Htw Spin-off Mod - Ancient: TW

[wumpus]

macsen rufus:
The BRONZE AGE (Ancient TW) work that you do sounds very interesting. I like it very much. More power to you on that.
And it's a pity you lost your Britania 43. What a great loss. It would have been a great game too--maybe make a scenario about what could have happened to the lost VIIII Legion. (A recent movie speculated that VIIII Legion formed the core of Uther Pendragon's army--you know, Uther the father of King Arthur of Camelot.)
Anyway, you have my full approval for your admirable project.
Hawooh.

[dimitrios the samian]

:smash: ... CONGRATULATIONS Macsen .. 500 posts !! :smash:

[macsen rufus]

Greetings, Wumpus, and welcome to our little primitive backwater :2thumbsup:

Britannia 43 was a great loss, indeed, but all is not lost as I'm sure it could be built back into the broader framework of Ancient -- after all, it uses the same animations and so on. I'd have to recreate some of my research re British tribes, and which were factions and which were rebels. As far as I recall, the factions I used were Atrabates, Dumnonii, Cruithne (Picts...), Silurii, Corieltauvi (of course, :2thumbsup: ), Caledonii, Iceni, Ordovici, Hibernii, Parisii and I'm sure there was at least one more faction in Wales. And maybe Catevellaunii, too. Dubonni? Hmm, well, lots of British factions, anyway ~D

And there were a unit of elephants as I did find at least one reference to Claudius bringing some with him for the period he was here in person, about 12 of them IIRC :yes:

Another plus since then is that I can now mod the campaign map as well, so a new version is now possible, with the Gallic mainland as a "playable" area for the Romans to start from, which means I wouldn't have to give them Cantware as a beachhead :book:

@DTS - I'm afraid the Assyrians are going to have to be content with just their battering rams, that being the most attestable technology available up to the 7th C BC. Well, there were other things, but nothing "doable" in MTW, only siege towers and ladders, and that's pretty much it :embarassed: Mining is already addressed, of course... :2thumbsup:

V3.0 release will just be up to the Alex campaign - so I can get it out before Xmas - Diadochi etc later....


EDIT: WOOT! :balloon2: :balloon2: 500 posts in the thread, and I've reached 1,500 as well. Dang, didn't see that coming :laugh4:

[dimitrios the samian]

Howdy Mac ,, Been quite here for almost 3 wks ! but thats fine , cause all thats important is that your getting much more gaming time than modding !! After all thats the driving force that keeps us at it !
I like many others are gratefull you have done so much already and look forward to V3 sometime in the new year ..... cheers .:2thumbsup:

[macsen rufus]

I'm going to draw a line before Xmas and do a 2.5 release with what I have at present, there's a bit more work to do yet before I can call it a V3.0, but want to have something new out for the holidays for everyone. I also have a side-project for someone else on the go, but it's not my place to reveal what it is :wink:

So V2.5 will include the Alex campaign, and all the recent changes for the Punic and main campaigns.

Myself, I think I'll be playing Mount and Blade over Xmas, for a change of scenery ~D

[dimitrios the samian]

Great news Macsen !! ...... :smash:

[Hound of Ulster]

with both the '2.5' and 3.0, will my 2.1 saves be compatible?

[macsen rufus]

@ Hound: good question, I'm not sure off the top of my head. The worst I can think of is maybe some unit shields in battle will be a little strange (there are a couple of animation changes, but it's mostly stuff ADDED rather than changed), the major part of 2.5 will be just to add the Alex campaign, the other bits are things like new unit graphics, some name changes (purely translation).... hmmm, no let me think. I might have changed some unit names - as I originally made Assyrian units based on the old HTW "Persian" equivalent, which have been restored for Alex, and the Assyrian units now have new in-game names. So, excuse the wild diversion, but I think that's going to make savegames incompatible. Course, if you have the disk space you can copy your directory and upgrade one copy and keep 2.1 going til you've finished your campaigns :2thumbsup:

[Hound of Ulster]

gah.....I was afraid of that. Just when I was ripping Europe apart with the Celts.:ireland:

[dimitrios the samian]

A small price to pay for progress Hound :beam: ,,, Go get em again in the next version :whip:

[axel]

hi Mascus
question wot is the mappack for?

[macsen rufus]

Ancient TW V2.1 Map Pack
====================

This expansion pack adds some new battlemaps for the Ancient TW mod, with the necessary changes to the startpos files to ensure they are called up at the right time and place. It is intended to be installed after the v2.1 patch, but it should still work on a v2.0 install.

Punic Wars maps:
* Syracuse castle map set
* Carthage castle map set

I thought these two cities deserved their own maps due to the importance and difficulty of assaulting them during the Punic Wars. I've tried to make them fairly realistic representations within the limits of the MTW engine, or at least duplicate some of the major features of the historic defences and strategic problems faced by a besieging/assaulting army. Thanks again to Adrian Goldsworthy's excellent "The Fall of Carthage"

Main campaign maps:
* a fjord-style river map for the Norway/Sweden border
* a coastal river map for Kemet (Egypt)

Also an old MTW castlemap has been replaced with an HTW map of the same name to avoid embarrassing miscalculations when assaulting!

As ever, the link is in the download thread (Rapidshare, only 1.6MB)

I'm particularly pleased with the "fjord" map, but have to admit that Slartibartfast was a greater genius than I

For the first time ever I was beaten as the Germanics when trying to take Norway from the rebels, and it makes for some interesting tactical options, for both attackers and defenders. Enjoy


It was so long ago I'd forgotten, but luckily found my post about it ~D

[dimitrios the samian]

Good to hear from you Macsen & Axel ....
Are the Fortifications the same for everyone ? Or can they be faction specific ?
As you answered in an earlier post Armoured Elephants are part & parcel and similiar to making new units and very time consuming and difficult .... but !
I beleive that I can also produce a deluxe set of Mesopotamian & Eastern forts , castles , & citadels .
cheers for now

[macsen rufus]

Are the Fortifications the same for everyone ? Or can they be faction specific ?


I only wish, but unfortunately there's only the one series of castle maps, and all you can really fix is to set some maps to attach to some provinces by carefully selecting the terrain type. There may some cunning way round, but I can't see it myself. It would be great if you could have different types of fort by faction....

[Kaidonni]

Hey Macsen, downloaded this mod and trying it out at the moment. Looks quite good.

I can't help but notice you're also inspiring me while I look through this topic - for my Medieval's Rome: Total War mod, I now rather fancy using an actual map like you've done for your Alexander campaign. Looks very stylish indeed. Although the people over at DATW offered to let me use their map, I don't really like the idea of going for the more MTW-looking map.

So, I hope I enjoy your mod, and thank you for also inspiring me. :)

If you don't mind me asking, anything, such as requesting permission from the authors, you did so you could use a map for Alex like that? And...I now realise the map is usually at an angle, on a table, so how did you manage to get it to look 3D rather than a 2D orthographic view?

Thanks again. :)

[macsen rufus]

Ermmm, well I went on the 50 years old is out of copyright assumption, to be honest :laugh4:

However, I did get the permission of the HTW team to re-use and re-release their unit animations, battle maps etc. If any of them would be useful for your mod (eg the Roman units ~D) then I suggest you PM Komninos - he's not around the Org often, but does pop in occasionally still, and failing that a moderator would be able to email him the message (worked for me, thanks to Barocca :bow: )

On the map, the Alex one (which will be released TOMORROW :balloon2: :balloon2: ) only covers Illyria in the north-west, to Indus in the south-east, so not so useful for yours, alas. BUT the good news is, you don't need to do the 3D stuff, the game does all that from a 2D map :2thumbsup: There is a high and low res version - the large one being around 4000x3000 pixels, to give you an estimate for what you need.

[Hound of Ulster]

can't wait for the Alex campaign.

[macsen rufus]

@Hound - you don't have to! :balloon2:

It's just been uploaded here (http://www.mydatabus.com/public/macsenrufus/AncientTWV2_5Patch.exe) (70Mb)

I'll put the info into the "Downloads" sticky as well, but a few words here are in order first.

The v2.5 patch adds the Alex campaign, with it's new map, and six playable factions: Macedonians, Illyrians, Spartans, Persians, Scyths and Gandharans (ie Indian faction). It also adds some new units to the main campaign (eg Baltic axemen) and Punic (Vasconian Heavy Spearmen, Tribal pikemen, Celtic pikemen, and tribal spears are now a "two-part" unit, that must be 'dismounted' to use their throwing spears) and a couple of fixes, and some changes to unit names and some offices, notably for the Israelites (if my Hebrew grammar is wrong, someone please correct me :beam: ), but the Gauls have had bit of a makeover, too. The map pack I released earlier is also incorporated, so you have dedicated siege maps for Syracuse and Carthage. There are also some new battle maps I've made for Alex

You will require either a v2.0 or 2.1 install, the patch will work with both. It has been tested, installs okay and plays, but testing has not been completely thorough. So I recommend making a copy of your v2.x folder, and patching that. It should be fine, but as I'm going to be offline for two weeks, I won't be around to quickly issue fixes if anyone spots a problem (about the only thing that I can think of that may be a problem would be unit icons, infopics or reviewpanel graphics, but I believe I got them all.... I'm just not willing to promise ~D)

There is still work to do on the Alex campaign (there's no hypaspists or agrianes yet, for one), which is why this is a v2.5 rather than a v3.0 release, but I wanted something out for the holidays :yes:

Enjoy!

[dimitrios the samian]

Well done Mac !! enjoy your break ... :smash: Got really nice deluxe set of portraits for most of the princesses and working away at all others including differentiating between the existing Roman/Italics & Greeks using a real simple idea ..
Also got plenty of bifs done but still need a lot more ,, Your gonna love the Brothel again :laugh4:
When you get back I'll have to ask a few questions so I can work out how they all interlock and called upon ...
cheers for now and well done this year .

[Xehh II]

Hey Macsen, I was wondering if you could put this update into smaller pieces for me please?
Stupid Dial-Up!:furious3:

[axel]

gg mate downloading at the moment :balloon2: :balloon2: :2thumbsup:
will give you a feedback soon :yes:

[axel]

Hi mate
Got me first Bug report:
1. playing the india faction the archers (paramesyasa) you cane see them but there is sommething strange with them.
2.playing the persian faction i wanted to attack the rebels and i got the follow message : CANNOT FIND FILE , textures\men\actionpage\jud_archer.txt so i press ok and got again a error message :HARD-SPRITES FAILED TO LOAD , unknow error (0)(00000000) but it did nt CTD.
so mate i hope i give enough information :2thumbsup:

[axel]

here s a link i found :2thumbsup: : http://home.swipnet.se/~w-63448/mesbro.htm

[russia almighty]

A couple suggestions .


Epirus in the Punic campaign needs a cavalry body guard . Epirus unlike the Achaean's is a minor successor state and there roster should show that a little better . I'd just give them a renamed pike unit and a renamed cavalry unit .

Second I'd give the mak's either kleurchoi pikemen to expand pike recruitment or something like native levy pikemen .

[Kaidonni]

Hmmm...anyone else had issues running custom battles? When I click on the Alexander campaign for custom battles, it CTD's. I tried some of the other eras for custom battles, and it's rather...haphazard in the way it experiences a CTD. I could go to the troop selection screen for, say, the Egyptians - but as soon as I click back, I get a CTD. I can enter the campaign map just fine - it's just the custom battles.

[dimitrios the samian]

Good suggestions russia ,, Im sure Mac will consider them .
Guys its still in beta form so like Mac said earlier "just something out for the holidays" .. cheers .

[seireikhaan]

Hi, Mac. I took the 2.5 out for a spin, and I have a few comments. First of all, the Indian archer unit was behaving rather oddly for me, the animation was quite bizarre and kinda threw me off a bit. Secondly, the Alexander campaign was VERY easy. I actually conquered nearly the entire Persian Empire under a single Raja(gee, imagine that?:beam: ) Now granted, I did grab several former Persian provinces after they rebelled before hand, but that constituted roughly 5 or 6 provinces, maybe. After a while, though, I just sent a large force right trough the gut of the Empire, following with another large force to sweep down south and through Egypt. Much to my amazement, I found almost no enemy troops, anywhere. There were more rebel troops than Persian. When I had finally driven my way to lower Egypt and Damascus, I found the problem. Persia had gone absolutely CRAZY building boats. They had over 7 stacks of 8 or more merchant ships! They had built so many boats in the mediterrenean, they could hardly afford any troops! Is there any way to fix this rather bizarre AI behavior?

Also, and I know that this is quite fixable even by myself, but I think the elephants are a tad too expensive. Perhaps 3 years instead of 6?

But besides that, the mod is still quite good.:thumbsup:

[seireikhaan]

Well, sorry to be a nag, Mac, but I had one more issue crop up while playing as the Balts. Tribal chariots were not working in battles. I would get a message like "Missing animation file...tribalchariot etc..." when I tried to play out any battle which had tribal chariots, which would then lead to the game basically ignoring whatever battle was supposed to be fought, and it would go right back to the campaign map. It was almost as annoying as that valour 8 tribal spearman the Germanics had.:sweatdrop:

[macsen rufus]

Happy New Year everyone, and thanks for the feedback :2thumbsup:

I'm finally back online after a most enjoyable holiday, so I can start looking at the issues raised with Alex. Looks from what's been said I may have not included the latest animations for a couple of textures, so will check that out.

@Xehh - yes, will do once the "issues" are sorted :bow:

@RA - I'll look at those ideas, tnx - I think the "Hellenistic" factions are still a bit sketchy in Punic, their only real pike units are the Macedonian Phalanx and the Yficratian hoplites so far. Maybe the Epirotes could have Xistophoroi hippeis as BG units, then....

@Kamikhaan - yet more evidence the latest animations are not included, I think! I've noted your comments about the Persians - I have set them up to be difficult to play as, for the human player, but maybe they need more start units out to the east so they can put up more resistance when AI-controlled. The ships issue was interesting - I think the AI preferences for ships need to be turned way down for this scenario, then, as the seas are quite unlike the main map anyway. Elephants are truly expensive and slow to train, but that's to prevent you bulldozing the map with them. Maybe a slight let-up could be allowed for Alex (they still have the same settings as for Punic, where elephants were rarer still. Maybe an Indian faction advantage should help?)

@Kaidonni - certainly I don't expect custom battles to work from the Alex campaign, as that prod file hasn't been tweaked for the custom side. The other scenarios should work though ...

@Axel - thanks for the details :2thumbsup:

Now you see why I suggested a second install for Alex :beam:

cheers all

[axel]

Hi macsen rufus,
Happy new year mate :2thumbsup:

[dimitrios the samian]

Good to see you back Mac :beam:

[Xehh II]

@Xehh - yes, will do once the "issues" are sorted :bow:

Thanks, I was really looking foward to the alex campaign but my stupid dial-up wouldn't let me.

[macsen rufus]

:balloon2: :balloon2: v2.51 Bug Fix available :balloon2: :balloon2:


Okay, there is now a Bug Fix (http://rapidshare.com/files/82164885/Ancient_TW_2_52_Bug_Fix.exe) available that solves various problems so far, but keep the bug reports coming if you find anything else, of course. Once we have them all, I'll make a new main install, and cut it into pieces for dial-up connections :bow:

Fixes:

- Judean archers
- Indian archers
- (Tribal) chariots

Tweaks:

- AI preferences for ships turned down a lot
- elephants made more rewarding
- eastern Persian Empire beefed up a bit

=================================

In the process of sorting this I discovered a new fact about the game's mechanism, as well, so useful to do for me :2thumbsup: If anyone's interested, on going into battle it checks the ActionPage for ALL units that use any of the animations in the battle. I know this because the chariot problem was NOT a problem with the tribal chariots, but the new Celtic Chariots, whose ActionPage entry was missing. Once this was replaced, the tribal chariots worked as well.

The Indian archers were pretty hilarious, weren't they? Pairs of legs floating horizontally in the air with nothing attached, flailing around aimlessly.... yes, it was the wrong animation (I re-used a fac shield folder, so no other scenarios would be affected).

[Wladyslaw IV]

Thanks macsen rufus. I was really digging this yesterday, than I come here very early this morning, and there's an update! Thanks!

:whip:

[Wladyslaw IV]

Found a bug... I was playing as the Italics in the Age of Chariots, the Celts invaded Venice. Game froze. It said something about celtic chariots being declared pagan but somewhere it could not find the image. I really wish I knew how to take a screen of my computer. If it is F2 like TW, than someone please direct me to where to find it. I pressed F2 for both errors.

[macsen rufus]

Hi Wladyslaw - tnx for the report - have you installed the Bug Fix? The celtic/tribal chariot was one problem addressed by that, so it should be okay with that. I notice there's been 63 downloads of 2.5, but only 4 of the Bug Fix, so there must be lots of folk not quite up-to-date....

I'll have another check tonight, as I recently fired up a Celtic campaign in my v2.51 re-install (I keep a development copy, and also a "re-installed" copy which uses just the downloads, to make sure it comes out the same :2thumbsup: ) However, I've not quite teched up to chariots yet, so will have to play a few more turns to be sure ~D The Ligurians have got it coming anyway, and a wave of covignae will be just the trick :laugh4:

Your stored images are in the TGAs folder - not sure if it will capture error messages or not, but have a look anyway :2thumbsup:

[Wladyslaw IV]

Thanks for such a beautiful mod. I haven't really finagled around with it yet again, just kind of hoping if someone else reports/doesn't report the same problem. I did definetely download the bug fix, it was on my desktop yesterday morning, I wasn't quite sure however if I installed it... :idea2: Well it's installed now, I can try getting back to the exact point it froze if you wish.

[macsen rufus]

Hi Wladyslaw - I'm afraid you need the Bug Fix 2.52 - in light of what you reported yesterday I found more missing files. There's a link to 2.52 Bug Fix on the download page. It duplicates all of 2.51 as well, so anyone with an unfixed 2.5 install can go straight to the 2.52 Bug Fix.

When I teched up to celtic chariots I had exactly the same problem in my re-installed copy. HOPEFULLY this will be everything, but as ever, keep reporting the bugs if you find any :2thumbsup:

[Wladyslaw IV]

Well thanks and I'm glad I was able to be of help. I'll download it now. Don't worry about hopefully I was hesitant to play the Alexander campaign because I thought there might be a glitch or two, being a first release. Just keep up the good work, MTW VI mods are my favorite. Any assistance and I'll try to be of help.

[macsen rufus]

Good news everybody :balloon2:

You may have seen Duke John's "resource pack" he posted up in the Alchemist sub-forum, which includes some nice animations that would be ideal to add into Ancient, so I've asked his permission to use some of them, and got the go-ahead. So that means there's going to be a little re-vamp of some of the units for v3.0, first and foremeost the tribal archers (surely I'm not the only one who's noticed they have the same actions as the slingers, right? :laugh4: )

Once I get those new ones up and running, and some folders re-allocated, it will be full-steam ahead on v3.0. I hope to get a Diadochi scenario working on the Alex map, and if I get the research done, maybe a "Rise of Persia" so you can build up your own Persian Empire, kick out the Medes and whatnot, so that would be a total of three scenarios for the new map. (Rise of Persia as early, Alex as high, and Diadochi as late). Obviously I'm going to have to put some more new units together, and work out the do-able factions, but it's a general plan, anyway.

I hope v2.52 is now stable for everyone who has it, but keep the bug reports coming if you spot anything else :bow:

ps Nice sig, Wladyslaw :2thumbsup:

[Hound of Ulster]

please please do a rise of Persia campaign.:jumping:

[macsen rufus]

Okay, here's a sneak preview of the all-new tribal archers (admittedly they are about to get wiped out by some Iberian light cavalry :laugh4: )

https://i95.photobucket.com/albums/l148/macsen_rufus/NEW_TRIBAL_ARCHERS.jpg

The same animation will also be used to re-do the Thracian peltasts, and will probably also be the basis of the Agrianes, for Alex. I'm part way through adding in some new shields and weapons so I have more options, and some of the weapon coordinates need a bit of tweaking (I've sorted the javelins out, but the swords will take some work...) Anyway, I think they look pretty cool, and add a nice bit of variety to the battlefield :2thumbsup:

[macsen rufus]

Morning all,

Here's some more tasters of new units I've put together from Duke John's animation, now that I've added in some extra shields and weapons for them.

Agrianes:


https://i95.photobucket.com/albums/l148/macsen_rufus/AGRIANES1.jpg
https://i95.photobucket.com/albums/l148/macsen_rufus/AGRIANES2.jpg


New-style thracian peltasts:

https://i95.photobucket.com/albums/l148/macsen_rufus/NEW_THRACIAN_PELTASTS.jpg

As well as the agrianes, I've also added in some hypaspists for Alexander, and here's the stats screen of the new units (bear in mind they are v2 in this battle):

https://i95.photobucket.com/albums/l148/macsen_rufus/new_unit_stats.jpg

I spent most of Sunday afternoon retweaking the sword coordinates for this animation, as they were a bit skewed - not sure if this was because I rescaled the image or not, but it was all very Harry Potter - guys waving their arms arround and swords flying about all over the place :laugh4: I did learn some useful things though, so it wasn't all drudgery :clown:

Anyway, I've started a new Alexander campaign to test these new guys out, and also to check on the tweaks I made for the bug-fixes. The Persians still seem to be building a lot of ships, which is odd as preferences were turned down by a factor of 10.... still, I shall see how it develops. I'm currently poised to retake Ionia to get a foothold on Asia, as the rebels kicked the Persians out, so the sea approach is open to me so far. Unfortunately my best general (after Alex himself) is currently stuck on Crete, feverishly building a port...

Edit: I'm also thinking we need a land-bridge across the Hellespont, not decided which provinces yet but Alex's historical route seems fairest. Any feedback?

[dimitrios the samian]

Very nice Macsen ..... very nice !!
Can you use the other Hoplites i refered to in the screenies at the Duke John thread ?
cheers for now
D

[macsen rufus]

I'm running low on animation folders (I only have one left, and that's a "dangerous" one that I can only use for Punic/Alex), and I think I have enough hoplite bodies, to be honest. Unfortunately I can only see the WotR pic in DJ's thread, so not sure which hoplite your looking at, but I guess it might be the Spartans? Very nciely done, but I'm sure you know they never actually wore those cloaks in battle, "300" notwithstanding? :laugh4: If I do take another of DJs it will be one of the cav units, as they're a bit thin on the ground for me. :bow:

[cegorach]

Did you use the mount folders and the two animation folders discovered by Barocca ??

[macsen rufus]

Did you use the mount folders and the two animation folders discovered by Barocca ??

:yes: There's two different chariot teams (EHorse and KHorse), LiHorse used as a one-pixel mount for the whole-unit HTW cavalry animations (I know I could declared these as infantry and re-use LiHorse, but I like the Ctrl-C command to work ~D), ArmHorse (a copy of the real LiHorse) as a real mount for two-part cav units, and Camel is a camel, of course. The DJ animation has gone into PLATESURCOAT and MONGHKAV has been used as well. The "dangerous" folders are restricted to animations only used in Punic and Alex, as neither of these will exceed the 20 faction mark (hence they include the HTW artillery - gastraphetes, euthitonon, oxivolos, plus the Vasconian spearmen and elephants....) which leaves just one spare.

[noone23]

Hi macsen rufus and everyone. I downloaded the latest major update just before the author went away for a couple weeks. Now that you are back, macsen rufus, I hope you(or someone else here)can help me out. My copy of ATW was okay right before the download as I had just run a custom battle in order to to check the mod. After installation I tried to start the mod and instead got the following error message: COLUMN_building_faction_association
Unknown faction specified: column 20, row 8
FN_27
At that point I was, of course, given no choice but to exit the game. I hope the answer to this problem isn't too technical since I'm not. That said, can anybody(I'm not picky)help? Thanks in advance.

[macsen rufus]

Hi there Noone23 - sounds most odd. I take it you have it brought up to v2.5, which was the pre-Xmas release? In that case I'd suggest you grab a copy of the 2.52 bug-fix (see the sticky downloads thread for the link) and install that - that will overwrite your prod files and should fix the problem judging by the error message. FN_27 pins it down to one of the main-map scenarios, so you maybe check that you have all three startpos files in place, as well.

If not, I'd suggest a complete new install, and wait til tomorrow for the 2.53 patch which I'm about to release (I was going to do it today, but got logged into rapidshare and browsed my memory stick only to find I'd forgotten to copy it over last night - DOH!) Well, I was doing my annual tax return as well ~D

So before anyone asks "2.53? Who dat?" I'll mention it now:

* supercedes v2.52 Bug Fix (ie includes all the bug-fix stuff, so will be the newest bug-fix)
and
* ADDS new units: agrianes and hypaspists for Alex campaign (I just know you all want to play with them ~D)
* moves some stuff around so the animation folders are re-aligned

And being as I'll now have another chance to fiddle with it tonight, then there may be a couple of other changes, as well :2thumbsup:

[macsen rufus]

As promised, the 2.53 patch has been uploaded, link in the usual place :bow: This can be installed over v2.5, v2.51 or v2.52.

This latest patch includes all bug-fixes for v2.5, adds in the new unit animation (thanks to Duke John :bow: ), so tribal archers and Thracian peltasts are updated, and Agrianes and Hypaspists have been added. There are also a few historical heroes added now (7 for Macedonia, 6 for Persia), and a couple of other tweaks have been implemented.

Looking at the install procedure I see it's getting a bit long-winded and cumbersome:

v2.0 Full Install
v2.5 Expansion
v2.53 Patch

are all required to get to the latest version.... So I think I should be looking at a fresh "Full Install" soon.

Enjoy!

[Wladyslaw IV]

A 2.53 patch?!! Oh, now you did it, you killed my whole weekend. ~D And right when I thought 1914 couldn't get more exciting (Paradox Interactive mod) Bah, was helping them a whole week anyway... :laugh4:

Oh right, congrats on your own forum ~:)

[seireikhaan]

Congrats on the subforum, Mac!

As for the land bridge, I think it might be a very good idea, potentially. My theory is that by being allowed to cross through the Hellespont without ships, Persia will be building less ships, and more troops, due to simple logic(hopefully:sweatdrop:). I don't think it'll really help Persia too much though, considering their sheer size will prevent them from doing to much damage to Greece, considering they're having a whale of a time preventing rebellions elsewhere.

[noone23]

I gave the 2.53 patch a shot and I got the same error message as the one I already posted. Now I need to know what to do about those startpos files - how(in detail)to manipulate them properly so that this headache can go away. One thing I might add - I previously used the Gnome Editor to make some changes to some data in your mod(which I also did with other MTWVI mods), but as I said in my previous post here, ATW was fine and I was able to run a custom battle just to check it right before downloading the Alex update.

[macsen rufus]

Hi Noone23 - okay, if you've made changes somewhere it could well be something I can't help you with. But I was working on the next phase of development last night (going for the next big leap to v3.0 :2thumbsup: ) and realised that Alex doesn't have an FN_27 - first thing to check, do you have any OLD build_prod files that don't belong to Ancient in the same directory? Have you tried a complete re-install (v2.0 + 2.5 + 2.53), making sure to follow the instructions about old files that should be deleted beforehand? Try both of those and see what happens. All I can say is that the re-install works fine for me, so it's not a problem in the package itself.

@Kamikhaan: thanks for that input - I'm thinking across the Dardanelles would be right, but I think I'd need to shift a border so the gallipoli peninsula becomes part of Thrace instead of Macedon as it is at present (or I could just make the landbridge Thrace >> Mysia and gloss over the fact the map doesn't quite tie up ~D)

Later edit:
========

I've started looking at the Rise of Persia campaign, and decided that I need to subdivide the Greek provinces a little, so there will be a slightly altered campaign map by the time v3.0 comes out. It also requires the unit_prod for Alex to be rewritten slightly, so the Alexander campaign becomes "high" rather than "late" which I've already started on. And I might also have to accept the loss of dead bodies as it gets too complex with only one deadpage coords file to cover different unit_prods.

I've decided on the factions:

Macedonia (but a lot weaker than in Alex, obviously)
Aetolian Greeks (maybe sub-divide to include Athens separately)
Sparta
Peloponesian Greeks (maybe divide into Argos & Corinth)
Illyrians
Thracians
Lydian empire
Medes
Neo-Babylonian ("Chaldean") empire
Egypt (26th Dynasty)
Scythians
Gandharans
and, erm,
Persians, of course - starting life as a 2-province weakling ~D

The general background to the scenario: it begins in 559BC, the year Cyrus / Kyros comes to the throne of Anshan (Parsua - the Persians' homeland). Assyria has recently been crushed by the coalition of Medes, Scyths and Chaldeans. The Median empire stretches from the Halys river in the west - a border agreed by treaty with the Lydians under King Croesus - to the steppes of Transoxiana. Mysteriously the Scyths have retreated back to the steppe after their joint venture with the Medes and Chaldeans. Egypt under Pharaoh Ahmose II is resurgent after decades of foreign rule, and her territory stretches to Cyrenaica and Cyprus. The Kushites have been crushed in the south, so both Upper and Lower Egypt have been re-united under one dynasty once more. The fertile crescent from Susa to Assur to Jerusalem, plus Cilicia and northern Arabia, are controlled by the Chaldeans.

Cyrus is the head of the Achaemenid family of the Persian Pasargadae tribe, nominally a vassal of the Median ruler Astyages, but fated by prophecy to destroy the Median empire.

In the far west, the quarrelsome Greeks will be too busy with their barbarous northern neighbours and their petty infighting to have much impact on the affairs of grander states, though should a Greek basileus arise with the support of all Greek poleis then surely he will expect to participate in the grander game played by the eastern empires.

=========================

I'm going to need a few new units, not least for the Neo-Babylonians (actually, after typing that a few times, I think I'll stick with 'Chaldeans' in the game ~D) but they will be largely Assyrian clones, although they will be able to raise a few "regional" types.

I have been thinking about the Diadochi period, but I'm really not sure where to begin - at the death of Alexander, where things are really interesting for a brief spell, or wait until the main kingdoms are established, whcih means I can use major factions with well-known territories. Any ideas welcome :2thumbsup:

[seireikhaan]

Yes, Dardanelles would work quite well.

For the Diadochi, I'd wait until the new dynasties are established, like Ptolemy in Egypt, etc...At least to me, it'd be much more interesting to have these smaller, yet still mighty factions clubbing each other over the head, both figuratively and literally, of course. :2thumbsup:

[Hound of Ulster]

I'd recommend Athens, Corinth, Argos, and Thebes as your Greek city-state factions in addition to Sparta.

[dimitrios the samian]

Great news Macsen ..
I agree with kamikhaan on the Dardanelles
About the Diadochi period .. It makes for fascinating warfare and information is easily available ...
I wonder though how everyone would react to a what if Alexander didn't die campaign ! :laugh4:
Just a campaign with Alexander playable only and on the original map of version 2 .
SCENARIO : As he already owns Greece - Asia Minor - Egypt & the HolyLands he can begin his assault on the rest of Europe ? would be interesting with further thought ofcourse ..
cheers for now
DTS

[macsen rufus]

Morning all,

@ Hound: yes, I've pretty much come to the same conclusion for Greek factions. We do need the option for more in-fighting there before the Persians come waltzing along around ~490BC (in theory...) So I shall separate out Attica for the Athenians and split Achaea into three parts (I think there'll be enough room on the map) for Argos, Corinth and Messenia - at this stage the Spartans should have control of Messenia :bow:

I also wonder whether Macedonia needs cutting into two as well, as at this stage it was a much smaller country than in Alexander's time?

@Kamikhaan: ok, your vote has been noted :2thumbsup:

@DTS: sounds an interesting option - Alexander into Europe - I shall mull it over....

Meanwhile, another little preview for RoP (Rise of Persia - get used to the shorthand now :laugh4: ) scenario:

Starting positions:

https://i95.photobucket.com/albums/l148/macsen_rufus/RoP1.jpg

Faction selection (so far - see above about new factions....)

https://i95.photobucket.com/albums/l148/macsen_rufus/RoP2.jpg

[dimitrios the samian]

Macsen ,,, Just my thoughts on the Diadochi .... Wait until they are etablished and at the peak of their powers and glory ... much much more fun than the other alternative (( the establishment & growth period ))
Im sure if you where to get a show of hands from the boys they would agree .

[macsen rufus]

Morning all,

@DTS - thanks for the input :bow: It most probably is the easisest the way to go, and 9 out of ten cats seem to prefer it :laugh4:

I launched 13 new units last night, spread across the Medes and the Chaldeans, I now have to do the fine detail - tweaking weapons, shields, build requirements etc and make some new unit icons and info pics...... Put like that it seems the bulk of it remains to be done :clown: Anyway, they seem to appear in the right provinces for the right factions, but some provinces look very strange where eastern archers, Median archers and Scythian archers are all available - they all have the same reviewpanel graphic at present ~D

If I can recall the list, it's something like:

Chaldean - archers, spearmen, infantry guards, Royal cavalry, medium cavalry

Median - cameliers (Bactria and Sogdiana only), archers, spearmen, axe-warband (Scythian-type axes), Royal cav, heavy cavalry (lancers), horse archers (like, duh!), and javelin skrimishers

These are just the factional troops (though there will also be some overlap between Median and Persian recruitment, due to their very close relationship). 'Regionals' that will be available to various factions will remain in place too: tower-shield spearmen, eastern archers, eastern light cav, Judean archers, Assyrian militia, Hebrew militia, various Nubians, various Phrygians, Cascans, Indian units in the east, mercenary hoplites further west etc etc etc

I think I might need to expand the Lydians' roster as well, because there are only four Lydian units - Royal cav, heavy cav, archers, and infantry (mock-hoplites). There was also a "Lydian heavy infantry" in the original HTW whcih I shall try to resurrect. This faction will be fun to get right - I've decided to make them "orthodox", as they sit between the "catholic" Hellenic factions and the "muslim" eastern factions. And of course, they have to be as "rich as Croesus", as the saying goes, even to this day :bow:

I'm gathering together dynastic names (easy for some, as their dynasties were wiped out shortly after the game starts, IRL ~D)

The ones I'm sure of so far: Egypt - Ahmose II, Lydia - Croesus, Persia - Cyrus, Media - Astyages, Chaldea (either Nabonides or Nabopalisar?) For now it's running on the pre-existing names lists - Lydians have Roman names, the Chaldeans are decicedly Hittite etc - but that's a tweak for latter... meanwhile it seems to keep running, no CTDs yet, so it could be sorted pretty quickly by the looks of it :2thumbsup:

[dimitrios the samian]

Wow !!! You are incredible Mac ... Also good to hear the rest of the gang wanting the same type of Diadochi scenario .:2thumbsup:
>> About those review panel graphics ..
I beleive the time has arrived & is an ideal time to start borrowing from RTW and its mods . :yes:
Im sure with permission you could make up the Medeans & Scythians and then start a specific guide in the Lab which we can ask to get stickied specifically for this reverse engineering ,, it could also cover event scrolls building parchments etc etc .

** I think the waist up closer bifs of RTW are the way to go as many of those nice little HTW are nostalgic cute and dear to my heart but were in the heat of battle difficult to quickly id .

A guide (( even very basic )) would be the tonic i need to get cracking producing them for the mod ,, and also perhaps spur on other eye-candy improvements by others for others Mods as well .
Let the pillage begin
cheers :beam:

DTS

[noone23]

Thanks for your patience and your guidance, Macsen Rufus. Things are now better and your mod is back up and running. One thing - I get the feeling there is no custom battle option for the Alexander era, as the mod crashed when I tried to start putting together a custom Alex battle. Is this true? Meanwhile, I think the key to turning things around for me was that I somehow missed the 2.0 update in all the series of upgraded versions of ATW that have come out. Your last reply brought that to my attention, so a big thank you for that. Version 2.0 really was a big upgrade with the Carthaginians and all and here for all this time I missed it. Well, now I had the chance to see them in a custom battle and that Sacred Band infantry looked GOOD. One disappointment that I hope you will correct before too long: the Assyrians seem mostly out of place on maps that center on Europe. Their playground was mostly the Middle East and Western Asia with Egypt thrown in for good measure. On the maps where I currently see them they are squeezed in along the east mapedge. it would certainly make more historical sense to put them in a scenario that uses the Alexander map, which is what I thought you were going to do. The Assyrians are my ancient wargaming favorites and I would like to see a scenario truly worthy of their inclusion. I know how busy you are with all you still plan to add to ATW but I felt the need to bring this to your attention now that I seem to have some basic ATW problems out of the way. I thank you for all you have done with this mod - I appreciate your labors as much as anyone else here - because, being nontechnical myself, I look up to all TW modders and I think to myself that you guys are on a higher level. Keep up the fine work - I, too, see that this is a labor of love and I hereby offer you my emotional support if nothing else.

[russia almighty]

I thought this should be known but the Alexander scenario is REALLY unstable compared to the rest of the scenarios .

[dimitrios the samian]

Gentlemen ,,
Patience please ..
Take into consideration that all this is being done by one person !
Also remember that Macsen released Alexander as a something of a beta for us to try .

**** Lets contribute constructive feedback instead of criticism ****

RussiaAlmighty ... In reality this is like an evolving beta so constructive critisism is whats usefull ,, things that you see need balancing or flaws that can be pointed is the type of feedback that is required for polishing .
** Rest assured eventually it will be as stable as previous works .

Noone23 ... As above and I totally understand your dilemna with the Assyrians . For far to long I have also wanted a Golden Age set in Mesopotamia .. With the proposed split into two major mods this is the first logical improvement to the Chariot Era & could become the first major addition should Macsen choose to .

** Macsen ,, Would be a good idea to open a new sub-section where feedback can be placed re: glitches - bugs - issue etc etc .
cheers to all
DTS

[axel]

Well said dimitrios the samian:yes: ,
I think you are making really good mods Mascen rufus :2thumbsup: i am having real fun, me myself wos treying to make a campain map but to much work at the moment (56 hours this week) so i dont got the time to learn mod making :furious3: :furious3: but i would willing to learn sommething easy just to start with and help :yes:
dimitrios the samian the new sub-section for feedback is a brilliant idea :2thumbsup: gg mate

[macsen rufus]

Morning all - no real progress over the weekend, as I ended up working Saturday, and didn't wake up til 3pm on Sunday, with just one hour of daylight left for my weekend :gah:

Anyway, thanks for all the poll replies so far - I think I can see bit of a pattern emerging :laugh4:

@Noone23 - I was beginning to wander over the weekend if that might have been the case - FN_27 was bugging me (can't remember which exactly, but it's either the Ammonites or Moabites, both very late additions to the mod). So I was going to ask if you'd got v2.0, but as you've already answered it.... :2thumbsup: The custom battle side requires quite a bit of tweaking in the unit_prod to get it working properly - it will be done by the time the RoP scenario is finished - I'm working on it now along with the new units. I think the Punic and "Bronze Age" scenarios should all be working in custom now (well I know I tested the siege maps for Syracuse and Carthage in custom, but can't remember now whether I did it with the mod, or exported to VI??? Seems so long ago :laugh4: )

If it wasn't for the mod having started life on the XL map (which includes Mesopotamia as a province) the Assyrians wouldn't have been in there, but there's no doubt they are essential to the "geo-politics" of the era. Of course back then I was still saying "but I'm not even going to attempt making any changes to the campaign map". Three new campaign maps later things look different :laugh4: The irony is now there is the "Alex" map to use, the Assyrians have already been erased from history :clown:

@RA - which version are you on? Do you have it patched up to 2.53? Any specifics would really help as I've not been able to test every faction under every possible condition yet - it's the modder's curse, never finishing a campaign :beam: By the time v3.0 comes out (or perhaps the separate "Ancient II:TW"), then the stability should be there, as well as custom games :yes:

@DTS: yes, good idea - I'll launch a feedback/bug report thread :bow:

[noone23]

I see the initial unit list for, say, the Alex scenario and I want to boost the Persian unit strengths but I believe from previous experience that a crash will result. How can the default unit starting strengths be safely changed?

[Hound of Ulster]

Cyrus's name in Old Persian was Kurush. It sounds better.

will you drop the 'late' (I don't remember it's name) campaign?

I would include the Dahae/Massagataes to keep the Persians honest.

[russia almighty]

@macsen

I was playing as Gandahar(sp?) . About 5-10 turns in BAM crash to the desk top .

Think making every unit have a one turn build time could have something to do with it ?

[macsen rufus]

Hi all;

@Noone23: when you say the unit strength, I assume you mean number of men per unit? That can be changed in the unit_prod file (use Gnome editor, or be very, very careful with Notepad). Unit strength is about the 8th column, approx (it's labelled in Gnome, so easier to find). Max unit size is 200 - any more will crash the engine. In Ancient all units are set to be NON-SCALABLE, which means you can do what you like with the game's "unit size" setting, nothing will change :clown: Well, it's not strictly true - custom games will still scale, so you must have it set to default if you want to play custom battles, and in the campaign mode it will affect the size of STACK you can have on the campaign map (set to 'huge' unit size you can have (IIRC) 1920 men per stack, on default 960 men per stack).

Or if you want to add extra starting units in the startpos file, that is easily done: if you find a line such as

MakeUnit:: ID_LANDREG_15 Kardakes 128

you could either copy and paste it for two units:

MakeUnit:: ID_LANDREG_15 Kardakes 128
MakeUnit:: ID_LANDREG_15 Kardakes 128

or you could alter the size of that unit, eg

MakeUnit:: ID_LANDREG_15 Kardakes 200

Remember, 200 is the maximum possible unit size, and the maximum trainable size would be 128, so once the 200 man unit gets whittled down in battle you can only replenish numbers back up to 128 (however, you can retrain it at 200 men to give armour/weapon upgrades etc)

@Hound - I did wonder about other steppe factions, but as they're basically Scyths by another name thought there wasn't going to be any great advantage to it. Late Bronze or Late Alex? Not that I'm dropping either, of course...

@RA - do you have any more details about the crash - end of turn, battle, looking at a stack/agent/enemy province??? Anything you can tell me could help pin it down. The train time is not going to be an issue - most units in vanilla are 1-yr types. Any info you get, please post in the bug reports thread :2thumbsup:

[Hound of Ulster]

How the heck do you re-train units in MTW and STW?

I've always simply merged units to keep the numbers up.

[noone23]

Another question(BTW I did use Gnome Editor and made a lot of changes in the unit and building prod files): Can numbers of ships in the startpos files be safely boosted like those of the ground units? The ones I see are only single ships but of course I would like to get those puny numbers up, way up.

[macsen rufus]

@Noone - the ships are more like a special case of agent than a military unit in the way the game works, so no, you have to have them one by one, I'm afraid.

@Hound - retraining: if you have a unit that needs retraining (ie the last few survivors from a desperate battle), and it is in a province that can train that unit, then you can open up the unit training parchment, click on the army stack, select the unit to retrain, and drag it into any empty box at the bottom of the training panel. Unlike RTW, if you stack up five units to retrain, they will come out one unit a year.

Regardless of the unit's normal training time, re-training will only ever take a single year. It will bring numbers back up to full strength (but I guess you saw the notes above about units that started the game as bigger than the standard size?)

Also any units retrained will gain any upgrades available in the province (ie weapons, morale, valour and armour). You might still be better off recombining some of your units in the field, as you can keep your valoured-up guys together to make some kick-ass units. New ones acquired by retraining will be raw recruits and dilute the valour your veterans have already earned.

There are two well-known problems with retraining: Beware of retraining your heir apparent - if you do, then make 100% sure he goes straight to the front of the queue AND that you have no chance of running out of money that year. Why? Your king may die, and if your heir comes of age in the queue he will turn into a "king" unit WHICH CANNOT BE RETRAINED and therefore CTD, end of campaign. The CTD might not happen immediately if he was at the back of the queue, but it will CTD if you try to remove him from the queue, or on the year he reaches the front of the queue. You might have two kings for a while, as well...... all are signs that something bad is about to happen and you should wonder how old your last save game is ~D

The second retraining bug will also cause CTDs: it is possible to open a training parchment in one province, then click on a stack in a different province, and drag a unit across to the parchment. DO NOT DO THIS! Make sure the unit is retrained in the province it is really in....

[noone23]

Your mod, that is, not those ships. As I was previously starting to say, I made a lot of changes in the unitprod and buildprod files for ATW using Gnome Editor and more changes manually in the startpos files. The end result was a game that won't even start without so much as an error message to give me at least a clue as to which change(s) the game chose not to accept. At this point I'm probably looking at another reinstall unless you come up with something brilliant in a hurry. I think I understand very well any frustrations you might have with the MTW engine as I have enough of my own. I guess the creators of the original game decided medieval battles were small affairs and that was how they chose to proceed. The idea of Modding and other user changes apparently occured to those folks late if at all. I don't want to get on a rant here because I know that is not in the spirit of what you are trying to accomplish with ATW(not to mention being offtopic). However, you must find MTW's limitations as frustrating as I do, that's all I'm saying.

[macsen rufus]

@Noone - sorry I misread your last post - I thought you were wanting to up the size of the "fleets" in the unit_prod - as for adding extra ships to the startpos it should work, but do it as "MakeUnit:: ..... ship 1" repeated rather than "MakeUnit:: ..... ship 3" as I imagine that would probably confuse things (it might not, as well, but why go looking for trouble you don't need ~D)

The CTD problem may be Gnome-related, not necessarily a problem with your changes as such, not sure how much you've picked up from the forum about Gnome, but it's always a good idea to open up a freshly-saved unit_prod or build_prod file with Notepad before you try it out. Gnome often puts a line of junk at the bottom (especially if you've been cutting and pasting) and this needs to be removed using Notepad, and then resave the file. Gnome-junk = guaranteed CTD/error message. It will also stop Gnome reopening the file, so I tend to leave Gnome open even after I've saved the file and fixed it.

Moddability was bit of an add-on for the TW series, there's very little you can do in STW, vanilla MTW was a bit better, and VI an improvement over that. I haven't even looked at RTW, but I guess from what EB has achieved, there seems to be plenty of scope. My biggest grumble with MTW is default skirmish-mode for all missile units :no: This one really messes up line infantry in Napoleonic, for instance, as the AI won't stand and shoot at you properly.

Also don't forget how old the game is now, we've become accustomed to the hardware advances that allow us to run bigger battles with all the eye-candy - most "current" machines choked on full-spec, huge-scale battles when MTW was new.

[mhorohello]

Dear Macsen

Can I just take this opportunity to thank you for producing this mod. My friends and I have a LAN set up and we ran a four player game of Ancient TW in the Punic War Era at the weekend that has just gone. The games played without any hitches at all and were just as good as any of the multiplayer games for the Medieval TW that we have played. It would be nice of course for an Alexander multiplayer custom battle set up in the future... but so far so good!

It cannot be easy producing a mod for this program. But with a love of history and some knowledge of the program then much seems to be possible.

Although the Medieval Total War game is quite old and the graphics do not compare with the new games, there is something to be said for the "Classic" style and feel for this game. Classic is a word that must be used here. My friend has a large 47 inch TV screen (!) recently bought that can show the game screen very well and is excellent for viewing replays. What this game shows us on that huge screen is not poor graphics but classic gameplay which has not been beaten by anything from the Creative Assembly or elsewhere.

:yes:

[noone23]

So the question becomes: now what? That next reinstall is looking more and more likely at this point. All this work on the ATW files is wearing me out since I'm no spring chicken any more. That extended session yesterday of editing files for several hours only to get the result I described in my last post - now THAT was truly tiring and frustrating. Anyway, in looking through several of the edited files I didn't see anything that looked like Gnome junk, although I must admit I don't know what the stuff looks like. There must be something more sinister going on here - I just wish I had a clue as to its identity so I could then fix it myself and hit you with the more esoteric questions instead.

[macsen rufus]

@mhorohello: thanks for the kind words, and that LAN game sounds like a real blast - it's something I've not tried myself... where's the smiley for "envy" gone? :laugh4:

The custom side for the Alex unit_prods will be straightened out for the next release, but it might take a while yet... :bow:

@noone: if you have Gnome junk it would be pretty obvious, it's normally a line of random stuff from somewhere in the file but orphaned at the bottom - you can see that it's not a full unit's-worth of data.

There are so many different things that can kill the game though, it is always a good idea to make one change at a time. If you do a whole raft of stuff in one go before testing it you greatly reduce the chance of ever finding the problem.

Some of the oddities that can occur are: it doesn't like to have too many different unit/build prod files with similar names (eg you can have mod1, mod2, mod3 working then when you add mod4 it kills the game - yet it can all work if you remove say mod3 - there is nothing wrong with mod4 at all - it just doesn't like the name...); tabs, commas, brackets etc can cause CTDs/failure to load if they are misplaced; some parts of the files are case-sensitive, eg commands or labels - I once spent a whole evening on a non-loading iteration only to pin it down to the descriptions.txt having one entry with [unit_Desc] instead of [unit_desc] - it took so long to find because I'd added loads of new units at once and had to search all the files related to them.... it was a real pain in the neck, that one :beam:

So the general rules are: proceed by well defined, small steps. Back up eveything that works; resist the temptation to "oh, I'll add this bit in now whilst I have the file open" - if it's not part of the "programme" leave it til it is. Try not to do different types of changes at the same time. Maybe update the graphics, test, THEN update the stats, test, THEN change the description etc. So many mods have fallen by the wayside because authors have managed to corrupt their only working copy with an error they can't pin down - MTW fans should know about over-extending :laugh4: Successful modding is not all creativity - a lot of it is also being methodical and disciplined :bow:

[Hound of Ulster]

thanks Macsen for the info on retraining. So it works kinda like RTW, but less sophiisticated.

[macsen rufus]

So it works kinda like RTW, but less sophiisticated of an exploit.

There, fixed :laugh4:

No, seriously I did find RTW's way of retraining a whole panel full of stuff in one go a bit of an exploit, intsta-reinforcements, if you will. I think the MTW way is a bit more realistic, personally.

[macsen rufus]

v2.53 Full install and a "by parts" series for dial-up users is now ready and waiting for download :bow:

[Xehh II]

Can ZI install this over the ATW I've already got? Or do I need clean MTW?

[macsen rufus]

Hi Xehh - it's a complete install - so it's designed to go into an MTW-VI install, but it will still work if you go over an existing copy of Ancient. However, if you're up to v2+ then the 2.53 patch would be all you need :bow:

[Xehh II]

No, the patch is too big for my dial-up, I need to get the smaller parts.

[noone23]

Hi again, Macsen Rufus. I just copied Hellenic Total War then reinstalled the ATW downloads one at a time up to version 2.53 over the copy. Thus, I now have ATW back to where it was. One thing - that last campaign(I forget the name)crashed as soon as I tried to start it. Other parts of your mod seem to work okay. Do you have custom battles available for the Alex time frame yet? I guess I could have tried it for myself but I didn't feel like risking a crash at that point. I did some editing again with Gnome Editor and changed the starting money in the startpos files but I didn't get too aggressive this time with my choice of changes. I'll have more to say but I don't want to pile it all into a single post.

[noone23]

One thing I want to do(now that ATW is functional again)is to create a super naval unit for the Persians in the Alex scenario and the Carthaginians in the Punic Wars scenario but there don't appear to be any available unit slots when I try to use Gnome Editor. What did you use for this process? You clearly went though the unit creation process so I hope you have some really good advice on the subject.

[macsen rufus]

Hi Noone - do I understand you correctly - you installed Ancient over HTW? Because it's not meant to.... you should start with a standard, fully patched MTW:VI (2.01) with no other mods in there.

Alex era custom battles are still not entirely fixed. One thing to remember on custom battles, is that you must be in "default" unit size or smaller. Even though units are non-scalable in the campaign, they are scalable in custom games, and anything above "default" will cause a CTD.

I wouldn't put too much effort into the naval side on Alex right now, as the game really doesn't handle the naval side well on that map (having two discrete seas seems to confuse it) and even with ship preferences turned right down the Persians have a tendency to bleed themselves dry with pointless ship building. Anyway, they have Fast Phoenician Trieres, which are the best available ship, and what I usually tend to rely on as my "ships of the line". (I haven't changed the ships at all from HTW, they are exactly as they are in there...)

Adding new units: I don't use Gnome for this stage, but do it with Notepad. Open up unit_prod with Notepad, find a unit similar to the one you want to create, then copy and paste it to the end of the file. Change the name, save it, then and only then open it up in Gnome to edit the stats etc. When copying and pasting I always highlight from the beginning of the unit I want, to the point just before the next unit to ensure it includes the CR. It helps to do this with "Word Wrap" turned off. There always needs to be at least one CR after the last entry. When it's been re-saved from Gnome I always reload it into Notepad to check for Gnome junk at the end, and remove this and resave if necessary.

[seireikhaan]

Hmm.. Macsen, how about this to help fix the Persian ship building problem. Simply forbid the Persians from building them. Controlling the waters isn't THAT important for the campaign. Plus, if they weren't building ships, they'd be able to defend themselves from naval attacks anyways. I know its not historical at all, but it might help keep Persia from bleeding themselves to death every time.

[noone23]

Based on my previous experience downloading and installing the various updates for ATW I recalled, rightly or not, that the mod was made as an extension of HTW so that is how I proceeded with the reinstall process. Copying HTW enabled me to combine the first few steps of bringing back a working version of ATW so I started with that and went on to add the ATW downloads one at a time in order except for 2.52 which was covered by 2.53. Like I said the mod appears to work except for the last campaign which crashed immediately upon startup(I didn't try custom battles in Alex since I figured you didn't have them ready yet - I trust you will make an announcement when this is done).

[noone23]

I was poking around with the Alex campaign scenario and I tried to move Persian units that appeared to be in position to do so across the Dardanelles and into Greece but the target area didn't get highlighted to allow it. Is this intentional or is it a glitch and if the latter do you have plans to fix it? I sincerely hope the latter is the case as I think it limits Persian strategic options too much.

[noone23]

Maybe my imagination has gone berserk but I remember the Alex campaign that I had prior to my last self-inflicted bug/reinstall situation starting in 336 B.C. and basically starting with Alexander facing the Persians in Asia Minor. When I checked out the same campaign again last evening after completing the ATW restoration process I saw no Macedonian ground forces anywhere but in their place I did see numerous rebel armies hovering on the northern and southern fringes of the Persian empire. To further extend my little test I attacked four of those armies and won all four battles(rebels can be such cowards sometimes). Furthermore, I saw that the start year has apparently been changed to something like 366 B.C. not 30 years later as I think it was previously. Now I wonder whether or not all this is merely a figment of my overextended imagination, or did you actual rework this scenario as I just described?

[macsen rufus]

Hi Noone: no, nothing's changed, well nothing major - a few tweaks to starting troops, IIRC. There will be some more changes for the Alex map (such as a landbridge across the Hellespont) but it's not implemented yet. The major development focus at present is towards the "Rise of Persia" scenario, where I'm bulking out the Medes and other factions. The start date certainly hasn't changed, and the Macedonians start firmly in Europe, no presence in Asia Minor - they still have the Greeks to put in their place first :beam:

Those big rebel armies in Asia Minor should be different every time, as the provinces all start off under Persian 'control' - all Persia can do in the first couple of moves is decide which provinces will rebel, they can't ever hope to stop all of the the rebellions. (I usually allow Ionia to blow, it's historical, and you get a better class of rebel army there :laugh4: and Upper Egypt normally goes as well, and frequently Syria.... it's not meant to be too easy for the Persians, and took a bit of tweaking to ensure that fairly historical rebellions break out ~D)

The next release for this scenario will be the new install "Ancient TW2: Eastern Empires" and it will just have the scenarios on this map - I'll probably do a first one when Alex and RoP are ready, then get to work on the Diadochi later (otherwise it will be a long wait...:yes: ) This will free up some textures, so there should be more new units that can go in, and all the dead bodies etc will work properly. There will also be some other factors freed up a bit for further development, but I'll keep that under my hat for now ~D

Sorry for the confusion - "HTW spin-off" means it came out of HTW (ie re-used animations and battle maps), not that it installs into it. And of course to add to the confusion, I also did 2-3 years ago a little patch that fixed the "Bronze Age" scenario in HTW itself, at least made it playable, it still wasn't completely fixed - that will be revisited as well one day :2thumbsup:

[noone23]

Will ATW2: Eastern Empires finally be the extension to ATW that gives the Assyrians the scenario they deserve on a map that includes the Assyrian Empire at its height and surrounding areas, or should we expect another?

[noone23]

I happened to find it strange that the Alex campaign starts with absolutely no Macedonian units visible on the map. How are they to, as you say, put the Greeks in their place? This looks like a golden opportunity for the Persians to eliminate the Macedonian threat early but they need that crossing over the Hellespont(why did I call it the Dardanelles?)to work. Numerous early successes in battle against the rebels also would be a big help, no doubt.

[noone23]

I want to give this unit some of my patented help courtesy of Gnome Editor but first I have to be able to find it. In which unit_prod file is it located?

[macsen rufus]

Sacred Band is in XNM_unit_prod, and called CartSB. They shouldn't need any help though, they're almost as tough as Spartans.....

Macedonians are limited to Macedonia and Agriana at the beginning IIRC, or they may also have Thessalia, Aetolia and Achaea as well - it's a long while since I've looked at that one, to be honest :embarassed: But some of the units will be in the inset map, some on the main section... do a .matteosartori. if you can't see them, they are there! But you won't see them from the Persian starting position without revealing the map, as there's no watch towers or ships.

There might be an Assyrian era scenario for the eastern map, but not any time soon - there's just too much in the pipeline now, and I want some real-life time this year ~D

[noone23]

As per title. Color me ignorant if you want to, but I don't think I ever heard of a .matteosartori.

[noone23]

That leads me to the obvious conclusion that I most likely don't have one. I guess this would explain why I couldn't find the requested unit. Anyway, what is the fix for this problem? Is the file to be found in the 2.52 download? As I told you I skipped that step when I saw that 2.53 was supposed to take care of everything for 2.52. The above most likely also means that there is a XNM_build_prod file that is missing since I don't see that one either. Sorry to bug you again with this, macsen rufus, but I do need help here.

[macsen rufus]

Color me ignorant if you want to, but I don't think I ever heard of a .matteosartori.

Not at all, it's an honourable thing not knowing the cheat-codes :bow:

.matteosartori. is one such "cheat" code, you type it in exactly as shown (ie needs the . at either end) when you're looking at the campaign map and it will display the whole map - you can see who owns what, and where all the army stacks are. It's a very useful thing! There are a few others, but you'll find them spread around the forums. Of course I only ever use them for de-bugging purposes ~D Though I'm more likely to run in "debug" mode anyway, and then a simple "G" is enough to reveal the whole map (much easier to spell...)

As for the prod-files, it might well be NM, if it's not XNM (for the curious "NM" just means 'new map' - terminology I used to prevent it slipping out that the new map was the Punic Wars campaign...). You can always check which prod_files are used by looking at the first few lines of the startpos file (PUNIC_57_26.txt, IIRC -- because the "new map" has 57 provinces and 26 sea regions, and the startpos had to be updated each time I added more provinces :laugh4: )

[noone23]

As above. You had me going for a while , macsen. It didn't make sense to me that I could have ATW running properly and still be missing a couple of key prod files. Thanks for clearing that up. When using Gnome Editor the Carthaginian Sacred Band Infantry is unit 129 and I am working on it as I am doing this post. While I have it open I also want to boost the performances of any other uniquely Carthaginian units that I find.

[noone23]

I see this unit characteristic in Gnome Editor and in it I see the numbers 1500 and 2000. What does all this mean? I'll guess that the overall category refers to a unit's willingness to mix it up in combat, but by all means correct me if I'm wrong. I'll also hazard another guess to say that units with the number 1500 in this slot are more willing to fight than units with the number 2000; am I right or wrong on this one? Please correct any delusions from which I may be suffering.

[noone23]

You might have noticed that when I posted about creating a super naval unit I was thinking largely about the Carthaginians in your Punic War scenario. I played Carthage in the RTW campaign(for which I first had to download and use an unlocker)and a big thing from the beginning was gaining naval supremacy to keep the parts of my territory from becoming isolated and to aid in the battle to control Sicily. In RTW I was able to build units in bunches to help me realize my scenario goals. MTW won't allow me the same luxury so I have to substitute quality for quantity when it comes to unit production. Your version of this conflict requires control of the Med in order to be successful for a maritime power like Carthage the same as the RTW campaign does so that is why I want to create a super naval unit for Carthage. This faction is not in a position to successfully execute a strictly land-based strategy(which faction in this scenario really is?), hence, the attention on an effective shipbuilding program is key to gaining control of the Inner Sea. For the Persians in Alex they only need to have the Hellespont crossing working properly(which I naturally hope will be fixed soon).

[macsen rufus]

The "engagement threshold" is actually a distance (same units as missile range, IIRC) at which the unit decides to weigh in to melee if an enemy unit comes closer than that. Obviously the larger the threshold, the more likely the unit is to decide to make a charge at the enemy (ie it will run further to get to them!). This is a more significant figure for impetuous units, as they're more likely to 'go off on one' anyway ~D It's not something I've actively fiddled with, to be honest.

As for the Carthaginian units, I've deliberately made most of them a bit weak as very few Carthaginians actually fought on land - most citizens who partook in any actual fighting were in the fleets, and the land battles were mostly conducted using mercenaries or allies, at least until Zama when the Phoenicians actually fielded a fair number of militia and cavalry. My 'vision' for the Carthaginian strategy was to control enough territory to be able to raise plenty of Iberian, Numidian and Gallic units, and just keep the Carthaginian units (eg militia) for garrison duties. RTW notwithstanding, Carthaginian infantry really weren't very impressive.

Mind, you, now that I'm putting the Roman Wars package together I'll probably have bit of an overhaul, as I can rename a lot of the units (eg 'Meshwesh spears' is really a name appropriate to 1200BC.... they should become Liby-Phoenicians for this era etc)

[noone23]

I think the term "scantily clad" applies very well here. I did a custom battle featuring Carthaginian elephant units and I wasn't too pleased to see the drivers depicted in an almost nude state. I must sound like a prude, but geez, macsen rufus!! Couldn't you have put some more clothing on them? I like my armies to be well-dressed whenever possible and this goes really far away from that notion.

[macsen rufus]

The animations all (most...) come from HTW, the only things I've done with them are add some extra shields and weapons. Them's the elephants I have, them's the elephants I use :clown:

[JoesGeo]

I'm downloading this and doing a fresh install, so I'll be able to give it a try.

[noone23]

That would be you, macsen rufus. ATW must have more content than any other TW mod out there. I look at the number of folders and subfolders I have for this mod and the whole thing just goes on and on. Of course the way that I reinstalled it over Hellenic TW probably contributed something to that total. Anyway, I now wonder when you will have another campaign for us. Will that be anytime soon?

[macsen rufus]

The next release will probably be the TW3 - "Roman Wars" package once I get the Britannia campaign sorted, and add a few new tweaks to Punic. Britannia's still behaving oddly, and there are consequences of having so many factions on such a small map. It's not easy getting the Romans right, simply because anything challenging for a human player is just downright impossible for the AI, or alternatively anything which allows the Roman AI to do as it should makes it way too easy for a human player. They really don't get the idea about "We're here to invade Britain", though that has improved with the recent tweaks, and they have also managed to recreate the Battle of Medway on a couple of occasions, beating Caratacus out of Essex. However, they are really really bad at defending the Rhine, and on a couple of runs through have been totally hamstrung by Germanic incursions. Things are a lot more fun in Ireland though, both Irish factions are working out well :2thumbsup:

Anyway, keep an eye of the TW3 thread for updates on this one :2thumbsup:

And Hi, JoesGeo, good to have you on board :bow:

[naut]

Great mod! ~:cheers:

[Sigma]

I seem to be having a problem downloading the ATW file, for one its taking way much longer to download then it should (sometimes it says 6 hrs until completion) and usually it cuts off the download partway through leaving me with a bad file which I have to delete. :help:

[macsen rufus]

Hi Sigma, where are you getting it from? It's up on MyDataBus (which I can check) and also the Org Mizus server (which I can't...)

[Sigma]

I'm downloading it from the download page so I guess its the databus one...

[macsen rufus]

Maybe try the link in Tosa's post instead (also in the downloads thread), see if that's any better. Just checked on MyDataBus, but I'm only at 8% daily bandwidth usage, so it's not congestion on my account...

[Sigma]

Hmm, I'll wait a little while, the download is still timing out halfway through the download, so maybe its just a minor error and they will have it fixed soon...

[ferdi]

I'm playing ancinet tw. punic war mod with cartaga :) . I conquer sicily, spain and start on Italian peninsula from Bruttium. and now working on elephant merchant and then invade Rome like Hannibal :)... it is my first try. it has so many different unit and buildings so I'l try to get used them. but as always first ships and money then the army.
at night ı finished the game but with not conquring al provinces or Rome, just with classical %60 domination. mmm is there a problam in my game, or it is normal?
ı lood at text file and years are as ı sea
britain 43- 43 ad
the age of chariots 1280 bc as -ad 125
the catrastrope 1200 bc as - ad 200
alexander 336 bc as - ad 364
the recovery 980 bc as - ad 420
and punic wars 270 bc as - ad 430.
at first ı suprised when the game start with different age but then ı control respondind txt file and it is as ı see. so ı guess my game is normal, is not it?
and the wiev of victory
8585

[Raz]

I'm playing ancinet tw. punic war mod with cartaga :) . I conquer sicily, spain and start on Italian peninsula from Bruttium. and now working on elephant merchant and then invade Rome like Hannibal :)... it is my first try. it has so many different unit and buildings so I'l try to get used them. but as always first ships and money then the army.
at night ı finished the game but with not conquring al provinces or Rome, just with classical %60 domination. mmm is there a problam in my game, or it is normal?
ı lood at text file and years are as ı sea
britain 43- 43 ad
the age of chariots 1280 bc as -ad 125
the catrastrope 1200 bc as - ad 200
alexander 336 bc as - ad 364
the recovery 980 bc as - ad 420
and punic wars 270 bc as - ad 430.
at first ı suprised when the game start with different age but then ı control respondind txt file and it is as ı see. so ı guess my game is normal, is not it?
and the wiev of victory


Hi ferdi,

Yes that's normal. Unfortunately, MTW's engine doesn't have the ability to give proper winning conditions.
Ideally, the winning condition for Carthage would be control of Rome, but that's just not possible with the code.

Cheers!