Empires of Europe 1700 – Release Preview

We’re at the halfway point of this month’s 1700 release, meaning it will be live next weekend. Making the most of our new two-week release schedule, we’ve got a huge amount of updates and new content planned.

Starting off with the new “Mediterranean Town” scene – this is an absolutely enourmous 18th century seaside town scene built by ComprehendNubnes…taking inspiration from many of the western capitals within the Mediterranean such as Naples and Monaco.

This will used for many of the large seaside towns, and even gives us some options for large inland towns if we remove the water. One of the standout features is the glass windows on many shops and buildings…as well as the star fort which we’ll most likely repurpose for a castle scene at some point ☺️

Next up is the buildout of our armours for the Swedish troop tree. Sweden has always been a funny one for me…being one of the most important global powers at the time, as well as having one of the strongest military forces, it has always felt necessary to “do them justice” so to speak. In the original 1700 builds Sweden had their own culture so that we could give them their own unique troop tree separate from Denmark and Norway, however I never loved this solution, as it meant that Sweden had a different culture to Norway and Denmark, and would have cultural penalties in their areas as a result. Therefore I made the decision to remove the Swedish culture some time ago. Thanks to Reiko’s new settlement recruitment script however…we can now have a separate Swedish troop tree (recruitable in Sweden) whilst still maintaining a single “Nordic” culture. As a result we’re now busy building out at least 7-8x uniforms for a dedicated Swedish troop tree.

This will be a “full” tree including irregulars, regulars, artillery, and cavalry.

The next big update is the completion of the Ottoman tree along with a series of Swords, Lances, and Firearms specifically for their territories. We’ve added the final two armours which include the Garip light cavalry, and the Derbendci Guard unit in the irregular line:

We’ve also added a series of Ottoman specific sabres and firearms. Starting off with the sabres, there are six in total with one for each tier (noting that the tier 1 weapon is a Yatagan rather than a sabre):

These are accompanied by the the six new Ottoman firearms, which along with the Jezail Rifle and Abus gun gives us a total of eight:

Three of these are Ottoman whilst the other three are Balkan rifles. For light infantry we have the:

• Greek Kariofili

• Balkan Dzeferdar

• Bulgarian Boyliya

And for the Ottoman “regulars” we have the:

• Ottoman Naval Musket

• Ottoman Janissary Musket

• Ottoman Guard Musket

Each of these is based on a real life model, with the Jannisary and Guard muskets being the top tier. All firearms have had a balance pass to make sure they are somewhat aligned across cultures:

The key thing to point out here is the weapons in blue, which are all used by “volley fire”. Any units that have one of those firearms will use volley fire tactics by default, which is any Western or Ottoman regulars. Any weapons in white will use skirmisher tactics and “fire at will” by default.

We’ve also added three new lances which will be used by all cavalry units. These are long, powerful, and can be used in any scenario including one handed, two handed, spear brace, and couchable:

Using all of these new items the Ottomans have had their (probably) final overhaul, with all units now having a loadout based on the weapons above:

This brings us to the last major update which is further improvements to the volley fire tactics. I’ve been working on improving things like time to fire, flanking formations, and stopping the AI from making poor movement decisions.

I’m also hoping to complete tactics for cavalry, artillery, and grenadiers this week, giving them an automatic way of deploying and attacking. Cavalry have already been implemented, and will now attempt a flanking manoeuvre when with the allied or enemy armies have suffered significant losses:

They also now charge at full speed, using lances if they have them, and sabres if not. FYI I highly recommend RTS camera to go along with the new battle AI. If you want the Empire Total War experience within Bannerlord this is as close as you will get!

RTS camera is broken on the latest Bannerlord 1.5.4…however someone has release an add-on fix which you can find here: https://www.nexusmods.com/mountandblade2bannerlord/mods/13857

So that’s what we’ve got so far. No doubt with another 5+ days we’ll find a lot more to squeeze in, particularly with the volley fire and battle tactics. Target date for release is next Friday/Saturday the 17th October.

If anyone wants access to the test build send me a message on Discord and I will hook you up 😉

Good hunting!

-Fatrod