[M&B WB] V3 for Calradia's Borderlands : The New Worlds news

Hello everyone,

the V3 of Calradia Borderlands is currently under development (release date: unknown, for now) :)

6 new factions will join the battlefield:

Kingdoms equivalent to the main ones (20 lords, 3 cities):

• Empire of Czaloca: advanced pre-Columbian faction, with stylized armored warriors (assets directly taken from a TES Morrowind inspired OSP pack :)
• Kingdom of Quetzal: classic pre-Columbian faction, inspired by the Aztecs with jaguar warriors (melee), eagles (pikemen) and coyotes (archers)

Small kingdoms (12 lords, 2 cities)

• Tsarat of Vhonylor: Slavic faction, with enforcers (heavy hammerers) and hussars (fast medium-heavy cavalry)
• Kingdom of Tigrayand: Sub-Saharan Africa inspired faction, with lion warriors (melee), elephant archers and camel riders
• City-State of Trapegea: Greco-Roman inspired faction with Thorakites (heavy shield/sword/spear) and Amazons (mounted archers)

Minor Faction (8 lords, 1 city)

• City-State of New Zendar: more classic European medieval faction, with armored warriors and heavy musketeers

The new factions will also have their own claimants who, just like in V2, will have a story to tell. Expect some historical or cultural nods ;) However, to add more variety to the game, these claimants will move away from the "legitimate claimant VS pragmatic reigning king" model: the legitimacy of some will be more fragile, and you will have one or two claimants that we could without too much risk call "villains".

Two notable relocations:

• The Kingdom of Jumne will have the great frozen continent to the North (in accordance with what is said in the original game about them), their previous location in V2 will be shared between them and the new faction of the Tsarat of Vhonylor. (and they will of course be at war from the start)
• The City-State of Su'undi is moved further south, opposite the Kingdom of Tigrayand, with whom relations will be tense. The former location of Su'undi has been revised and replaced by the City-State of Trapegea, which will not get along at all with Blackstone and the Czalocans.

Quality of life improvements:

• 12 new NPC companions, among them a Dark Lord (the most powerful and expensive NPC) and several beginner adventurers, each with their own story.
• More bards, book merchants, etc., present in taverns (you will have 10x more chances of encountering them in a tavern). Three "super-bards" named capable of teaching you everything (they are 3 references to known bards, you can try to guess which ones :p)
• New mentors, less evolved than those implemented in V2 (who will still be there of course): they can increase each of the 4 attributes (strength/agility/intelligence/charisma) of your character (only) by 1 level in exchange for payment. These mentors will be in every new city of V3
• New mercenaries: condottiere, ronin, eagle warrior, wandering knight
• New bandits for the new continent: the cultists

In terms of assets used: Equipment: mainly the very good (and light!) items modeled by XMQC123 (nexus mod link), as well as some items from the Crusaders Way to Expiation mod

Scenes

• Calradia with Zimbabwe scenes for the southern desert factions, to vary the scenes.
• Tribal / Precolombian assets (by La Grandmaster) that you have probably already seen in other mods have been used for cities and villages.
• Ettenrocal also produced new LSP castles on NexusMod, they have been added as well :)

Abandoned ideas, for which I have not enough time (but if anybody has, it can be great) :

• Integrating scenes from The Last Days for Trapegea and Zendar, but I underestimated the scope of the task.
• Creating a new environnement : the jungle ; for the new precolombian-inspired factions
• adding even more factions : revamping Xothay and the clans with more China/Japan separated each other, adding Vietnamese/Malays, Amazons faction, bandits factions, northern and tribal clans...
• additional OSP resource integration (more populated taverns, more people in the cities, decapitation...)
• Trying to seriously enhance the Cornac and solve the collision issue

Feel free to join the discord to discuss, follow the development, or even contribute!

Sceners and Graphists are welcome, especially for the banners (I used Gekokujo ones for the Precolombian, but it can be really better) and all the new scenes (interior, exterior)

It's a bit off-topic, but as you can see in this image, I have finally managed to properly integrate city map-icons. I was previously facing incomprehensible errors which I finally managed to understand and avoid: you just need to first declare the icon in the python map_icon file, then compile the code (without using anything!). Once the code is compiled, the icons can be used without any problem. This limit does not exist with equipment or troops, where I organized the development in large blocks touching indistinctly the script files, troops or others, and then do the compilation.

Xothay and the clans will have Gekokujo's map icons ; while Tigrayand, Czaloca and Quetzal will also have their own.