HRTW: Exe

This is very important before we move on with the mod. We must choose the exe to use. At first I was thinking BI, but it will be better to use ALX. Why? Jmilan77 from TWC explained why in a PM he sent me:

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Hi there mate, very interesting stuff it took me quite a while to read XD

First off as you know me and my team are very very very busy with working on our upcoming release, however, my team do bear a certain amount of experience now after a lot of mistakes So I would be willing to provide me and my teams brains to be picked about any aspect of modding I would love to just pop by now and then and just see how your overall progress is going and seeing If I can help

A suggestion or two though as you did say I could this is coming out of experwince of what I have dealed with. Completely decide what exe you want to use from the start as it will provide so much headaches and confusion if you change in 6 months time. Why am I saying this?

The reason is because I would suggest to use the alex exe instead of BI, you may say ah but I want features like the religion or shield wall ability. Well don't worry about that as me and my team have worked out and recreated the system on the alex exe in fact changing the original purpose as well so instead of religions like christianity, pagan ect, we shall forms of government such as oligarchy, democracy tyranny ect. Little changes like this can make a real difference

The reason I say this now you still have those abilities, you can take the advantages of the alex exe such the increases AI, increased model slots an so on. Also you may be aware we are creating playable sea battles, we shall be releasing this discovery to the public so if you would like to use this feature, you shall have to use the alex exe.

Just food for thought mate, I hope you like my idea and good luck wid your mod mate, if you would like to copy paste this message to your other team mates for talking over feel free

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So we should use ALX, get into contact with the Roma Vici TW team, and get it modified so we can have what we need. Please post your thoughts and comments

hmm why dont we just use the normal RTW .exe i mean most of your work is on it all ready

I hope that was just a line badly miss-wrote ahowl11, but changing the engine is forbidden for any release. Other than that the only confirmed features that doesn't inherit from rtw are: Hording and Schiltrom (was that the name?) and shield wall. Religion, loyalty, shadowing are perfectly supported by it. Check this thread to know exactly what i'm talking about.

The most important feature in my opinion, that makes this engine the best is the AI do not attack faction; with that enbaled we can avoid the steam roll of some factions that might be otherwise get destroyed too son (we could avoid war between Epirus and Macedon, for example), thus representing historical alliances (Rome and its subjects) etc.

I am for BI. Shieldwall is the only way to properly emulate a close formation that many types of units used. Honestly i don't care about religion that much - 1/2 of the world is under the hellenic/roman stile religion by that time, and ancients didn't have the religious fanaticism that modern religions based on Judaism have. But shield wall, oh, man, shield wall! If rtw or alex had it it was going to be the best thing ever.

PS: And it's not that important, if i have to be honest - porting from one to another exe is not that hard.

Yeah the Roma Vici team has been able to port BI features to ALX.. I will be in contact with them and see if shield wall was ported. And they are not using the religion feature for religion but instead the different government systems. What I plan on using the religion feature is for the different cultures that were around then:
Roman
Tribal
Hellenic
Eastern
Nomadic

i think we should do it on ALX, as the most thing people complained about rtw was the very bad AI, so if we done it on AlX, plus all of the feature that the mod will give it will be brilliant!! :)

Yes that is another reason, the AI is considerably smarter. Plus more model slots in the DMB, if we have that coupled with the features from BI, it would work out nicely.

ahowl11 there's no thing like "goverments". It's religion with changed name.

I know and I dont want governments. I want cultures. Cultures would have same effect as religion in the game. Yes, it's pretty much a name change

And you'll double the culture penalty?
What is the idea behind doing that?

It would only double if you built a certain building that promotes your faction's culture, its the risk you have to take when conquering new settlements.

Ok, so... will i be able to build barbarian buildings with rome?

No because the Romans didn't build barbarian buildings.

The only use i see for it is the slowdown for human players, altough a skilled player can still steam roll trough that.

It's to show the difficulties that you would get when you tried to assimilate a different culture into your own.

wo, basically what i have said - double the culture penalty and nothing more.

keep in mind that
a) Not everyone have Alex (not as common as either RTW or BI
b) Alex cannot have hording factions AND true shield wall (the closest approximate are extra-dense formations mentioned per unit in EDU)
c) Actually, Alex did have the best battlefield AI, the downside is their campaign AI are focusing on turtling, not much problem, but it did reduce AI agression considerably.
d) Alex cannot play faction intro videos (at the expense of it can play historical battle videos, so it's kinda fair trade)

and the positive side too
a) Alex has more DMB slots
b) Character can be customized, portraits, units, even made immortal
c) Alex is much more stable than other exes, to the point that Alex has basically less CTD
d) of course, if someone don't have it, it's easy to grab from steam

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a) Not everyone have Alex (not as common as either RTW or BI

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True...Our original idea was HRTW 1.5,but I don't know what has happened to that.

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c) Actually, Alex did have the best battlefield AI, the downside is their campaign AI are focusing on turtling, not much problem, but it did reduce AI agression considerably.

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We planned to do put Darth formations and put that each factions attacks more form the sea,as no one would be safe then,not even Britons and Rome.

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d) Alex cannot play faction intro videos (at the expense of it can play historical battle videos, so it's kinda fair trade)

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Too bad as this is a good part of the vanilla in my opinion.Ahowl11 has before putted the barbarian intro for the Illyrians,eastern for the Nabataeans,greek for Bosporans..But I don't know what happened to that because I think this mod is going in some other direction.

Look we need hording, shield wall and other things. If it's not possible to do that on ALX then we need to use BI

USE BI!
80% of the RTW players don't have Alex.

BI,yes.

BI is better on my opinion. The shield-wall, scheltrom formation, and hording are really needed for historical accuracy.

BI it is. Well we have come to a conclusion on the most important step to our mod. Good work team.

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BI is better on my opinion. The shield-wall, scheltrom formation, and hording are really needed for historical accuracy.

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You are right...It will help us make the game more historicaly acurrate...

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BI it is. Well we have come to a conclusion on the most important step to our mod. Good work team.

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Jus the greek faction decision is left,right ?

pretty much, then we have to research the crap out of every faction. Which I honestly love researching so this is where my major contributions will come in

I would strongly suggest the use of BI. The only real-exclusive feature of ALX's is the personalized generals and FM, wich are great for mods restrained in time (like Alexander itself). The stability of the mod can be achieved if we really keep track of our changes, and the (again) supposedly smarter AI can be helped with balance for units and some scripts here and there.