Barbarossa82's Gold Mod Collection: Vanilla Balance Mod; VBM for BI, Alexander Reborn

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Originally Posted by PapaNasty

I too have found the early general cavalry to be quite potent and formidable, but there are a few ways around this. One, is to play on "very hard" settings where the AI units get stronger bonus' towards you, and the other, is to create your own "house rules" not control the way you play, so you don't exploit any advantages you know about.

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:laugh4: I'm a mediocre enough player that I don't need house rules to make my game challenging. It's somewhat the other way round, actually-- I was annoyed at the enemy's bodyguard being overpowered. In particular, one early-game battle as the Greeks against the Macedonians was narrowly won only because of the presence of Spartan hoplites-- the four Macedonian generals were mowing down my Greek hoplites and militia hoplites.

That, imo, is not how the generals' bodyguards are supposed to be used.

Hello VBM users, and sorry about the long silence and lack of updates. I'm now effectively retired from the Org and from modding generally, since I have to devote virtually all my time to my job these days. I don't envisage any further updates to VBM (except possibly just the one to integrate the bug fix into the download, if I ever get around to it).

Sorry about the Romano-British thing. I think I have a pretty good idea why that's happening, I just don't know if I can figure out how to stop it.

As for the generals' bodyguard issue, I'm caught between two unattractive options here. The problem really is that the modding I did here was forced upon me rather than chosen. In an ideal world, I'd like the generals' bodyguards to function in the way that CA originally intended - you would get a weaker unit earlier in the game, and a stronger one when you built your first Imperial Palace. However, this didn't work because CA messed up the code, and eventually they just hitched the whole thing to the Marian Reform rather than making the effort to actually fix it. So we ended up with a situation where non-Roman factions had to wait for the Romans to progress to the Marian era before their generals got upgraded.

This was obviously ridiculous because the ability to get your upgraded generals was out of your hands, and in fact you could be a victim of your own success if you wiped the Romans out before they reached the Marian period.

Because the upgrade feature was hardcoded and broken by CA, there were only two options I had to fix it - either restrict all factions to their early bodyguard unit, or to their late one. I picked the latter for two reasons:

1) Generals' cavalry should be their nation's best troops, which is why they are handpicked as bodyguards and lavished with equipment. It would make no sense if, just as your empire reaches its pinnacle and fields advanced armies, your generals' bodyguards have actually become quite a rubbish unit by comparison.

2) Although the powerful generals early in the game do create some imbalance, this is somewhat consistent with classical history - early in the period, when armies were small, individual men and their immediate retinues could make a substantial impact, which is why they tend to be mentioned personally - the Horatii, Hector, Agamemnon, Leonidas etc. As armies get bigger and more organised, their impact gets proportionately less.

So it's not a perfect solution by any stretch of the imagination, but sadly there wasn't a perfect option.

Anyway I'm really pleased to see that people are still playing VBM and if I do get any spare time at all I'll have a look at some of these issues and see if I can come up with a final update.

i just reinstalled rtw, and i remembered about this mod. unfourtunatley the links to the download do not work. is there any possible way to get the files for this mod?

hi again. i've downloaded the file and i have been trying to install it, i install it to the rome total war directory, yet when i launch the game the changes do not appear. i swear i'am using the correct install path, for i can visuall see the files in the right folder. i installed the bug fixer could this have contributed? thanks - dom.

Hi dom, sorry to hear you're having problems. Could you let me know what version of RTW you are using - original version with the latest patch, or the Gold Edition, or the Total War: Eras edition?

Also what version of Windows you are running?

Thanks

i'am using the gold edition on windows xp.

Are you sure you installed into the correct folder? If you have the Gold Edition, then your game may have been installed into the "Program Files\The Creative Assembly\" folder, instead of "Program Files\Activision", which is the default for the installer for Vanilla Balance Mod. The installer will let you browse for a different directory.

ok status update, i unistalled and reinstalled the files to the creative assembly file, then i installed the orig files to the rome total war directory, ran the morig (before i ran the program that shows up as a black data command screen). after that i went to play by launching rome total war. i get to the imperial campaign menu and start it up and it exits to the desktop. note i did install the bug fixer patches, but i also tried this without the bug fixer patch. another interesting thing, i don't know if it is suppose to do this, but during the unistastslling of vb the installer began copying files. Plaease help.
thanks - dom

sorry i also forgot to mention that the bi version keeps on telling me to select from a list when i try to play the campaign once the game has loaded. i also could not find the data command programs (black screen white text)like those in the orig version. thanks - dom.

Hi Dom,

It sounds like you have a corrupt or overly-modified installation of Rome: Total War. I would recommend the following sequence:

1) Back up any save games, screenshots etc. that you want to keep
2) Uninstall RTW
3) Manually select and delete the entire "Rome - Total War" folder.
4) Reinstall RTW
5) Install BugFixer
6) Install Vanilla Balance Mod
7) Install Vanilla Balance Mod for Barbarian Invasion.

Hope this helps.

I have now updated the mod collection, adding a new patch to each of the mini-mods. The errors/issues fixed are as follows:

VANILLA BALANCE MOD V5.1
* Fixed an issue where the government buildings in certain cities (Carthago Nova, Sardis and Hatra) could not be upgraded.
* Carthage now uses culturally-appropriate Eastern event pictures instead of Roman ones.
* Corrected a problem where 2-star generals were still described as idiots in tooltip text


VANILLA BALANCE MOD FOR BARBARIAN INVASION V3.1
* Fixed an issue where the Night Fighter trait was still being awarded at 4 command stars, not 3.
* 2-star generals' tooltip text fixed.


ALEXANDER REBORN V1.1
* Corrected a problem where Macedon had access to some improper units in custom battles
* Added "perfect spy" ability as in Vanilla Balance Mod (accessible through keyboard shortcuts advisor)
* Fixed an error where Greek Hoplites showed a brown peasant on their info scroll.
* Fixed error where Persian Immortals did not have standard bearer as advertised.
* India now has the ability to recruit mercenaries.

Where can i download this? it says im forbidden to get this file?

yeh i had the same problem. anyone know of another link to download theres files

Don't know what that was about, but seems to be fixed now.

Have just found this mod (the first real mod I have played).

Thank you for improving my game experiance hugely.

I understand that this would have taken you a considerable amount of time for little to no reward.

So the last I can do is say "thanks" for a fantasic job and here have a balloon. :balloon2:

I especially like the one roman faction with Senate. A great mod.

Thank you...

Hi El Diablo, thanks for you message, it's really satisfying to know that you are enjoying the mod!

hey, i just downloaded the mod, and i'm really having fun. however, whenever i run "UniRomeS", i get this message:

Access denied
Unable to create directory - C:Program Files: all that stuff/data
0 File(s) copied
Could not find C:Program files: all that stuff/data/world/maps/base/map.rwm
You are now using a unified Rome with Senate
Press any key to continue.....


wow that was annoying to type out by hand. Anyway, it still shows up as 3 separate roman families. any insight?

still, im not playing romans right now anyways(greeks are awesome) so ill be busy. thanks for any help!

Hey!

I'm having loads of fun with the mod for BI, with just 1 weird problem: all the ship units in my game seem to have the exact same stats. Does anyone have any idea how I can fix this? I already tried re-installing everything, but that didn't work...:no:

thank you Barbarossa82

hello!

So, I'm starting to get slightly frustrated, since this mod seems like it's a really good one.

Whenever I try to start a new campaign, I get taken right back to the main R:TW menu. Why is this? I haven't changed any of the coding or anything, and am running patch v1.5.

Before I installed the mod, it worked fine, but now, I can't even start a new faction!

Can anyone help me out with this? I'm most definitely very eager to start playing with this mod.

Sorry to hear about your problems, shinderhizzle84. I've not heard of any such issue occurring before.

Can you tell me a little more about your system set-up? In particular the following:

* Which version of Windows you are running
* If it is Vista, is User Account Control turned on or off?
* Are you quite sure you had not modified the game in any way before installing VBM?
* Which version of RTW are you running? The original or Gold/Eras? If original, is it patched to 1.6?
* What folder is RTW installed in?

It's laborious, but you could try uninstalling VBM and RTW (copying your saved games first of course), then reinstalling in the following order:
1) RTW
2) 1.6 Patch for RTW (unnecessary if you have the Gold or Eras edition)
3) BugFixer (optional but recommended)
4) VBM
5) VBM for Barbarian Invasion (optional).

Good luck!

The host site seems to be down, though one can of course only hope it isn't permanently so.

From the description, this mod seems very well thought out and being a long-time vanilla player, I'd definitely like to get my greasy, unwashed fingers on this mod. So many nice touches that would improve the game and which are well beyond my personal ability to implement. Not that I wouldn't still tweak a few things, but this mod goes very, very far in getting the vanilla game to what it should be.

Nice work, Barbarossa, even if I can't actually download it at this time. :-)

Hey Barbarossa.

Cool mod, thanks for all your hard work!
Gonna try to d/l...

When I try to start a campaign, I get a CTD. I am playing RTW Anthology on Windows XP with additional officers added to some units. How do I fix this?

does this work with steam version?

One of the starting family members in Romano British campaign is missing bodyguards (has unit archers instead)

Where can i download these mods now?

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Originally Posted by cris86

Where can i download these mods now?

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I would also like to know please, I've looked all over the internet and can't find a download link anywhere. If anyone could upload it, it would be highly appreciated, this mod is brilliant and I cannot stand vanilla RTW without it installed.

So did anyone found out where we can download this mod ? Come on... just upload it, someone has to have it.

Ok people, I'm happy to announce, I found the mod files at long last! Check this link, they are here. https://forums.totalwar.org/mizu/miz...TW/Stats_mods/ Download VBMsetup for vanilla and VBM4BIsetup.exe for Barbarian Invasion.