Exilian

Game Design and Project Resources: The Workshops Quarter => Mods, Maps & Game Add-Ons - The Bazaar => Total War Mods - The Engineer's Shed => Topic started by: korsakoff on May 14, 2018, 07:56:16 PM

Title: Vanilla Extended Mini Mod
Post by: korsakoff on May 14, 2018, 07:56:16 PM
(https://i.imgur.com/VhOM7l7.png)

Vanilla Extended Mod has been a little project i have been working on for a rather long (too long) time.  I have always enjoyed Vanilla Rome Total War and it's gameplay but have grown rather tired of replaying the same factions over and over again. Vanilla Extended rectifies this by adding 5 new factions and slightly tweaks and modifies some existing factions with a few new units and roster tweaks.  I am releasing this current build as i simply have no more free time to work on this mod anymore and feel that leaving all the assets i have currently worked on be dumped to the side lines would be a rather silly waste. So what does this version include?

List of Changes as followed
- The Romans are now a single faction with all family members combined. Includes complete retextured units and UI's
- The Brutti have been replaced with Epirus,  with skins and UI's
- The scipii have been replaced with Pergamum, with skins and UI's
- The Senate have been replaced with Bosporan Kingdom, with skins and UI's
- Parthia has been replaced with the Kingdom of atropatene, with skins and UI's
- Ptolemaic Kingdom has replaced Egypt with a slightly more believable unit roster.
- new map images  for the campaign faction selection screen
- New faction win conditions
-New units for some existing factions and tweaks too!!
and a lot more that i'm too tired to list off

Credits!
CG for letting me use his awesome Egyptian skins that would have otherwise caused me more headache and work and for creating THS which has inspired me and this mod greatly  ;D
NGR mundus magnus for settlement refrences
Lanjane for his fantastic unit cards
And thanks to Jubal and the Exilian for giving this mod a little home!!

This will be the only release version of this mod at the time of writing. As stated previously i simply have no more spare time to work on it. The mod should be pretty crash free from testing (fingers crossed) as mod is basically just a heavily modded Vanilla. If any small bugs pop up i'll be sure to fix those when i can but any major work will not happen.

Download here - currently unavailable

Screenshots!
Spoiler (click to show/hide)










Title: Re: Vanilla Extended mini project
Post by: comrade_general on May 15, 2018, 04:30:08 PM
Looking good keep it up.
Title: Re: Vanilla Extended mini project
Post by: Jubal on May 15, 2018, 04:35:29 PM
This is certainly the right place to this, and welcome to Exilian :) Looks fun and I'll hopefully get time to give it a test drive once you've got a working version out.

Looks like a fun faction set as well (though I'd still like to see someone add the Georgian Pharnavazids in a mod, but I'm biased).
Title: Re: Vanilla Extended mini project
Post by: korsakoff on May 17, 2018, 11:44:41 PM
Hai guys thanks for the replies! been a little delayed on getting back since i have been pretty busy with some campaign map (mostly for carthage) editing and finishing the bosporan unit roster along with egypt which i have linked below. Thanks CG again for letting me borrow those rather nice looking skins for the ptolemy  :P

I have ran into a little predicament atm though and i have no idea why it's happening. Basically trying to select a siege settlement in the menus for custom battle seems to hard CTD the game with no error at all even though siege battles work just fine on the campaign map. It's not too much of a major problem as at least it's not effecting the campaign map siege battles (thank god) but do anyone of you know what might be causing it?

few of the wip images i talked about
Spoiler (click to show/hide)




Title: Re: Vanilla Extended mini project
Post by: Jubal on May 21, 2018, 09:59:50 PM
I think I've seen that before, never worked out what caused it :/
Title: Re: Vanilla Extended mini project
Post by: korsakoff on May 22, 2018, 10:36:33 PM
I feel like it has something to do with editing Egypt. At first i thought it might be something to do with me editing and adding new regions but i'm pretty sure custom battle maps are seperate from the campaign map? i have reverted back to an older back up that i had from a few days ago when i didn't touch them and i seem to have 0 crashing on custom siege battles and it seems to have fixed the problem with trying to conquer any roman settlement from crashing on the campaign map also. I'm pretty stumped with what it could be but i guess i'll leave them be for now  ???
Title: Re: Vanilla Extended mini project
Post by: comrade_general on May 22, 2018, 10:40:05 PM
Change one thing at a time until you find the problem. It's really the only way to do it.
Title: Re: Vanilla Extended mini project
Post by: Jubal on May 31, 2018, 11:20:53 PM
Gave a shout to this in Updates:

https://exilian.co.uk/forum/index.php?topic=5647
Title: Re: Vanilla Extended mini project
Post by: korsakoff on June 02, 2018, 03:44:18 PM
Quote from: Jubal on May 31, 2018, 11:20:53 PM
Gave a shout to this in Updates:

https://exilian.co.uk/forum/index.php?topic=5647

woah thanks a lot Jubal :P

I have been a little distracted with working on a little smaller project along side this which is probably poor choice of wording as it's not close to even being small haha.  I'll leave only two wip screenshots since it's not really related to this current project but i'll be sure to post some more work in progess screens for VE when i get the time. Cheers again Jubal!
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Title: Re: Vanilla Extended mini project
Post by: Jubal on June 03, 2018, 04:48:09 PM
Ooh neat! Do make a new thread for the other project whenever you want to post more about it :)
Title: Re: Vanilla Extended mini project
Post by: warcrafthero on June 16, 2018, 07:00:52 PM
Interesting mod idea! From the last picture, with the green Parthia, i guess an Alexander Extended  :)
Title: Re: Vanilla Extended mini project
Post by: korsakoff on June 17, 2018, 06:12:46 PM
Quote from: warcrafthero on June 16, 2018, 07:00:52 PM
Interesting mod idea! From the last picture, with the green Parthia, i guess an Alexander Extended  :)

Thanks! A lot more further back in the time however :P
I'll probably have a thread up for it when i feel more confident and have some more content to show off.
Title: Re: Vanilla Extended mini project
Post by: ahowl11 on August 03, 2018, 06:48:46 AM
Wow, reminds me of an old mod I worked on on TWC called Historical Rome Total War Vanilla 1.5.. that was 7 years ago! Keep up the good work :)
Title: Re: Vanilla Extended mini project
Post by: korsakoff on August 17, 2018, 11:38:46 AM
Yeah, i remember helping you out with that mod a long time ago  :P
Title: Re: Vanilla Extended mini project
Post by: ahowl11 on August 17, 2018, 05:12:29 PM
Iirc you went by evilkinevil back then haha. My vanilla mod that I just posted is an attempt to finish HRTW once and for all :)
Title: Re: Vanilla Extended mini project
Post by: Winters07 on December 04, 2018, 09:32:41 AM
How work is going ? I can't wait to play this mod ! ;D
Title: Re: Vanilla Extended mini project
Post by: korsakoff on September 27, 2019, 03:54:47 PM
Been a fair while since i posted anything about this little project. I had to stop working on it for a good while due to focusing on studies but the RTW nerve hit me again recently which has got me fully back working on it. That being said i have pretty much started with a clean folder so it's taking me a fair bit of time to get to where i was before but it's been fun. In the mean time i have made some slight changes to the faction roster included down below.

I wanted to originally include the Britons but they seem to just sit on the little island dong virtually nothing. While you could say this is pretty accurate it does feel like a waste of a faction slot and having them sitting around and praying one of the AI actually some how bothers to invade the island is rather boring so i have came up with the idea of mostly replacing them with a faction called "celts" or "celtic tribes". This could give the gauls a bit of a fight rather than being too dominant in france alone and i could give the  faction one province in Britian and give them access to unique units only recruitable in briton?

Parthia is another faction i have replaced, the original game kind of just shoehorned them on the campaign map when they really should not have been there. I have been playing some Rome 2 and imperator rome as of late and i rather like the idea of Media Atropatene being included instead to replace them.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

WIP screenshot below of the  Bosporans

Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Title: Re: Vanilla Extended mini project
Post by: Jubal on September 29, 2019, 12:51:05 PM
Yeah, in general modelling celtic cultures effectively is a massive problem for wargames that tend to start with a very Romano-Greek premise for how societies and cultures work. RTW just has the wrong model for it, at a base game mechanics level. In some ways this frees you up - just do whatever works for gameplay, because in accuracy terms "getting it right" just isn't much of a thing. And yeah, unique Briton units in a wider celtic faction seems fine as an idea.

Nice to see you and the mod back :)
Title: Re: Vanilla Extended mini project
Post by: Lanjane on October 06, 2019, 10:25:02 PM
Hi korsakoff!

I'm Lanjane, you could probably know me as I was helping with comrade_general's mods Persian Invasion and The Hellenic States before.

I want to invite you to our Discord Rome Total War Modding Community which was created by Ahowl and me and currently has about 163 members: https://discordapp.com/invite/p4jnanZ
Not only you will have a chance to get help with the development of your mod, but you also will get some additional audience for your project and as a bonus you also can meet a lot of remaining RTW modders there, like Ahowl11,  Suppanut, Gigantus, Joar, Robbe Aerts and many others.
Title: Re: Vanilla Extended mini project
Post by: Jubal on October 06, 2019, 11:27:55 PM
Also, this got included in the latest newsletter:

https://exilian.co.uk/forum/index.php?topic=6019
Title: Re: Vanilla Extended mini project
Post by: ahowl11 on October 11, 2019, 07:28:44 AM
Keep up the good work!
Title: Re: Vanilla Extended mini project
Post by: korsakoff on October 21, 2019, 12:42:49 AM
Thanks Ahowl  :D

Thought i would post a small little update since it's been a while. Currently working on replacing the entire julii roster to fit with the new faction symbol and banners which has been a bit of a headache with how many unit cards and textures they have but i think it's turning out pretty well so far.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Thrace has recieved some small buffs to their unit roster as the default vanilla roster is pretty meh. They now have warband, levy pikemen and noble cavalry.  Dacia also has a tweaked unit roster with swordsman and Sicklemen taken from alexenader now added. Falxmen are now exclusive to Dacia and Sicklemen can be recruited from a blacksmith for game balance.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)



Title: Re: Vanilla Extended mini project
Post by: Jubal on October 27, 2019, 05:11:05 PM
Thrace is an interesting oddity in RTW terms. It's one of those things that's kinda there for gameplay, and I've had great campaigns playing as them, but I've never found them quite satisfactory somehow. Looks like you made some sensible additions to their main roster, anyway :)
Title: Re: Vanilla Extended mini project
Post by: korsakoff on October 30, 2019, 05:02:51 PM
Thrace has always been a favourite of mine so i totally had to give them a little bit of buff  :P

And of course another small little update!

 numidia: unit roster slightly tweaked including town militia and desert swordsmen. The swordsmen unit card is a place holder
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Iberians: This faction always felt rather weak in vanilla so they now have access to spearmen and a slighty more heavier version of scutarii (really need unit cards for these)
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Carthage: When i was looking into the RTW data files it seems CA left behind a Scutarii texture so rather than let it go to waste of course carthage now have them too!! ;D The unit card was pretty simple to make with a couple of mins of image manipulating in gimp and i think it turned out rather well.
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Last but not least a few campaign map images. I'd say the campaign map is pretty much fully complete at this point with some polish needed here and there. I had originally intended for the mod to start in 279bc to include pyrrhus and i had a plethora of ideas and routes for the mod to go down on but at the current moment i'm simply lacking time as my studies will be starting rather soon and i also felt that since the mod is called "Vanilla Extended" most of my ideas and the start date i had originally planned simply diverged a little too far from Vanilla. Baiscally this means sadly no pyrrhus and the pyrrhic wars but Epirus is still included i just cut them back down  :(

Spoiler (click to show/hide)






Title: Re: Vanilla Extended Mini Mod
Post by: korsakoff on November 01, 2019, 03:22:04 AM
Mod finally released  ;D

Updated the front page! Going to go into hiding for now,  i need time to relax after working on this lmao!
Title: Re: Vanilla Extended Mini Mod
Post by: Jubal on November 01, 2019, 02:06:08 PM
Congrats! Did an announcement :)

https://exilian.co.uk/forum/index.php?topic=6032
Title: Re: Vanilla Extended Mini Mod
Post by: dubsartur on December 18, 2019, 08:40:12 PM
Wow, cool!  I played some Rome: Total Realism back in the day, it just got boring to defeat endless Ionian armies as King of Armenia, never being able to make progress against Ionians (no money or troops!) but never having to make peace either (the AI was easy to confuse and shoot to pieces with elite archers, cataphracts, and a small phalanx).

What do you need to run a modded version these days  ... a Windows box and the CD/DVD?  I don't really use Windows any more (Windows 10 terrifies me and Windows 7 will not be maintained soon!) and I don't have money for Macs.

I feel confused because a lot of things on computers are going in a surveillancey, software-as-a-service direction that we voted against with our feet in the 1990s.  Its getting hard to do basic things on say my phone in a way which is consistent with my fundamental values ("no, I don't want some online service suggesting music for me!  I want to play albums, one at a time, which I own").
Title: Re: Vanilla Extended mini project
Post by: dubsartur on December 18, 2019, 09:26:55 PM
Quote from: Jubal on September 29, 2019, 12:51:05 PM
Yeah, in general modelling celtic cultures effectively is a massive problem for wargames that tend to start with a very Romano-Greek premise for how societies and cultures work. RTW just has the wrong model for it, at a base game mechanics level. In some ways this frees you up - just do whatever works for gameplay, because in accuracy terms "getting it right" just isn't much of a thing. And yeah, unique Briton units in a wider celtic faction seems fine as an idea.

Nice to see you and the mod back :)
And games like the Total War series or real-time strategy games also have the issue that they are built around constantly aggressively expanding.  Its hard to represent things like the Japanese ignoring Hokkaido, or the Romans ignoring Ireland, because the locals were weird and didn't seem to have anything to offer their conquerors.

I don't like criticizing commercial games or films for doing what games and film people think is cool rather than what historians think is cool ("just assume that what you see on the screen is wrong!"), but maybe there is room for history geeks and indy games geeks to work together?  I am poking around 0 AD which works on Linux and has features like "women" and "units that work when they can and fight when they must."
Title: Re: Vanilla Extended Mini Mod
Post by: Jubal on December 18, 2019, 10:17:37 PM
0AD is very neat, I did some programming on it back in the day. We used to have some whole 0AD sections on Exilian but they got archived due to under-use sadly.

I think my conception of this is that "accurate computer games" is a non-starter, but there are ways of showing other parts and sides of history through games that can make them more rather than less fun. I certainly think that you could do the Romans ignoring Ireland with a sufficiently smart AI and sufficient balance of risk/reward (like, "this place makes me no money and the locals keep rebelling, it's not worth it" ought to be a do-able AI calculation). Unfortunately AI modding isn't something any of the Total War games have allowed for very well, but it's one of the areas most of interest with my historian's hat on.

I mostly use the steam version of RTW nowadays on windows - don't know what the linux options are.
Title: Re: Vanilla Extended Mini Mod
Post by: dubsartur on December 19, 2019, 09:07:36 AM
And I guess you can have games which explore different aspects ... I would love to have a game where if you let the wrong types of troops do something glorious, that has political implications!

Isn't Steam spyware?  I thought it monitors all the software on your computer and all the hardware configurations "to ensure respect for copyright and prevent bots and cheating in multiplayer games."  I am having trouble duckduckgoing the details, because "valve" and "steam" are common nouns with high frequencies, but here is a reddit thread (https://www.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/dgh3en/how_is_steam_on_privacy/).
Title: Re: Vanilla Extended Mini Mod
Post by: BagaturKhan on December 05, 2020, 07:43:00 PM
This mod is simple and cool for vanilla game! But i can`t find it in the internet. Does someone know about it? Maybe its possible to get a link somewhere? Thanks anyway, friends.
Title: Re: Vanilla Extended Mini Mod
Post by: Jubal on December 06, 2020, 11:59:48 AM
Not sure. Maybe someone like Lanjane would know.
Title: Re: Vanilla Extended Mini Mod
Post by: BagaturKhan on December 19, 2020, 12:04:14 AM
I`ll ask him then. Because mod is really interesting for me.