The RTR Beta 2 Public Release Thread

[ahowl11]

Hello everyone!

It is my pleasure to announce that we are releasing our second beta this weekend, to be followed by a LIVE STREAM of the mod by our very own Jackasaurus, so keep your eyes on this thread for when he posts his link.

Now, onto the mod!

Our last release thread contained no screens, and basically a list of changes. We have made up for that by taking a good amount of screenshots for everyone to gaze at.
In BETA 2 we really focused on our in-game mechanics regarding trade, farming, economy, population growth, battle mechanics and overall ai gameplay. Graphics are roughly the same, though the environments are an upgrade due to EmoDude's constant work. Units are the same, and factions got some tweaking in regards to symbols and colors. However, the gameplay (which is what we've been focusing on first from day one) is superbly better. I have done a few tests myself and it is a very fun mod to play as regardless of the faction!

Here is the entire feature list dating back to our first release.

1) The map is based off Philadelphos' Rome Total History map. This map in turn is based off the combination of the RTRPE map and the Mundus Magnus map that we have come very accustomed to. This means the map will encompass the areas that were most important to Rome and Greece. Certain areas will not get as many settlements due to the fact that they bordered the Greek and Roman lands, and they were considered more of trade partners than enemies. Such areas include India, Arabia, Africa, and North East Europe. Two major rivers are navigable, the Nile and Danube. We have also recently expanded the map more into India and have made a new radar map as well as all of the faction maps.
EmoDude has also polished the campaign map. He fixed the jagged coastlines, improved the textures, made new eye candy water, added 3D sand dunes to deserts, added new settlements from RTRVII and RSII, e.t.c.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Besides a beautiful map we decided that for phase 1 we needed a solid base in which we can develop a great mod. So we are running RTW on the Alexander engine, which is the best engine of the three as it has multiple AI improvements and it can handle most of the features from Barbarian Invasion.

Here are the features in Detail:
2) Every city that historically had either stone or earth walls have stone walls, even if they are not at city level yet. Some colonies and most barbarian settlements have wooden walls.
3) Most regions have roads, blacksmiths and ports as its realistic.
4) Most cities have the closest temple associated with it historically in place.
5) If cities specialized in ships, academics, mining, farming, games, theater, cavalry, archers, or infantry they have been given the specific buildings to represent this.
6) Religion: which is now termed culture. There will be Western Civilized, Eastern Civilized and Barbarian cultures. They each get a building tree to help spread their culture and public unrest will be the result if you conquer a city of different culture. Each region has an indestructible native culture building, but factions can build colonies of their culture to help convert the populace. Carthage and the Seleucids will have the toughest time. Also traits were added to characters to reflect their culture. Thanks to the XGM and XC teams for helping us with this feature.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

7) Seventh Culture: Nomad. This has been given to two factions. They now have different portraits, and sound eastern. They also have eastern music and the nomad building tree from BI. Xeofox has done great work to make them look unique compared to other cultures.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

 8) Loyalty: This feature has been given to a few greek and celtic factions and your generals all have the loyalty feature attached to them. A disloyal general will defect to the shadowing faction upon revolt instead of being kicked out of a settlement.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

9) Night Battles: Your best generals will now have the ability to fight night battles.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

10) BI Buildings for Barbarians: the 4th and 5th tier buildings have been added to the strat map and battle map. No bugs either.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

11) Naval Invasions: A few factions will have the tendency to make naval invasions.
12) BI Barbarian Interface
13) Advisor portraits for Barbarian, Nomad, Carthaginian, Greek and Eastern Cultures.
14) Faction Specific Mercenaries. With ALX, factions can have mercenaries available only to them. I added a few vanilla units that made sense to some factions (we are tinkering with this, once we add more units it will become more unique and diverse)
15) Immortal trait added (this will be important for future development)
16) ai_do_not_attack_faction - this feature makes it so factions don't attack a faction. It can only be used once per faction. I'll let you guess who we gave this to!
17) New factions: Sarmatia, Nabataea, Hellenic Kingdoms, Saka, Illyria, and Celtic Tribes
18) One Roman Faction
19) A new recruitment system: When you take over a settlement you can build a normal barracks but it will only allow you to recruit the most basic troop types, native to that region. However, depending on which settlement you take you will be able to have two options to choose from. First is the annexation route where you slowly integrate the city and its people into your culture. This will lead to unrest and it takes a long time, but in the end you acquire access to most of your factional units. The second route is an allied client state where it takes a quick amount of time and gives you local troops, this also keeps the population happy but you cannot train factional units.
20) Built off of this system is an Area of Recruitment and Zone of Recruitment system. Certain troops will only be able to be built in certain regions, and factions won't be able to build factional troops on the other side of the map.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

21. Also, for special cities such as Carthage or Alexandria, a certain building can be built to acquire mercenary units. This is based off of the fact that many greek factions and Carthage used mercenaries from distant lands to do their fighting for them.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

22. A lot of new units are included. These units are all either from BI, ALX, or reskins of vanilla. They also have more historically accurate and culturally specific names to distinguish themselves from similar unit types. Here are some of the new units showcased by Lanjane and his beautiful unit cards.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

24) Here starts the main features that were not included in BETA 1. Quinn_Inuit of ExRM has been extremely gracious to RTR in letting us use his economic system. Here is the description of our economic system from Quinn himself from the ExRM Documentation page.

Farming and Growth:
Income from farms was historically the major source of income for most states, yet the RTW engine heavily privileges trade (especially sea trade). As a result of this, in a well-balanced mod, you won't be able to recruit and sustain a major army from inland regions. If you could, then you'd have to be able to recruit huge armies from the coastal regions.

We've fixed this by leveraging the game's "tax income" feature into a farm-based income system. Regions are given tax income multipliers based on both their base fertility and the level of farming improvements there. Many improvements also give minor income tax penalties to represent maintenance and/or pollution costs, but they always make up for it in other ways. This forces players to be careful to build infrastructure only where they actually need it. This ensures that farming (in most regions) is a more important source of wealth than trade, but that trade remains important to your overall income stream. This system allows inland regions to support troops just as well as coastal ones, or at least nearly as well.
Trade:

You'll see a few new trade resources in the game, such as salt and fish. We thought these were more important than some of the existing ones, and allowed us to more accurately portray the strategic significance of some cities.

Much more has changed "under the hood" with the trading system. Fewer buildings provide trade bonuses now, and many of those that do provide such bonuses only boost land trade. This allows us to keep trade income from become the main source of income for almost all factions, like it is in the unmodified game, and it also prevents the income from sea trade from completely overshadowing land trade income. Trade is still very important, of course, but it's now just one part of a balanced budget.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

25) We've also changed population into Man Power based off a concept created by RedFox and his Diadochi TW mod. It's impossible to simulate realistc population numbers in RTW as the squalor gets way too high and cities are constantly in the red. So instead we changed population to Man Power. Also Man Power doesn't generate as quickly as Population did, once again, Quinn with the reasoning behind it.

As you can imagine, this system required us to tackle growth, as well. Astute players will have noticed that growth in most RTW mods (to say nothing of the unmodded game) is heavily weighted toward the early game, since a base fertility level of 6 is equivalent to L2 farms + L2 sewers + L2 trader. We thought this made games too quick while simultaneously deprecating the importance of proper region management. So we set up a system of slow, balanced growth that relies more on buildings and less on base fertility.
This allows for the measured growth of regions, and rewards careful management by players. It should also reduce the occurrence of population-growth-induced rioting, since such growth cannot get out of control now. Your people may still have reasons to riot, but displeasure at ahistoric population growth rates will no longer be one of them.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

26) New Environments: Since the previous release, EmoDude has done a lot of work to enhance the environments even more. He also enhanced a lot of tree models from RSII.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

27) New Cliffs and Routing Banners



Emodude added new cliffs to the battle map, some are ported from a mod called 300 Warlords of Sparta, some are from RTW Alexander, but most ones are enhanced cliffs and rocks from vanilla. On the second screenshot you can also see the new banners for routing units.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

28) New Faction Icons and maps with new names for difficulty levels

All factions have new faction icons and banners made by ngr, who made the original Mundus Magnus Mod, and new faction maps made by EmoDude. Furthermore the difficulty levels have been renamed, stars have been added and there is also a warning message on the bottom of the screen that warns for possible bugs on hardcore (very hard) campaign difficulty.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

29) 6tpy, climate change, realistic movement and supply system


EmoDude has also been busy working on realistic movement rates that depend on circumstances such as supply rates, climate, season and there’s also huge penalty in enemy territory. An army needs to be commanded by a family member in order to have full movement enabled and for admirals you just have to wait a few turns. Agents have full movement enabled by default. Furthermore he increased the number of turns per year to 6 and the number of winter turns varies between 2 and 4. Early in the game you’ll have 3 winter turns on average to simulate the cooler Subatlantic period, later in the game short winters of 2 turns will become much more common to reflect the beginning of the roman warm period. Also, the climate in a region is represented as a building and affects population growth, supplies and movement rates in certain seasons depending on the climate (not fully implemented yet).

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Those are all of our features for BETA 2. Here is a list of contributors and credits, a big thank you to all of you!

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

New features
BETA1
Alexander Engine
Barbarian Invasion features such as: Loyalty, Night Battles, Religion, Barbarian Tech Tree, Barbarian Interface
Map from Philadelphos and the Rome: Total History Mod
New Culture: Nomad
New Factions: Rome, Celtic Tribes, Hellenic Kingdoms, Saka, Sarmatia, Nabataea, Illyria
Accurate Building levels in Cities
Naval Invasions
New Advisor UI
AI_Do_Not_Attack_Faction
New Recruitment System: Factional, Allied, Levy
Mercenary Centers and Ports
New Units from BI and ALX
Many Unit Name Changes
Many new Unit skins and Unit Cards
BETA2
better animations for most units
merged Sinuhet and Darth formations
Battle AI script made by germanicu5
6tpy script
more realistic environments
added some greek buildings in ptolemaic settlements
enhanced height map with various features like eye-candy sand dunes
eye candy water on the campaign map
new faction maps
renamed difficulty levels
new strat map pines from AEE
faction specific wall textures for both wooden and stone walls
new road textures for both mud tracks and paved roads
new nomad settlements
autumn trees
new faction icons and banners
new banners for routing units
more realistic cliffs on the battle map
new movement and supply system
smart AI bonuses
hellenic generals for the Ptolemaic kingdom
new UI cards for the Ptolemaic faction, made by TuCoT
tweaked projectiles
rebalanced ships
climate “buildings” that affect population growth, movement, supplies and the acquisition of ancillaries, e.t.c.
strat map settlements from RTRVII and RSII
protective formations system for darthmod
economic system (farm & trade) from ExRM
population growth system from ExRM
man power instead of population from DTW
Money Script for AI
Peace with the Dead Script
New Nomad Portraits
New Yuezhi Horse Archer model and Texture with Unit Card
Bug fixes
the foot missile bug is fixed
fixed the height of Chigu, the capital city of the saka
fixed the jagged coastlines
fixed the cliffs on the strat map
the fatigue system is completely fixed
nerfed tower arrows
the desert scout ancillary can now only be acquired in desert regions
Credits
Philadelphos and RTH for the Map
limes and AEE - Campaign Pine Trees
DimeBagHo and XGM - Unit textures, UI's, Culture System
RedFox and DTW - ManPower mechanic, Roman Symbol
ngr - Original Mundus Magnus map and many faction symbols
Rise of Empire - Many unit textures and Unit Cards
comrade_general and THS - Unit textures and Unit Cards
Prometheus - Animations
Signifierone - Animations
Pat89 - Peace with the Dead Script
Makanyane & 300WOS team – battlemap Cliffs
Europa Barbarorum - Animations, Stratmap Vegetation & Inspiration
davide.cool - wall textures
Germanicu5 - RealyBadAI Script for RTW Alexander
0 A.D. - road- & ground textures
http://mapdb.obsidianconflict.net/texture:oskutin-s-snow-materials - Alpine winter cliff texture
http://www.mb3d.co.uk/mb3d/maxTextures_Home_-_Free_Seamless_and_Tileable_High_Res_Textures.html - Ground- wall- & Bridge textures
http://mayang.com/ - Ground textures
RTRPE: strat map textures, bamboo javelin
RTRVII: strat map settlements, animations
Darthmod - AI formations, base for fatigue system, foot missile bug fix, protective formation system
Sinuhet - AI formations
Roma Surrectum: nomadic campaign map settlement models, roman, greek and carthaginian ports, some settlement textures, some campaign map textures, missile models and used as base for our environments which also include a tree model made by Éorl for FATW
TuCoT - Ptolemaic General Portraits
Contributors (only listed if contributed)
ahowl11 - Project Leader, Coding
EmoDude - Coding, Mapping, Bug Fixing, Graphics
XeoFox - Nomad Specialist, Nomad Portraits, Yuezhi Horse Archer, Menu Video, Pulchura Mors Mod
Quinn_Inuit - Helped with porting ExRM features and Scripts
Alavaria - Devised Recruitment System and set it up
uanime5 - Finished Recruitment system as well as various coding
Anarchon - Initial Map editor, helped with factions and settlements
comrade_general - Unit reskins and Unit Card recolors
Michael333 - Unit reskins and Unit Card recolors
Lanjane - Many new Unit Cards
Pat89 - Advise on Economy
Aarronbarron - Coding
Mandoni - Siege of Numantia Historical Battle
CanOmer - Starting Positions Preview Map
Mausolos of Caria - Historical Advise
Phillip - Testing
Vincent Butler - Testing
Gen.james.wolfe - Testing
Vrosivs Avgvstvs Ravkvs - Testing
Jackasaurus - Live Stream Testing
Jubal - Forum Hosting on Exilian
Infiernus - GitProject Hosting and Management
If we forgot any Contributors let me know! There are many RTRProject members, but I will only list them when they contribute, or else the list would be huge.

DOWNLOAD

https://mega.nz/#!559RXSqI!kJQHd1shERFaifIXOViU-P6UnxE3aam9HPsMuk_7eUc


Will post more download links as they are presented. Soon we will post a link to an installer as well.

To install
1. Extract the MM folder to your RTW directory or if you are using steam, your RTW - Alexander directory
2. Right Click on the Alx.exe and create a shortcut
3. Then right click the shortcut and select properties and put this in the target line after all quotations: -show_err -mod:MM
4. If you are using steam, Go to your RTW - Alexander folder and make a shortcut of the exe file, and then follow step 3.
5. If you are using the non steam version but want to run it through steam, go to 'Add a game' then select the Shortcut you made in step two and name it RTR BETA 2
6. Play!

This patch of the mod has very important texture files that enhance the looks of the mod. It cannot be modfoldered sadly so it must overwrite your vanilla data folder to be used. It's an optional download but if used it wont effect any of your other games or mods, but simply add some enhancements.
https://mega.nz/#!Y89wnZ6R!segfiivTU_ukAbaLZvmoPR0kjK-4m3gaZOrTy_1cnOw

[Jubal]

Good stuff! I'll get some announcements out about this after I've slept, sorry for not getting them done earlier, bit swamped with stuff to do at the moment.

[ahowl11]

Are the images showing for anyone? And thanks jubal, I've received basically no feedback from Twc so we need to get this on Twitter, Reddit, and any other area where a RTW community or ancient history community lies.
Also I'll try and get more discussions up here to generate activity.

[wambat]

I am not seeing any images in the spoiler boxes.

Also: "Those are all of are our features for BETA 2."

[Jubal]

Yeah, the images definitely aren't there, looking at it in BBcode mode.

[ahowl11]

What do I need to do to get them changed? And thanks for the heads up Wambat

Oh I figured it out, I gotta redo the images. Howvever before I do that, I've noticed that screenshots in this forum are way too big and kind of mess up the thread. How can we fix that so they fit appropriately?

[Jubal]

If you're using the visual editor you might find it easier to switch to BBCode editor - either way, if you edit the post and put the image URLs there I can turn them into image tags properly for you.

[ahowl11]

Edited post above

[Jubal]

To get them to fit, the image tag has a width attribute, about 800/900 is good for most modern screens.

So it's:

Code: [Select]

[IMG width=850]url goes here[/IMG]
Once there are images up that I can use, I'll get on with more advertising. 

[ahowl11]

Fixed, images added, but there are a few not showing and the unit cards are HUGE! Can you edit this and show me the size for future unit cards? Thanks

[Jubal]

Basically if an image is naturally smaller than 850, just drop out the width attribute and it'll show fine. Fixed

[morfeasnikos]

I like the beta so far because it keep the classical feeling of Rome total war !

[Jubal]

Welcome back to Exilian, nikos

[morfeasnikos]

Thank you Jubal

[Suppanut]

Hi.