The Reiksmarines
"๐๐๐ ๐
๐๐’๐ ๐๐๐๐ ๐๐๐ ๐น๐๐
๐๐๐
๐ฉ๐๐๐๐ ๐๐ ๐๐๐, ๐๐๐ ๐๐๐๐ ๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐
๐๐
."
– ๐ณ๐. ๐จ๐๐๐๐ ๐ฉ๐๐๐๐๐
Taking a bit of inspiration from his northern neighbors, Karl Franz saw the use in having an elite fighting force that can fulfill multiple roles on the battlefield, and under the auspices and guidance of Reiksmarshall Helborg, created the Reiksmarines.
Every man in the corps comes hand selected by their superior officers after demonstrating uncommon courage, resourcefulness, and skill at arms in the course of their service with the state troops of Reikland. They hail from Greatsword brigades, Swordsmen companies, Handgunner squads, even artillery crews. Once selected, they receive additional training, new weapons, full plate armor, and a new combat doctrine; shoot to kill, break their will.
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Now that the fluff is outta the way;
If you’re like me, later in Empire campaigns it can get tiresome delicately setting up formations to remain effective, when really all you wanna see is your enemies getting shot to pieces and getting trounced in melee. An elite Hybrid unit felt like the way to go, but I didn’t see a unit mod that fit the bill. So I made my own!
The Reiksmarines are balanced around being *slightly* worse in some aspects to their state troop cohorts, are better in others, and can fulfill the roles of almost all of them. For example, they have ten fewer soldiers with handguns than handgunners (80 vs 90) and reload slower, but the front line are as good in melee as greatswords. Or, like halberdiers they can reflect a charge, but don’t have charge reflection against large. However, they benefit from lord perks and research for all state troops, so their shortcomings can be greatly eased over the course of a campaign.
Special thanks to Cornelius Scipio for letting me borrow some of his models from his Knights Galore 2 mod, go check that one out!
Big thanks also to the fine folk over in Da Modding Den Discord, Calm and Lost2Insanity in particular lended a pair of gigantic helping hands in assisting the creation of my first real mod!
Future plans; I think I’ll split this unit into separate ones sometime in the future. In addition to this hybrid version, A dedicated riflemen unit with all 120 men using rifles. I might patch in that bayonet submod to make them fight with their rifles as well. Also a dedicated great weapons variant composed of the front line troops wielding poleaxes and polehammers. I also have an idea to do a minor hero series starring some specialists. Besides that, I might also release the "toolbox" I’ve put together full of all the pieces I used to create the Reiksmarines.
Let me know if everything looks good in the comments, throw me some feedback, any bugs you encounter, and of course enjoy the mod!
