ahowl11’s Vanilla Enhancement Mod

[ahowl11]

Very nice Jubal, I appreciate it!

[ahowl11]

ahowl11's Vanilla Enhancement Mod v4
Way of the Woad

Not many mods gave the Britons a chance.. forums everywhere debated  on what factions to replace them with. EB gave us the most accurate representation about 10 years ago, but no other mod tried. My own beloved RTR even scrapped them, and no vanilla mod did anything for them except maybe give them a few anachronistic units. That has all changed,  in v4 of my mod, you will find the Britons to be exceptionally well  done, all thanks to the wonderful and expert help of lanjane.
In vanilla, the Britons were a bit of a mysterious faction, until we all saw them destroying the Germans on every play through. They like the Gauls were a simple faction with chariots of death, in this mod much has  changed.

Spoiler

Britons ready for the Fray!

Here's the list of features in v4:
- Britannic roster completely overhauled
- Veggiemod by Robbe Aerts implemented (his work is amazing!)
- Higher Level Buildings available for Britons
- Grain Resource re-added as it's not a bug, take advantage of it in the 6 regions it is located in!
- Phalanx bugs fixed.. they are more cohesive and men don't slide backwards and glitch out
- Redid Fatigue.. All heat modifiers based on the vanilla -2 - 5 scale, and all units have either hardy or very_hardy. This is a better solution to turning fatigue completely off
- Mercenary Peltasts now have Peltast skin in mercenary color. Illyrian Mercenaries are back to the way they looked in vanilla.
- New Transparent bases under settlements.. No more white patches!
- New Strat Map Captains for each faction, thanks to crazyroman!
- Culture Specific Battering Rams, from tutorial made by Seasoned Alcoholic
- Towers rate of fire reduced, thanks to Robbe!
- Peasants in Settlement viewer don't have the faction colors anymore.

Spoiler

New Britannic Roster

The Britannic Roster in detail:

Spoiler

GOVERNMENT

Tier 1 - Warband & Youths
Tier 2 - Levies
BARRACKS
Tier 1 - Spear Warband & Sword Warband
Tier 2 - Spearmen & Axemen
Tier 3 - Swordsmen and Fanatic Spearmen
Tier 4 - Chosen Spearmen & Chosen Swordsmen
Tier 5 - Champions & Sword Masters
RANGE
Tier 1 - Slingers
Tier 2 - Skirmisher Warband
Tier 3 - Ambushers
Tier 4 - Archer Warband
STABLES
Tier 1 - Britannic Light Chariots
Tier 2 - Britannic Heavy Chariots
Tier 3 - Light Cavalry
TEMPLES
Tier 2 - Woad Warriors & Wolfhounds
Tier 3 - Druids
GENERALS
Barbarian Warlord (Chariot)
Barbarian Chosen Warlord (Heavy Cavalry)
The roster is a bit backwards in some regards but that is because the Ancient Britons were not as developed as the Gauls, they were somewhat behind the times. As the game begins in 270 BC, we didn't want to have a time warp, so the Britons will have a really weak roster to begin the game and later on develop into a very strong roster. This should change game play in that area of the map drastically.

Spoiler

Chariots charge in with their javelins hurling!

DOWNLOAD & INSTALLATION

DOWNLOAD HERE

One thing that I need to be clear on, is this mod runs on the Alexander.exe not the regular Rome Total War exe. Please make sure you use an Alexander Install.
If you have the last version of the mod, simply extract into the same location and overwrite your files. Make sure to delete the map.rwm file in HRTW/data/world/maps/base folder.
If this is your first crack at my mod then follow these instructions:
To Install, simply extract HRTW into your Rome Total War Directory,  or if you use steam, your Rome Total War Alexander Directory. when  making a shortcut, use the Alexander.exe or in steam go to Launch  options and include this: -show_err -mod:HRTW

Features listed in the forum or the latest article, once approved!
For more visuals, check out the screenshots area on my moddb page!



CREDITS


Lanjane - Thank you for for the careful precision that you put into the units and their detail
crazyroman - Thank you for letting me use your mod!
Robbe Aerts - Thank you for all of your work with Veggiemod and allowing me to use it, as well as your advice on the phalanx bugs and fatigue, and finally slowing down the rate of fire of towers

Saul_Tyre - Thank you for testing and putting my mod into the youtube world!
EB - For the inspiration especially on Sword Masters and woad tattoos.
Suppanut - for explaining to me the secrets of the Grain Resource and how it's not a bug, but misunderstood and misused
Quinn_Inuit - for helping me with fatigue
BHL_20 - for testing and helping with the battle script
Seasoned Alcoholic - For tutorial regarding culture specific rams
webbird - For some elements of the new Woad Warrior model
Rise of Empire - Champions unit
comrade_general - Skin & UI for Barbarian Chosen Warlord from THS mod



Finally, thank you all for downloading and making this mod happen!
~ahowl11

[Jubal]

Ooh, that's really cool As a Brit myself from Iceni country, I approve!

[comrade_general]

Who are the Britons?

[ahowl11]

ahowl11's Vanilla Enhancement Mod v5
Germanic Mystery

The Germans have a few representations in the RTW modding world.  Realistic mods like EB, RS2, RTR and Res Gestae all have very nice  rosters. However for fans of a more simpler vanilla fee, they are lacking. XGM has a decent roster, but there still felt like a lot was lacking. In this mod, they finally got their overhaul.

The Germans are a hard faction to approach when modding. There is not  a whole lot to pull from and look at to get an accurate idea, but after some research, discussion and viewing other mods from other games, we came up with something that we believe really enhances the German faction. This is not aimed at historical realism, but more game play driven with a historical flavor to it.. With that being said, don't expect any mythical or fantastical units either! In this installment, you'll receive a brand new German roster and building tree, as well as night battles and some traits and ancillaries from BI. Other features and fixes will be listed below!

Spoiler

Bear Warriors await orders

Here's the list of features in v5
- Germanic roster completely overhauled
- Bugs from Veggiemod fixed (no more random crashes from weather, climate or day types)
- Internal feature, but we saved over 30 unit slots. Lanjane has made  a few 'shared' models that each barbarian faction can use and still  have the unit look distinct based on culture. Kudos to him for this  idea, it was a lot of work, but it paid off! (This will allow for more  units in future releases)
- BI traits and ancillaries from BI that fit in the RTW timeframe  have been added. More will be added in future releases. Included are the  UI and sounds for messages.
- Night Battles from BI have been added fully. Some characters can fight night battles from the beginning, check it out.
- Britons have a small shakeup to their roster.. They lose Youth Slingers, but gain Britannic Slingers.. they will still have regular Slingers, now available in their government building. This was done mainly due to us wanting to conserve unit slots.
- Britons also lose their chariot general sadly . They were not working well at all and I was getting a lot of negative feedback. Historically, chariots were just transportation service for nobles, so don't think that they were used like they were in vanilla! Britons now have standard Barbarian Warlord for an early general.
- Mercenary Peltasts have correct UI
- All units have working sprites, this took awhile and we had an entire day worth of CTD's but it was fixed and everything runs smoothly. If you have any issues with the sprites, please let me know.
- Teutoburg Forest Historical Battle updated to be playable with new Germanic roster.
- New Mercenary unit exclusive to the Germans, Harii Warriors. Look around to see where you can recruit them!

Spoiler

New Germanic Roster

The Germanic Roster in detail:

Spoiler

GOVERNMENT

Tier 1 - Warband
Tier 2 - Levies
BARRACKS
Tier 1 - Spear Warband & Clubmen
Tier 2 - Spearmen & Axemen
Tier 3 - Veteran Spearmen & Swordsmen
Tier 4 - Pikemen & Chosen Swordsmen
Tier 5 - Chosen Spearmen & Chosen Axemen
RANGE
Tier 1 - Slingers & Skirmisher Warband
Tier 2 - Archer Warband
Tier 3 - Forester Warband
STABLES
Tier 1 - Light Cavalry
Tier 2 - Heavy Cavalry
Tier 3 - Germanic Noble Cavalry
TAVERN
Tier 1 - Night Raiders
Tier 2 - Berserkers
TEMPLES
Tier 2 - Wolf Warriors
Tier 3 - Bear Warriors
EXCLUSIVE MERCENARY
Harii Warriors
GENERAL
Barbarian Warlord
Barbarian Chosen Warlord
The Germanic roster starts off very weak, you'll find it hard to sustain minimal casualties in the early game as nobody has armor and you basically have spears, clubs, javelins and slings. Germania is also a tough location to start in due to lack of population growth. If you can expand though, you have a lot of great warriors available that do AP damage and strike fear into their enemies. I broke down recruitment to also include the tavern, as vanilla uses it, I thought I would expand on that. So you have multiple ways to supply your Germanic raiding party!

Spoiler

Romans running for their lives as the Harii give chase!

Download and Installation:

Download v5 HERE

One thing that I need to be clear on, is this mod runs on the Alexander.exe not the regular Rome Total War exe. Please make sure you use an Alexander Install.
If you have the last version of the mod, simply extract into the same location and overwrite your files. Make sure to delete the map.rwm file in HRTW/data/world/maps/base folder. *If Downloading v5 and you had v4 installed, delete your HRTW/data/world/maps/campaign/Alexander folder before installing v5.. it got cleaned up, and if not deleted your  campaign map will look a bit different than intended!*
If this is your first crack at my mod then follow these instructions:
To Install, simply extract HRTW into your Rome Total War Directory,  or if you use steam, your Rome Total War Alexander Directory. when  making a shortcut, use the Alexander.exe or in steam go to Launch  options and include this: -show_err -mod:HRTW


Credits:

- Lanjane for awesome unit detail, as well as a few ideas for internal benefit.
- Crazyroman for testing and support
- Robbe Aerts for willing to fix some bugs
- RTRPE for the Harii Warrior model, and parts of Veteran Spearmen Skin
- EB for hair and leather helmet, as well as inspiration
- Res Gestae and RS2 for inspiration
- Barbarians Revenge for Bear Warrior model
- ME and Lanjane for Chosen Axemen model
- XGM for Club model
- comrade_general - Skin & UI for Barbarian Warlord for Britons from THS mod


Finally, thank you all for downloading and making this mod happen!


~ ahowl11

[Tusky]

Looks awesome, nice work on the britons

[Jubal]

Shared models are so useful - I wish I'd had more for some of my mods. Good to see you managing to squeeze more from the engine!

[ahowl11]

Thanks Tusky! Jubal, yeah we are trying to really maximize the potential this time. I have downloaded and installed just about every mod, pack, feature, tool etc and I have combed through the RTW universe many times to find things that I like. I am hoping that this mod will be my grand finale and exit from the RTW modding scene. A lot of planning has gone into this mod and I learned a lot from my RTR journey so hopefully this can really make a lasting impact for RTW fans.

[Jubal]

Nice Any ideas what you'll do after that, do you have any other games you might have a crack at modding or any other projects lined up?

[ahowl11]

Well this is going to be a lengthy project but hopefully unlike RTR not all spent on a main campaign. I'm hoping to make a lot of separate campaigns within this mod like Caesar or Hannibal. Doing it with vanilla should make it easier and quicker too.

[comrade_general]

Hopefully my work will slow down considerably this winter so I can help you more effectively. I kinda want to get back into some modding but perhaps not another full blown project of my own.

[Jubal]

Ooh, I'd love to see a good Hannibal campaign.

[ahowl11]

CG that'd be great, its been a lot of fun so far. Jubal, yeah I have a ton of ideas so I'm trying to zoom through the grand campaign as quickly as possible.

[Jubal]

Ahowl - sorry, side question, but does the RTR project still have a website? I noticed that the link from the Exilian frontpage is now broken.

[ahowl11]

I do not think it does anymore