Announcement:
Dear Europa Barbarorum Fans,
When the Europa Barbarorum Team set out in 2007 to create the sequel to the award-winning mod, Europa Barbarorum I, few of us guessed what a long and winding road it would be from then to this moment. The original goal of Europa Barbarorum I was, to a large degree, to add to and improve the historical experience of Rome: Total War. Our goal when we set out to create Europa Barbarorum II was much grander. This time, we wanted to go to the limits of what we could create within the bounds of the M2TW engine, in order to create the best and most detailed historical strategy game possible. This proved to be a greater challenge than any of us anticipated.
To begin, most background research was done from scratch, and in addition to the 20 factions of EBI, we now had another eight to cover with as much care and historical detail in both concept and design. The new graphical features of the M2TW engine allowed us to utilize the mixing of model parts to avoid the so-called "clone wars" of RTW. However, this meant an exponential increase in the amount of work to be done by our unit artists, not to mention the higher poly count and better texture qualities. Likewise, the gameplay in EBI, although innovative, was still very much a variation on the vanilla gameplay from RTW. For EB II, we set out to create unique and historically accurate government systems for all factions, as well as making the campaigns more interesting with unique events and features.
Through sweat, blood and tears we worked, but also through much joy, excitement and laughter. Many of our initial ideas had to be revised and thrown out as impossible, but just as many new and interesting ideas were born to replace them. Sometimes work was fast and the mod took great strides; at other times, unforseen bugs, hard-coded limits, or just that small distraction called life stepped in and brought the mod to the shores of the river Styx. But through all these ups and downs, a few things kept us going, and gave us the will to call "once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more". One of these things was of course you, the fans, who stayed with us for all these years. But perhaps greatest of all was our passion for the history of our time period, and our desire to bring the world of the late first millennium BC to life. One of our main motivations for creating EB has been, besides creating a great game, to bring out the fascinating history that we are so passionate about. It is our hope that EB will not only provide players with many hours of fun, but that it will also inspire in others the same fascination and passion for history that we in the Team share. If, through our work, others discover how exciting and interesting history can be, or if we can make even the most weathered history buff learn something new, then our work will not have been in vain. It was this desire to tell the story of all the many cultures and peoples within our mod, even the ones that are generally passed by in history class, that kept us going even through the hard times. And so, once more unto the breach we charged...
Now, seven years later, we have at last reached the point where we feel ready to release this labour of love to you, our fans. We know that it has been a long wait for you, and still we have a long way to go. This instalment is not a finished product, and we have many grand plans that are yet to be implemented. There are new and exciting units to be added, game mechanics to be coded, and historical texts to be written. So even though this is a major milestone in the history of the mod, it is by no means the end of the journey. This is but a first release, a beta version if you wish, and it will be some time still before we can call it a finished product (if such a thing even exists), and to take our mod further we will rely on you to provide us with feedback, bug reports and suggestions.
None the less, we take great pride in hereby presenting the first release of EB II. We have all poured our hearts and souls into this mod, and even though it is but early days, we hope that this dedication will shine through, and, to use the old cliché, that you will have at least as much fun playing it as we've had making it (for, let's face it, it's not all been rainbows and roses). With this release, we now look to the road ahead. It has, as we have said, been a long and winding road, and what lies ahead is no less daunting. We do hope that you who have been with us all this time will be willing to keep walking this road with us, and that many new faces may join along the way. We in the EB Team will continue our work, and especially we are hoping for many new modding talents to join us and help bring our vision for EB II to life.
In the meantime, Ladies and Gentlemen: Enjoy!
Installation instructions:
1. Download the EBII installer using one of the provided download links.
2. The downloaded file is a zip archive, which means you need to unpack the installer files from the zip file. Windows Explorer should allow you to simply copy the contents out. If not, you can download 7-zip for the purpose.
3. Run EBII.exe.
4. Step through the install wizard.
5. Wait for the installer to copy all the files.
6. Run the mod using the shortcut placed in your start menu or desktop.
In the wizard, the default installation path is where your copy of M2TW is installed. Unless you know what you're doing, leave this unchanged.
We have tested the mod's stability as far as we could, considering we are a small group and the game is huge. It runs pretty well for us, but we have not been able to run long campaigns with all factions. You may encounter problems, possibly even at the start of your campaign.
If the game crashes, please remember to post the log and savegame where it happened in the tech help subforum, this will help us a lot. Along with a description of what you were doing when it crashed, obviously. But before you do that, remember to check if there are any hotfixes available - it might just be that your problem has been solved already.
Links:
Visit the EB website
Download using magnet (requires torrent client)
Download from Mod DB
Download from Gamefront
Download from the Org FTP server
Download from the EB FTP server
Using the magnet link is the best option. Please consider seeding for at least the next couple of days.
With the release we would like to provide a graphic enchanment mod(thread link) and a modesty patch:
Download Modesty patch
Download EB2 Graphic Enhancer
Or you can download them from our ModDB page.
Best Regards,
The Europa Barbarorum Team
