Htw Spin-off Mod - Ancient: TW
Hi there Dimitrios! Good to see you around again - how can I forget the guy that emailed those pics? :laugh4:
It's taken me a while to get back to finishing off the Bronze Age scenario, as I mentioned above, my last computer died on me and all the old work was lost - including my Roman Invasion one (Britannia 43, I called it) -- that will take ages to redo, so it's on a back burner for now. I had loads of extra stuff gathered together for the BA project though, lots of new ship images etc, but it's all gone, or locked away on a disc I can't recover .... I know, I know, back ups!!! :shame:
Anyway, I've finally got a new PC, back into HTW and relearning all the modding I'd forgotten over the past year or so. Hopefully I'll be able to finish off the Bronze Age campaigns for HTW BA one day - I just found my old notes last night, so I can recreate a lot of the lost work. Meanwhile, I'm working on the Bronze Age Europe "cross-mod". I won't be making any new units as such, just recycling HTW models.
I've got them ported across to the XL map okay, had a few battles as the Egyptians and Hittites, and making steady progress. I'm concentrating on the Egyptians first. Anyway, a couple of tasters for you...
Starting provinces:
https://i95.photobucket.com/albums/l...s/00000043.jpg
Egyptian campaign:
https://i95.photobucket.com/albums/l...s/00000046.jpg
I still have lots of research to do, but it seems Bronze Age warfare was mostly chariots supported by spears and archers, with a few local variants. Getting into western europe things are a lot vaguer, with fewer chariots, more general "tribal" types etc.
16 factions so far but might consider others: Ligurians, Phoenicians, Israelites, "The Sea Peoples", Sicels, Canaanites... The problem is that the Middle East is the most interesting area, but doesn't have enough provinces. I know someone once was making a mid-east campmap, and I'd love to get my hands on that!
No promises on whether it will ever be releasable, or how long it will all take, but I'll try.
@Axel - yes, you've got the latest versions of HTW and the patch, but the factionshields have been redone since that one, and I think I have some newer .txt files too. I'll do a new install and see what has changed since then.
Htw Spin-off Mod - Ancient: TW
In brief, it uses the Hellenic Bronze Age units on the XL whole Europe map to create a "Bronze Age Europe" scenario.
Start date is approx 1250-1275BC (ie just in time for Kadesh). The main area of interest is obviously the Middle East, as most of the rest of the map is pretty much uncivilised, although this is an era in which the Celts, Slavs, Balts, Germanics etc are become established. During the scenario, iron use will spread and revolutionise the relationship between the "barbarians" and the "civilised" factions. The age of chariots will be superceded as better horse breeding allows for riding as well as chariot-pulling.
Latest updates:
Egyptians in Battle - the sharp eyed will notice a new unit in the roster - Nubian archers! I found unused frames for this in the HTW "NegInf" animations - this unit has now made its way to the battlefield and works fine (though obviously not as good as Egyptian Archers :2thumbsup: )
https://i95.photobucket.com/albums/l...us/battle2.jpg
Assyrian battle line
https://i95.photobucket.com/albums/l...ss_battle2.jpg
Assyrian unit stats
https://i95.photobucket.com/albums/l...ass_battle.jpg
A couple of new units:
https://i95.photobucket.com/albums/l...ass_spears.jpg
https://i95.photobucket.com/albums/l...ass_archer.jpg
Re: Htw Spin-off Mod - Bronze Age Europe
really nice mate i am itching to play this mod mate :2thumbsup:
Re: Htw Spin-off Mod - Bronze Age Europe
Rufus ,, Good to see all these new screenies ! nice :laugh4: ... Im just as keen as you on this mod so keep plugging away till you get it nice Tight & balanced ,, Ok a few questions ,, Can I be your beta tester on this one ?
Also I would like to do any research for you including giving you all the nice pics I collected all those years ago for Komninos when he was working on it with the boys ,, (( I have nice Syrians - Hyksos - Sea Peoples + more )) that would be ideal for review panels / parchments etc etc if required ,, Imagine if a Mesopotamian map was made for this one ! wow !! cause if memory serves me correct their are factions already made by Flip which stretch beyond the XL map ,, Would also be nice if we could get period campap peices as well ..
** MODERATOR ** PLEASE if possible move this thread to the SUB-FORUM :2thumbsup: ...
cheerio for now ,, DTS
Re: Htw Spin-off Mod - Bronze Age Europe
@Dimitrios - I'd like to see your stuff on the Sea Peoples & Syrians, please! The Hyksos, I'm afraid are already in the past at this point, as are the Mitanni.
One main focus is trying to get the chronology right - not easy when the sources disagree as to whether the Trojan War happened before or after Kadesh, for instance! Whilst we have a good date for Kadesh (1275 BC +/- 5 years), I've seen dates for the Trojan Wars everywhere from 1300 to 1180 BC. I'm trying to avoid names/factions/portraits that are more recent than the target period (eg found LOADS of stuff for Assyria, but all based around 600BC or thereabouts :wall: ), but I guess I'll have to fudge a few issues eventually!
I will also be doing recruitment on a "homeland" basis, though a few faction-specific units will be recruitable everywhere (eg Egyptian archers are just archers trained Egyptian style and with Egyptian bows and will be available anywhere, but Nubian Archers will ONLY be available in Libya and Egypt).
Some units will have a homeland and available to all factions in that homeland - I'm still undecided whether to make them culture-specific though - if the Celts took Arabia, would the cameliers fight for them or not, for instance?
I'd really like to make a Hebrew faction too (I've already given Palestine a valour-bonus for light slingers :laugh4: ) and I'd love the idea of producing wall-levelling trumpets at a siege engineer's workshop :laugh4: My first thoughts were to maybe dump "The Exodus" in Sinai, but it might be better to wait til approx 900BC and set up a proper Israelite kingdom in the "high" era. But then if I was to include Phoenicians we could be a bit short of provinces...
Western European factions are going to be harder, as we're really talking about distributed ethno-linguistic groups rather than any sort of organised nations at this stage. At the moment their unit roster is the most limited of all, especially the Germanics who never had chariots. I'm verging more towards having lots of rebels across western europe and keeping the factions in small homelands to start with (ie celts and slavs especially) to mimic the culture spreading with time (Halstatt and Lausitz, respectively). Also I'm not yet sure what to do about the non Indo-Europeans of western europe - Iberians and the Atlantic culture.
So far the most developed faction roster I have is the Egyptians and Assyrians:
EGYPT
Egyptian chariots (BG unit)
Nubian spears / Nubian archers / Nubian guards (Libya + Egypt only)
Light + heavy slingers (ALL FACTIONS, ALL PROVINCES)
Egyptian archers
Tower shield spearmen ("homeland" units for middle east - all factions)
Sherdan mercenaries
Medianite cameliers (Sinai + Arabia ony)
Eastern ("Syrian") archers ("homeland" units for middle east - all factions)
To add: Ne'arin (elite infantry) and light infantry (armed with maces)
ASSYRIA
Assyrian chariots (BG unit, valour bonus in Mesopotamia)
Light + heavy slingers (ALL FACTIONS, ALL PROVINCES)
Assyrian archers (Mesopotamia, Armenia, Edessa)
Tower shield spearmen ("homeland" units for middle east - all factions)
Eastern swordsmen ("homeland" units for middle east - limited factions)
Medianite cameliers (Sinai + Arabia ony)
Eastern ("Syrian") archers ("homeland" units for middle east - all factions)
Assyrian spearmen (Mesopotamia, Armenia, Edessa)
To add: possibly horse archers depending on research regarding dates - definitely by 900BC
Battering ram c. 600BC (first siege engineers were Assyrian)
I'm toying with the idea of making light slingers "dismountable" to heavy slingers (which have flaming missiles for wooden walls, and also AP missiles against troops - I've altered the ammo already so that light slingers have 100 (IIRC) as they can just use stones....)
Re: Htw Spin-off Mod - Bronze Age Europe
Ok Macsen ,, Send me your email and i will start sending you those pics ,, cheers for now
Re: Htw Spin-off Mod - Bronze Age Europe
I've been getting more to grips with unit animations, and last night spent some time in the barbarous lands of the north...
Added shield to tribal axemen
New unit: tribal spears, with shield and throwing spear (see pics below)
Changed shield on Assyrian spears
"Dismountable" slingers works fine, so now I have one trainable unit that can do both jobs.
https://i95.photobucket.com/albums/l...ibalspears.jpg
https://i95.photobucket.com/albums/l...axenspears.jpg
https://i95.photobucket.com/albums/l...rianspears.jpg
Re: Htw Spin-off Mod - Bronze Age Europe
Quote:
Ok Macsen ,, Send me your email and i will start sending you those pics ,, cheers for now
PM on its way :2thumbsup:
Re: Htw Spin-off Mod - Bronze Age Europe
Nice ones Macsen ! ... I only wish i could mod to ,,,, Looking forward to seeing more of your middle eastern units especially chariots & seige equipment (( Assyrian Rams )) :beam: ,, Are you planning on making /modifying the castles on the battlemap to suit the period ? I'll get those pics over to you on the weekend , gotta spend 3 days on the road ,, cheers for now ,, DTS
Re: Htw Spin-off Mod - Bronze Age Europe
For the castles, I intend to import all the HTW maps - at the moment it still has the XL maps throughout -- which leaves the great situation of 200 club-wielding nutters trying to hammer down the doors of a full-blown mediaeval castle with ballista towers :laugh4: If all goes well I'd like to make some hillfort maps for the western european factions, as that will be mostly terrain rather than models involved, lots of ramps and ditches and stockades.
I know the whole map import thing will be quite a big job, as it will require me to go carefully through all the province info in the startpos file, make sure I have maps for all the terrain types etc. Yup, that's right, I'm procrastinating on that one :beam: More of a job for a weekend than an evening, I think.
Any new units will depend on what I can make from existing ones by moving shields and weapons around - but that still gives quite some scope. The pre-existing HTW RAM will be fine for the Assyrian one.
As for unit bifs, there are quite a few spares left yet - some of the animations will not be used in BA (oxivolos and eutythonon, for example) and some are duplicated - the bodies of the tribal warriors exist in two animations, so that means I can extract my slingers from the bif which has bronze weapons, and free up the other copy which has iron weapons.
It's going to be difficult to make the european barbarian factions distinct from each other - okay, so the Germanics have no chariots and their BG units are the axemen - but most of them will have the basic tribal warriors (clubs), archers, spears and axes, plus the slingers which everyone gets. So some faction-specific "specials" will be needed. I was thinking along the lines of small "berserker" type units, hunters that can hide in the open and have better bows, and possibly some sort of "noble" unit that can also be a chariot dismount. Javelin throwers also seem desirable. And in due course there will be swordsmen available, which can vary between factions (eg Celtic units with Naue swords, Germanics with longswords maybe....)
Re: Htw Spin-off Mod - Bronze Age Europe
macsen rufus:
Excellent work so far :)
You're progressing at a quick pace....
I also love playing ancient empire games such as HTW.
BTW, it would be great to see Babylon and Persia in the mod. Babylon especially fits the time period, and if you have Early, High, Late, periods, then perhaps Persia could be fit in.
Cheers!
Re: Htw Spin-off Mod - Bronze Age Europe
Re: Htw Spin-off Mod - Bronze Age Europe
Hi Pericles,
thanks for the links, I'll go and have a little snoop around shortly :2thumbsup:
It definitely sounds like we need a map for further east, seems there's a lot of interest in Babylonia! For now I think Assyria is the eastern limit with the XL map (at least it has Mesopotamia on it :laugh4: )
Slightly less progress last night, I got kind of caught up with playing the Germanics, and trying a couple of ideas. For the western barbarian factions I've added in three levels of livestock farming (Domesticated boars, Cattle herd, and Cattle Breeder) currently with "cathedral income" as I don't know yet if two sets of buildings with farm income will work, and depending on the other farm upgrades. In time this will extend into the rest of the tech tree, such as leatherworker (needed to make shields and harnesses etc), so the barbarians go through a longer tech-up process, and also to make up for not having the same sort of farmland as found in the fertile crescent. Farm levels and resources are yet to be tweaked, currently I have no resources or trade goods on the map, and farming is at default XL values. Genrally the economy overall will need a complete overhaul, as I have the very cheap HTW units and buildings on quite a high-income map, but for now, whilst I'm testing, quick and easy building is a useful tool...
I'm off to do some research, lunch break is nearly over :thumbsdown: