How to make a faction horde and how to make your own unique horde

Well I have been fiddling around with hording and finally got it to work. There are info on how to create hordes but one problem that are rarely addressed is that when making a faction horde will get weird unit cards if you don´t make some changes of your own. Some mods (Patula) have created unique units but it can be fun to know how you can make your own unique horde. If you like you could make an “all golden band horde” or whatever.

So here is what you can do. Let us take the Alemanni as an example. I want to make Alemanni horde and then I want to create a unique horde set up for my horde.

1) Open up you roll down to Alemanni

2) Insert this text between

“custom_battle_availability yes” and “can_sap yes”

It will look like this: (edit: not that the reduction number is 10 in my text instead of 20 in the default so your text should read 20)

custom_battle_availability yes
horde_min_units 60
horde_max_units 100
horde_max_units_reduction_every_horde 10
horde_unit_per_settlement_population 300
horde_min_named_characters 4
horde_max_percent_army_stack 80
horde_disband_percent_on_settlement_capture 33
horde_disband_percent_on_settlement_capture 50
horde_disband_percent_on_settlement_capture 100
horde_unit barb horde hunter
horde_unit barb horde hunter
horde_unit barb horde spearman
horde_unit barb horde spearman
horde_unit barb horde hunter
horde_unit barb horde raider
horde_unit barb horde raider
horde_unit barb horde chosen swordsmen
can_sap yes

3) This will give you a horde with the above mentioned units IF you also make these units available for Alemanni. To achieve this you have to insert text for each unit:

type barb horde spearman
dictionary barb_horde_spearman ; Horde Spearmen
category infantry
class spearmen
voice_type Light_1
soldier spear_warband, 60, 0, 1.1
attributes sea_faring, hide_forest, can_horde, no_custom
formation 1, 1, 2, 2, 4, horde
stat_health 1, 0
stat_pri 8, 4, no, 0, 0, melee, simple, piercing, spear, 25 ,0.73
stat_pri_attr light_spear, spear_bonus_4
stat_sec 0, 0, no, 0, 0, no, no, no, none, 25 ,1
stat_sec_attr no
stat_pri_armour 2, 5, 3, flesh
stat_sec_armour 0, 0, flesh
stat_heat 2
stat_ground 1, -2, 3, 2
stat_mental 6, normal, untrained
stat_charge_dist 30
stat_fire_delay 0
stat_food 60, 300
stat_cost 1, 279, 0, 40, 50, 310
ownership franks, lombardi, burgundii, alemanni


4) When you have added alemanni to each unit that are numbered in SM faction you have created your Alemanni horde BUT as you will note some unit cards will look weird since these units are not customized for the alemanni faction (horde raiders, horde chosen). Since that is plain boring you need to make some more changes to get a good result. What I did to make my horde look better is this.

5) I will give one example: Let us say I want to change “barb horde chosen swordsmen” since the unit card sucks. I want the unit to be chosen axmen instead. Go to unit.text and under “chosen axemen alemanni” you have to add (and note that this unit is recruitable for alemanni, every unit you want in your horde must both be recruitable to that faction AND have the horde function ie can_horde as attribute):

type chosen axemen alemanni
dictionary chosen_axemen_alemanni ; Chosen Axemen
category infantry
class heavy
voice_type Heavy_1
soldier chosen_axemen, 40, 0, 1.1
officer barb_standard
attributes sea_faring, hide_forest, can_sap, hardy, warcry, can_horde
formation 1.2, 1.2, 2.4, 2.4, 4, square
stat_health 1, 0
stat_pri 14, 5, no, 0, 0, melee, blade, slashing, axe, 25 ,0.87
stat_pri_attr ap
stat_sec 0, 0, no, 0, 0, no, no, no, none, 25 ,1
stat_sec_attr no
stat_pri_armour 6, 8, 0, metal
stat_sec_armour 0, 0, flesh
stat_heat 4
stat_ground 1, -2, 3, 2
stat_mental 9, impetuous, untrained
stat_charge_dist 30
stat_fire_delay 0
stat_food 60, 300
stat_cost 1, 450, 134, 50, 80, 500
ownership slave, alemanni, lombardi, burgundii

6) Go back to SM factions and replace ”barb horde chosen swordmen” with “chosen axemen alemanni” and voila

Before

horde_unit barb horde hunter
horde_unit barb horde hunter
horde_unit barb horde spearman
horde_unit barb horde spearman
horde_unit barb horde hunter
horde_unit barb horde raider
horde_unit barb horde raider
horde_unit barb horde chosen swordsmen

After

horde_unit barb horde hunter
horde_unit barb horde hunter
horde_unit barb horde spearman
horde_unit barb horde spearman
horde_unit barb horde hunter
horde_unit barb horde raider
horde_unit barb horde raider
horde_unit chosen axemen alemanni

you now get axmen with a proper unit card instead of “barb horde chosen swordmen” with a wrong one. You can now customize your entire horde by repeating the same step (adding can_horde to a unit that are recruitable by alemanni) and replacing the units that don´t give correct unit cards. Or you might want to replace them anyway like I did depending on your liking. I changed the Saxons completely by adding keels and heart troops, saxon archers and sea raiders. For the alemanni I added lomard archers and barbarian cavalry and golden band.

Can you make it work on RTW?

Nope sorry RTW does not support hording. If you own BI though, you can add hording to the RTW files in the same way and then run the game through the BI.exe using the -mod system. There is information in the scriptorium about -mod.

I thought there was a tutorial on this already - or has it got lost in the pits of the ORG or TWC? ;)

Don't think there was tutorial as such on hording RTW factions under BI.exe there is my favourite thread, if you want to make them emerge: https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=59665
I could have sworn I put that in answers database somewhere but can't find so maybe didn't.:embarassed:

and I did try summarising on TWC Wiki:
http://www.twcenter.net/wiki/Hording...tions_-_RTW/BI
(if I ever get round to converting things back from Wiki code I'll try and put summary here too)


To run RTW under BI.exe all you need to do is add -mod to the BI shortcut see:
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showp...tcount=1219905

though running the revised version from a mod folder is preferable, see:
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=44332
....which is also in dire need of summarising, as RTW and BI methods got mixed up in discussion - sure I mentioned that to someone before ;)

Does it work in Alexander?

Nope sorry, BI.exe is the only Rome Total War .exe that supports hording. You'd have to get the Alex game/mod to run through BI.exe first, and you might have problems with that as Alex has some higher hard-coded limits.