Expanding Rome: Total War

[ahowl11]

Been awhile but I need to update this thread.

The mod so far:
9 factions' unit rosters completed
Every faction has a new symbol
Will be on the bi.exe
Mundus Magnus Map 4.0 with historical starting positions
Makanyanes Neutralised Senate Mod implemented
Egypt now a  more historic Ptolemaic Empire
Four New factions: Epirus, Bactria, Illyrians, Bosporan Kingdom
New units

Works in Progress:
AOR system
Upgraded Barbarian tech tree from BI
Upgraded Eastern tech tree from BI
Balanced Unit-Stats for every faction

The future:
New Map
Very historical looking units for each roster
Government/Economy systems

Beyond the future:
Version for M2TWK

Who does what?
ahowl11: Creator, text editer, Public Relations, Coordinator
Jzech: 2d artist
Rarity: Modeller
Lethe1: Mapper
debux: Unit stats balancer
Punic Hoplite: Beta Tester
Agamemnon: text editer
Rex Anglorvm: Unit descriptions
HeirofAlexander: Faction descriptions

I will update this thread with each update we have with the mod

[debux]

Nice stuffs. You might want to use the Spain mod, to avoid spending time implementing/creating new units for Ibera

[ahowl11]

I might take a few units from it and give Sotk the credit

[Agamemnon]

To be honest, I don't know much about it, but I don't really think that the Bosporans should be included at the expense of some others. They really didn't do a whole lot ever. Honestly, the Sarmatians didn't do a whole lot either, and I think could be best represented by strong rebels.

However, I do think that while the Britons were not a major power, they were important enough thanks to Caesar's troubles in Britain to include. In addition, it would not hurt to add another Germanic faction, say put the Germanians in the north and, for example, the Alemannians or Cimbri in the south. Why? Because the southern German tribes BROUGHT ON the Marian Reforms, and it would be really cool to see two competing German factions eventually spilling into Gaul and Italy. Finally, the Galatians would simply be amazing to add, as their Celtic/Greek influence just frankly equals EPIC to me. However, they could be represented by a Gaul or Celts faction that has a bit of land in Anatolia and lots of AoR units there.

That said, I do like the Illyrians, but I also think that the above mentioned Barbarian factions would be better and more interesting to play as or against. The Barbarians simply don't get much love until BI, and I think that if we are to truly expand RTW it would be better done not by adding more Eastern or Greek factions (there's certainly enough of them, though I must admit I've long dreamed of a Jewish Rebellion faction and I certainly wouldn't mind seeing the Nabaeteans or Sabeans), but by adding more Barbarian factions and hopefully simulating the inter-tribal wars that had been going on long before Caesar's conquest and made the conquests far more difficult than the cake walk conquering the Barbarians is in Vanilla.


And hang on, this isn't the final map? You must realise that the AoR stuff I'm doing will ALL have to be redone if we change the map significantly.

[ahowl11]

Very good points but I solidified the Faction list about a month ago, and it's really too late to go back on it. I understand your points but the way everything is set up it's too late to change anyway.

About the map, I really do not know. Lethe1 has been very sporadic in his work and responses to me, plus the way the Mundus Magnus Map lloks right now, I'm thinking about staying with it. However if I stay with Mundus Magnus there will be some significant changes regarding the regions, but that will not happen for a long time, at least until I know for sure if I have a new map or not. If I do end up using the FO map you don't have to make the AOR system if you don't want to. I'm lucky enough for you to be making one for the current map.

[Agamemnon]

Well that's all fine, and assuming the region names and such are similar I can probably copy/paste some old stuff and just change the RGB values. I just thought you meant that like we'd be getting a totally different map soon, in which case my AoR work is pointless.

[ahowl11]

Yeah regardless it will just be editing. The only difference that the FO map has is that it's very geographically accurate and it has bigger dimensions so the settlements are further apart than vanilla

[Agamemnon]

Hey, uh, when I try to start a campaign it tells me that resource_salt.CAS, resource_fish.CAS, and resource_horses.CAS are missing from models_strat... yet I copied both the Vanilla models_strat folder and the M2 models_strat folder, so I'm absolutely certain they are there (and they even are in the folder named correctly). The game just keeps saying they aren't and won't start a campaign.

I'll try to remove the resources section of descr_strat for now for test purposes, but we need to get that fixed ASAP, since this whole AoR thing is based on the campaign and I need to do testing.

[Agamemnon]

No go, even when there exist no resources on the map AND the correct files do in fact exist.

[ahowl11]

All you gotta do is this:
type            furs
trade_value         9
item            MM/data/models_strat/resource_salt.CAS
icon            MM/data/ui/resources/resource_salt.tga

type            pigs
trade_value         10
item            MM/data/models_strat/resource_horses.CAS
icon            MM/data/ui/resources/resource_horses.tga

type            dogs
trade_value         5
item            MM/data/models_strat/resource_fish.CAS
icon            MM/data/ui/resources/resource_fish.tga


In your descr_sm_resources text file


Also make sure you have the resources fish, horses, ivory, and salt inside of MM/data/UI/resources folder

[Agamemnon]

Fixed it, just had to be in the RTW directory (remember that for the future).

Alright, I finished the AoR, added barbarian buildings (IDK if there even are higher levels of eastern buildings, never looked at them), and got the game working.

Uploading, will post link and known issues when it's done.

[Agamemnon]

Link:
https://rapidshare.com/files/3596096138/XRTW Alpha .5.rar

Known issues:
Wooden walls do not show up on battlemap (no idea why, never had that problem before, can't seem to fix it)
Custom battles do not start after selecting armies (WTF? No clue if it's from me modding or was already there)
Game "stops responding" after you exit the game - no real problem, you just have to click okay

[comrade_general]

I see wooden walls on the battlemap, they just have invisible gates. But the gates are in fact still there (some form of ancient cloaking technology?). I see you have a lot of custom building files, so I'm guessing one of them is referring to a gate "item" which doesn't exist or is named something else, so the game is unable to display it.
Custom battles seem to work OK for me.
I also got the "stopped responding" box after closing the game. No idea what that's from; could conceivably be anything.

[ahowl11]

Are the wooden walls the ones from DTW or are they the vanilla wooden walls?

I also have no experience with custom building files ha

Maybe it was just his computer that didn't let custom battles work?

Odd about the stopped responding box, hopefully it's not a big deal and can be easily fixed once found

[comrade_general]

They looked vanilla to me, just with invisible gates.

Might of been his computer, or he had done something else to the files.