside Marshal Turenne, Vauban, Saxe and of course, Charles de Batz, better known to most of you as the Comte D’Artangnan.

I had midterms to deal with, and some pesky assignments and a few other things on the side to deal with, so no time to do blog posts. I can tell you that just about all the GUI art assets are done. I’ve laid out a pretty neat looking GUI, and we’re putting everything together so the whole thing will be playable as a game, and not just as a glorified tech demo.

That means we have the horrors of beta testing and long hours of enemy wave scripting coming up.

I can’t avoid the former, but maybe I can find a way to make the latter easier…

…hmmm.

(Excuse the missing banner at the top, I’m changing it up and I need to wait for Chris to get on, since he has access to the FTP server and I don’t.)

Most of you with some cursory knowledge of history are familiar with some aspect of the Renaissance Spanish Empire, of Ferdinand and Isabella, Columbus, Cortes, the Spanish Armada, Philip II and so on. The Spain of MoF2 is, in some ways, the same empire. However, things are no longer a bright as they had once been. While Spain is still a great power, it is beset on all sides by powerful and able rivals

Originally a series of feudal fortress-states (most prominently Castile, Aragon and Leon) fighting against the Moors of Southern Iberia. Under the newly crowned House of Trastamara, the newly-formed Spanish kingdom had enough vitality to kick the Moors out of the Iberian peninsula and lock down a very large and very rich portion of the Americas and Pacific. The Spanish Empire was made even bigger by another dynastic marriage: between Philip the Handsome of Burgundy and Princess Juana, heir to the Spanish throne. Philip was the head of the Habsburgs, the remarkable Austrian family which would dominate European politics for centuries to come.

When Philip died young and Juana went irrevocably insane (hence her epithet, Juana the Mad), the crown of Spain, archdukedom of Austria and title of Holy Roman Emperor went to their son, Charles V, who would rule the greatest empire in European History. It was under his rule that Cortes and Pizarro would conquer central and South America. In wars against France and the Italian City-states, the Spanish Army would create a new system of fighting which would dominate the battlefield for the next century: the Tercio.

A Tercio was a massive formation of professional soldiers, basically a mobile fortress. The centrepiece of a Tercio was a hollow square of pikemen, capable of deploying their anti-cavalry weapons in any direction. Marching outside of the square were four “sleeves” of arquebusiers, once again, capable of firing on infantry approaching from any direction. In addition, there were additional blocks of ranged infantry sitting at each corner of the formation. From the air, the whole thing resembled a genuine fortress, with the pikemen as the keep and the arquebusiers as the bastions and walls. When faced with infantry, the Tercio would deploy its sleeves and bring the full force of its complement of guns upon it. When faced with cavalry, the arquebusiers would retreat into the pike square and allow the pikemen to fend off incoming horsemen. Designed to use both firearms and traditional pikemen to complement each other, the Tercio proved highly effective and was soon copied by Spain’s neighbours. For many years, it was considered invincible, and Spain had the most feared army on the continent.

Beset by the religious turmoil of the Reformation, Charles’ successor, Maximilian II would repartition the Spanish and Austrian portions of his empire. Although both parts would be ruled by the Habsburgs, the Spanish portion, consisting of Iberia, the colonies and the Spanish Netherlands, would be the richer and senior part. Over the next fifty years, Spain held its own. While beaten by England at sea and frustrated by the resilience and ferocity of the Dutch rebellion, the invincible Spanish Tercios continued to break any enemy that was set before it and the combined Spanish/Austrian fleet was still enough to crush the Ottoman fleet at Lepanto in 1571.

By the 1600s, this has begun to change. The enormous cost of fighting wars on every front has led Spain to declare bankruptcy five times in as many decades. The English and French continue to gain ground overseas and worst of all, the Dutch have begun to defeat Spanish armies in the field.

The Spanish Empire of MoF2 is much like the modern United States. Though overwhelmingly powerful in conventional warfare and extremely prosperous, it is in the beginnings of a deep decline. Surrounded by enemies from without and split by factionalism and petty politics from within, it is paranoid, dysfunctional and mired in immense debt. King Phillip IV is still the most powerful man in the world, nicknamed the “Planet King” for his world wide influence, but he is a pale shadow of his forebears. His senior advisor, the Count-Duke of Olivares, championed a defensive strategy centered around Spain’s myth of superiority on all fronts, one which wore thinner and thinner every year.

The Spanish units in MoF2 are heavily centered around the Tercio system and an older, perhaps more robust style of war. Spanish Light Infantry are Arquebusiers which, at higher levels of veterancy, do the same amount of damage as unupgraded heavy infantry from the other two factions. The heavy infantry, the Tercio Musketeers, do more damage per-shot than any other infantry unit in the game, due to their heavy armour-piercing guns. On the other hand, both units fire slower than their Dutch and French counterparts. Their accuracy at range is also lower, but in a close-in slugging match, the Spanish Infantry are likely to win the day.

To represent their favouring of the Pike over firearms (the ratio of pike to shot in a Tercio was roughly 2:1), the slow, resilient formations of attacking Spanish armies will include more Pikemen than any other faction.

Lastly, the Spanish unique unit represents Spain’s glorious past: The Hidalgo. Hidalgos were the bottom rung of Spanish nobility, generally stereotyped as dashing adventurers and soldiers. Sons of at least seventeen generations of nobility, Hidalgos often inherited little more than an big and battered house, a sword a glorious name and massive debts. Paying off those debts were always a challenge: going into almost anything that made money meant giving up noble status, and by extension, exemption from a truly terrifying array of taxes. Naturally, many took the route which would allow them to make money wile retaining their status and good name: the army. Hidalgos served as the officer class of the Spanish Army well into the 1600s, and as such, are represented in MoF2. Cutting a dashing figure with plumed hat and sword, the Hidalgo exhorts the men around him to fight with greater vigour, increasing their damage even further.

Hopefully, I can do the French next week and finish off these Faction Updates/History Lessons.

First of all, I’m going to try setting my blog updates to all auto-publish on Fridays at 9:00 AM. This’ll mean I won’t always be posting in the middle of the night. It’ll also mean I should be able to keep a more regular update schedule, what with actually having the entire week to write things.

Anyhow, We’ve done an enormous amount of work on MoF2 over the past week, and I mean huge. Kiril and I have redone the map editor and the maps (I should get him to do a profile on the site sometime), and I’ve been working on the menu while he implements all the buttons and sets a system whereby dark sorcery allows us to slave multiple sprites to a single pathfinding/collision entity. This’ll allow us to work with Total War-style multi-man units, as opposed to the individual 1 unit = one guy system we had for MoF1.

This makes all of our lives easier for a multitude of reasons. First of all, it means that I can do epic scale without having to use tiny tiles or tiny sprites. It also means I can allow the player to do a bit more meaningful micromanagement in battles, allowing them to reposition units in a way which would actually have an effect on the battle. Lastly, of course, it saves an enormous amount of CPU in the battle phase, since we only have to deal with, at most, 30 or so units, as opposed to one or two hundred. It’ll also make players’ lives easier, seeing as it means that they have less in the way of buildings and walls to repair, minimizing the “down-time” of fortress maintenance.

Main problem right now seems to be with making all the units turn properly. We’re getting that resolved, in the meantime, I’ll be messing about with finishing up the menu hub. I’ll show you what I’ve done next week.