The Elder Scrolls: Total War 1.5 - State of Development (March) feature

It's been more than half a year since the release of version 1.4 and almost the same, from the day we released 1.4.1. TESTW 1.5 is now in an active development stage, and therefore we would like to tell you how far we have been moving since the last article was published so that you can understand how much 1.5 is closer to the coveted release date, which is still a mystery even for us. We should immediately apologize for the long silence and for the delay in the publication of article, which we promised you last week.

We will analyze all aspects of the mod in order:

UNITS:

Since release 1.4.1, we have improved 22 unit models. Among them, mainly the units of the Empire and Skyrim, but also the models of general’s bodyguard from Anequina and Pelletine and the soldiers of the House of Dres were replaced. We added a few new units to the game, such as Ra'Gada Swordmasters (we did not show them here before) for the Forebears, the House Hlaalu nobles militia, the Maormeri mercs army for the factions of the south Tamriel (Dominion, Valenwood, Pelletine, Anequina, Empire and the Blackmarsh), which includes spearmen, swordsmen and archers. Players will be able to hire them in all cities on the southern coast, if they build there a largest available ports.

Also now we are introducing another mercenary army - pirate enclave of Stros M’Kai: Restless League, whose units Forevears, Crowns, Wayrest and Daggerfall can hire by capturing the island itself. We'll show them to you later, and on this note the addition of new units in 1.5 will be completed.

As for the balance, in addition to the already introduced number of edits to text files, we are still preparing for a long and hard work to debug the features of all the units that we have not yet been taken into account, such as discipline, the presence or absence of shields and certain types of weapons, as well as indicators attack and defense.

UI:

In addition to minor cosmetic revisions of the interface for cultures of elves, humans and orcs, we finally added unique icons to buildings. All these icons were drawn in Creation Kit - Skyrim toolkit and with several hours of time spent designing the buildings using the assets from Morrowind, Oblivion and Skyrim. In the mod, icons for the men culture are already almost fully implemented, in part, for orcs and dunmers, a set for Argonians is also ready. High and wood elves also get their building icons soon.

We continue to work on portraits. A set of portraits for the generals of orcs and redguards was expanded, and we continue to implement portraits for agents - merchants, assassins, diplomats and spies. In terms of working out the interface at the moment, this is one of the most time-consuming parts.

Some eventpics were replaced, using art from TES: Legends. The greatest changes were in the cultures of Orcs and Khajiits. Among other things, we also have to do the finishing touches to improve the interface of Argonians and Dunmer.

STRATMAP:

To improve the balance on the stratmap, we returned taverns to the game. The buildings of Morag Tong and the Dark Brotherhood were given a separate slot, and religious buildings for the factions of Aldmeri Dominion, Valenwood and Orsinium can now be improved to four levels instead of two. The Empire and the Dominion will receive a military academy.

In addition to the buildings, we introduce into the game two mercenary armies, which we already described above - the army of Maormers and Restless League. Both armies are designed for mobility and a hit and run play style, but receiving them requires a lot of effort and they can only be hired on a limited number of territories.

The balance of factions is also far from perfect, but we are working on it. Two key challenges for us now are to slow down Orsinium, which has become an indisputable leader in High Rock, and the correction of the AI ​​of the Sixth House, which has not been in a hurry to descend from the mountains for 4 patches in a row and punish the supporters of the deceitful Tribunal.

As for the visual series, the models of generals for the Khajiits and Skyrim have been changed, and also in 1.5 we will add unique stratmodels for all faction leaders and some heroes.

CUSTOM BATTLE:

In addition to the settlements already shown for Aldmeri Dominion, we are now working on the debugging of the Imperial City - improving the pathfinding for AI inside the city, removing the "holes" in the walls and adding the option to use siege towers. Now, the Imperial City will be available to players for a siege not only in the campaign, but in a custom battle too.

The final goal at 1.5 is, in addition, a sweep for bosmeri towns and castles at House Telvanni for the convenience of their defenders, but this is already the material for the next state of development. Moreover, to finish on a pleasant note, the Imperial City will not be the only unique settlement available in custom battles. Now we are actively working on the majestic ancient city of the Nords, founded years ago by Ysgramor himself. And the name of this city is Windhelm.

Of course, complex deployment of the city gives us some problems, but apparently this city has such a destiny - to be troublemaker, the imperial legions know it. Who knows what problems it will create for those who risk besieging these ancient walls in future versions of mod?

Do not forget also that everything you saw about Windhelm, is currently Work in Progress.

And that's all for now. English-speaking users can follow us here on ModDB and Twitter, and Russian-speaking - at the imtw.ru, and in our VK group. Do not forget to subscribe, comment and download the mod.