I was wondering how things were progressing. I also know this can get annoying with people asking questions. I guess what would help if we got an update from time to time so we wouldn't have to bother asking such questions.
I was wondering how things were progressing. I also know this can get annoying with people asking questions. I guess what would help if we got an update from time to time so we wouldn't have to bother asking such questions.
Firstly I apologize if this is in the wrong place.
In MTW2 the ability to see the upgrade of armor is pretty cool.
(I build a leather tanner, retrain troops, and they have an increased defense, AND wear the leather on the battlefield)
Is his going to be implemented in EBII in any way?
Thanks
Right. But those eras correspond to Reforms, which can occur under specific situations. Basically, the upgraded units are available after those Reform events and not by buildings.
"Death Smiles at Us All,all a Man Can Do Is Smile Back."
Maximvs Decimvs Meridivs, Commander of the Armies of the North, General of the Felix Legions, Iberian Gladiator.
Ah, I see, thanks.
As the previews go its looking good, keep it up!
Again sorry.
I often play Stainless Steel 6.4 at the moment, and like the way they have incorporated:
a) The added gore mod
b) All faction families have surname.
If its possible to spill, will either of these be added to EBII? I understand the surnames may be harder as I know you like your detail, and it may not always be available. Especially that far back.
a) Tux has doing great work on blood and dust textures.
b) That was already part of EB, where applicable.
Thanks again.
For me they add another small layer that makes it much more appealing to see a bloodied unit make it out of battle.
And i may suffer from ruling family OCD
Is the mod going to be released in a finished version (1.XX) or will it be more like EB1 with its "beta" (0.XX ) releases for the general public ?
Satyros
Smell the battle in the wind, before you see us.Winterhorde of furyride, the wind will lead us.
No need to apologize , thank you for answering .
We are still waiting , we will wait as long as it takes .
Never fear about our loyalty .
I will buy a new PC to enjoy EB2 at the most sick level of detailed awesomeness .
I hope you guys are all well .
Satyros
Smell the battle in the wind, before you see us.Winterhorde of furyride, the wind will lead us.
Hi people! I don't mean to be rude but...
Why do you keep developing this mod after so many years? This mod seems already obsolete to me.
The way I see it, when EBII finally comes out few people will want to play it. Don't get me wrong, I love and admire EB and I still play it from time to time...but with Rome 2 coming I don't see the point of this mod anymore.
I bet people is starting to think about EBIII (based on Rome 2).
Take care!
I don't care much fore Rome 2; I'd still love to play EB 2, though.
‘Abdü’l-Mecīd-i evvel
I don't agree at all. EB II will almost certainly be much more worked out in aspects of historical accuracy, difficulty, roleplaying aspects, traits, and gameplay mechanisms such as leaders and families, nomadism and settlement, building development, provincial government, ...
Rome 2 will look better, have better animations, and probably have some innovative aspects. But Rome 2 will be all about war. EB II will be all about the world you play in. Which IMHO has much more appeal. I will be bored with Rome 2 very early on. I will be able to keep playing EB II for years, as I have been playing EB for years.
Last edited by Ailfertes; 03-07-2013 at 11:24.
There is no garantee that RTW2 will allow modifications on it. It will probably follow the path of its predecessors and allow only a minimal degree of visual changes and that's it. So, most probably, MTW2 will continue to be the last TW game to allow a reasonable level of modifications. As such, if you want to make a mod which better represents this period in History, you have to do it with MTW2, even if obsolete.
"Death Smiles at Us All,all a Man Can Do Is Smile Back."
Maximvs Decimvs Meridivs, Commander of the Armies of the North, General of the Felix Legions, Iberian Gladiator.
Good points lads, good points.
I'd like to add one point that while it may sound a bit silly to 9out of 10 gamers I think does help the download numbers of EB2:
R2TW will have much higher requirements and many people who "do mods" are reluctant to upgrade their rig. Thus while EB2 runs on all reasonably gamey machines people have out there R2TW will force some people to get anew rig, while this does not scare hardcore fans, Modusers will reassess: cost(R2TW)=50$+1000$=1050$=a lot, cost(EB2)=0$+10(in case they do not have M2TW yet)$=10$=not much.
And frankly M2TW actually is a reasonably pretty game(well apart from those horrid vanilla skins that are replaced by EB) it has mixed units, and a ok poly count. while one could say RTW is just soo horrid(all units look the same) that one needs to upgrade the same is not true for M2TW. R2TW will surely be much prettier and have some fancy features that EB2 will sorely lack(naval warfare and realistic strat map rivers in particular) but It's not like EB would not have perks aswell. Starting from more than 8 playable factions, extensive scripts and a more reasonable Province capital choice(CA wtf!!) not to forget that it stretches east ~2 provinces further.
Another also often overlooked reason:
one should not change horses in midstream. I* have seen quite some Mods die because they changed the engine before they actually released a version. A good example here is the "EB mod" for Mount and Blade. switching engines may retain research, but you loose all the work done in code Textures and Models may be imported but are often obsolete. A new engine often also means new possibilities and thus spurs more concept work. You essencially throw away most of your work and start from scratch, just to have an "obsolete" mod by the time you're done, afterall large Mods normally take much longer than "real" games do make, afterall modders do it in their free time. and often Modding teams are much smaller than Dev teams at microsoft etc. Finaly switching engine also disgruntles a lot of fans and thus disposes of a large portion of the mod followers as most people follow mods for games that they own rather than mods from good modders.
Total conversion Mods make old games interesting again, they don't improve on new games.
*the great mod observer.
"Who fights can lose, who doesn't fight has already lost."
- Pyrrhus of Epirus
"Durch diese hohle Gasse muss er kommen..."
- Leonidas of Sparta
"People called Romanes they go the House"
- Alaric the Visigoth
Seriously, those complaining really need to engrave that part in their brains: IT'S FREE!!!
For me and most people, deciding whether to spend 1k is a choice between being able to eat and pay the bills for 2 months (even less) or not XD
And that's the materialistic take on it, R2TW will never even remotely reach the depth of EBII, Shogun 2 had like 5 gainable traits, 3 ancillaries and when you are like 1-2 traits from birth lol
Then again, if all you care about are graphics, buy the damn thing and be happy :P
Last edited by Arjos; 03-08-2013 at 15:29.
I'd be more worried about the AI, especially the campaign map AI. IIRC, the M2:TW AI is even worse than R:TW's is, and then there are things like the cavalry bug (making proper charging not happen all too often). Empire was pretty dire also, but S2:TW was a huge improvement in campaign AI and an incremental one in battlemap AI. Assuming R2:TW's AI is as good or better than Shogun 2's, I'm sure that's something we'd like to have for EB.
Nah, the campaign AI is far far better, especially the diplomacy (I've seen this in many mods already)...
As for the cavalry charges, I think it had to do with the vanilla stats, regarding at what distance the lances were lowered. Again in mods I've had no troubles with charging, retreating and charging again :)
The lance "bug" was more than compensated by the onipresent OP-ness of heavy cavalry in M2TW, there are few mods where Cavalry isn't THE battle winner*, no matter how small their units. While I do see the problem, It hasn't been anyway near game breaking in the past and with the EB aim(Cavalry is great but Infantry wins battles) I don't think it will be problematic at all.
*lately I mopped up a scripted dutch rebellion with 8 units of pikemen, 8 units of Spearmen and 4 units of crossbowmen, with 5 units of bodyguard sized Knights a unit of Militia crossbowmen, sergeants and mounted sergeants each. you could say I'm an inpeccible General, or you could say Cavalry is awfully powerfull in M2TW.
"Who fights can lose, who doesn't fight has already lost."
- Pyrrhus of Epirus
"Durch diese hohle Gasse muss er kommen..."
- Leonidas of Sparta
"People called Romanes they go the House"
- Alaric the Visigoth
Agreed. R2:TW will be more vanilla CA rubbish, which I have zero interest in. I bought M2:TW on budget a year or so ago in preparation for EBII, but haven't even installed it yet. I won't play it unmodded, not even worth my time, though I have occasionally looked for other total conversions of the same standard as EB to try. Fundamental issue, though, is that I don't much care for the medieval period and even less for fantasy-inspired ones.
It began on seven hills - an EB 1.1 Romani AAR with historical house-rules (now ceased)
Heirs to Lysimachos - an EB 1.1 Epeiros-as-Pergamon AAR with semi-historical houserules (now ceased)
Philetairos' Gift - a second EB 1.1 Epeiros-as-Pergamon AAR
Invasio Barbarorum II isn't bad, its team is working on several scenarios, which are quite interesting...
With those completed (2 out of 3 were already released), they will mix it all up for the "world" map campaign...
Of course if you don't like the late antiquity, I can't think of any mod for M2TW, other than EBII :P
hi to all!
how is everything?
I have a curiosity: the performance of the mod in development and the engine itself, as they are?
How detailed is the representation of local cultures and religions, like Judaism? And how can the player influence their development? From the meagre information I've gleaned, most of the important buildings will primarily determine the relation of the ruling or occupying power to the regional community. Will that correspond to a cultural exchange?
Last edited by Rex Somnorum; 04-13-2013 at 04:26.
Thank you and hello back to you!
Pretty busy, but fine overall. Afterall, it seems that winter has finally decided to go away from my place and the Sun is startin to show up at times, so it will only get better I guess.
That is a good question, but a difficult one to answer. Luckily for me I have bought a "Skyrim-grade" laptop last year, so the game runs smoothly for me. Actually the loading times are much shorter than I experience while playing EB 1.2 on the same computer. But that might be not only because the M2TW engine is better and more efficient, but also because we still do not have so much text - historical descriptions mostly - crammed into our development version of the mod. In any case, I believe that given how old M2TW is and how powerful most of computers made in the last few years are, there will be no problem running the game in reasonable detail at a reasonable speed.
Related to that is of course the stability issue and here I have to admit that this is something that we have to improve before public release. Yes, there are mysterious CTDs occurring from time to time - as is to be expected in any complex software still under development - and it would be prudent to assume that even after public release there will still be some. Hopefully it will not detract from the enjoyment of the game too much. Just remember - or ask around - what performance EB 0.74 or EB 0.81b have had...
So brace yourself, but do not be afraid!
First of all, welcome to the .Org in general and to the EB community in particular. Please enjoy a virtual beer straight from Pilsen, cheers!
The game is necessarily running of very high level of abstraction - just consider how huge area in RL the game map is supposed to represent and how little tools we have in the game engine to make such things really matter. That said, this is an issue that is considered seriously by our historians and attention is paid to it. What we can do is provide historical information on subjects that otherwise cannot be directly represented in the game. For instance, every province - and there are 199 of them - will have it own "building" precisely as a medium to confer information about the geography, history and society of the region to the player in the building's description. Than there are traits. while there is a hard-coded limit of 30 factions at max in the game, there are ways to represent various tribes, ethnicities and such, that composed the larger game faction, as traits for the game characters. These are another medium to provide historical information, but more importantly they matter in things like how well a particular character fare in governing a particular city or commanding an army, etc.
The cultural interplay is actually even more restricted as the game engine allows at most 10 "cultures" and 7 "religions" - so there is not too much granularity we can aim for, but still some ingenious mechanisms has been devised which I am not going to spoil right now, but generally I can say with confidence that yes, local cultures and religions do matter, have fairly detailed representation and could be manipulated by the player. Within reason of course.
Admittedly I don't have a lot of faith in CA in this regard (since AI is much harder to get right than graphics), but I'd be curious to know more.
Does the AI respect alliances and such, or more specifically, are the military and diplomacy AI actually aligned now (they weren't in R:TW)?
Will the AI accept peace treaties when you've decided you've had enough of defeating them?
Does the AI put together proper, large armies, rather than fragmenting their forces and sending endless streams of useless, too-small armies to annoy but never actually threaten?
Does the AI defend its settlements when you invade, rather than fleeing?
Is the rebel/slave/unaligned faction a challenge to other AI factions? One of the things that annoys me a little about the simulation aspect in EB is that all those independents are a pushover, leading to imperial juggernaughts in far too short a time.
Lastly, is there an equivalent to the Force Diplomacy minimod in M2:TW?
Last edited by QuintusSertorius; 04-13-2013 at 16:44.
It began on seven hills - an EB 1.1 Romani AAR with historical house-rules (now ceased)
Heirs to Lysimachos - an EB 1.1 Epeiros-as-Pergamon AAR with semi-historical houserules (now ceased)
Philetairos' Gift - a second EB 1.1 Epeiros-as-Pergamon AAR
Thank you for your kind words and congratulations to your family, friend!
I am father of two by now, which I wasn't back in 2007/8 when I was first playing EB1, and I can tell you that while there are some compatibility issues between family and EB, it is still manageable.
Now to your questions in the preceding post - I have not played vanilla M2TW at all and neither any other mod for it, because, exactly as you, I am simply not interested in it. Therefore I really do not know how well the engine does perform on these issues and I fully agree that these are among the top most important ones for a satisfying gameplay. This is how I joined the Team - waiting for EB2 long enough to finally decide to speed things up a little...
However, there are some good news - the diplomacy and AI behaviour is to a significant extent moddable. Currently, we do not have a Team member dedicated specifically to this aspect of the game. So, if you are willing to sacrifice some of your free time - and with kids you cannot have a good sleep anyway - you can help us on this front. Contributing to EB2 is a nice way to distract your thoughts between changing nappies or cooking dinner I assure you!
Last edited by V.T. Marvin; 04-13-2013 at 17:18.
They respect them, yes.
Betrayals are still possible, but their standing needs to be lowish for it. Or if your ally shares all its borders with you, it will demand military access or declare war, but accept peace and alliance once again, provided you offer access...
Factions with high relations, will stick together...
I do not know, at a coding/engine level, whether they are aligned though...
It depends on how many settlements the specific faction has left I think...Originally Posted by QuintusSertorius
But it's very common for say a faction suffering defeats and with 2-3 (sometimes even more, especially if you don't border with them), to sue for peace and accepting most demands...
It tends to stick to large armies yes and also sends decent stacks on naval invasions...Originally Posted by QuintusSertorius
Not really sure what you mean here...Originally Posted by QuintusSertorius
I've usually seen settlements with full stacks (in EBI). AI vacating settlements and running away is new to me...
In M2TW, there are mods with scripted garrisons, so even if the AI has left it with a unit, depending on the settlement's size it spawns a stack inside. So definitely a sub-mod possibility...
That will depend on how the team scripts it...Originally Posted by QuintusSertorius
The pushover/short time is because they don't recruit or retrain. But I think already with the alex.exe the retrained units. I don't know whether it's harcoded or not for the eleutheroi to be unable to recruit. Hopefully it will be just a matter of editing few entries, but ofc it must be kept in mind, that starting with so many provinces, they would overrun everybody else. So in the end, the best of compromises will have to do...
Don't know, but I don't see why it couldn't be modded...Originally Posted by QuintusSertorius
BTW all of this comes from my experience with M2TW's mods. I haven't played any vanilla title (except Shogun 2) for more than a few hrs...
Last edited by Arjos; 04-13-2013 at 18:28.
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