Requesting beta team access

EB Team,

I have never installed a mod (other than the alt spart hoplite at the com, but that isn't really a mod)...

So I thought I would do it now. I was waiting for EB to come out, but I became impatient. I am sure you have seen my occasional postings in this forum, since last year.

Anyway, I was about to download RTR, because I need the change.

I figured I would ask (as johnny come lately) to join in on beta testing before I wasted my time with RTR.

Like I said, I know I am late, but here is what little I have to offer:

EB Project loyalty and commitment.
A solid business education (finish the BBA in Management this Nov, 4.0 GPA), with two years of specialized experience in asynchronous project development and team communication.
Personal addiction to PC gaming, especially the TW series.
I will provide clear, concise, and comprehensive reports on my playtesting activities.

I hope you will take the time to consider this, even though your beta roster is currently full. I would hate to download RTR with EB so close at hand.

I eagerly anticipate your reply.

Warmest Regards,

Divinus Arma

I don't think you would be wasting your time with RTR. It's a solid mod and will be even better after 6.0 comes out. EB beta may be coming out soon and will be cool but many aspects will be unfinished as well. So maybe RTR will actually work better for you at that point (or even later, who knows?)

I would download RTR. Its a great mod, and a very big improvement over the vanilla RTW.

Download both.

How can I download both and still play both?

I went ahead and downloaded RTR, and it is quite different than Vanilla of course. But with all the changes (new opening song, new "provincial campaign", new loading screens, etc), how can I have access to both EB and RTR? Is there going to be an "on-off" switch?

Thanks

1: copy RTW vanilla 1.2 two times
2:istall RTR to the first
3:install EB to the second

Regarding RTR: did they make hoplites a nightmare, or what?

I would still rather play EB.

Hah, yeah, hoplites are a bit nuts in 5.4. Basically, 5.2 was rushed because we wanted to get a 1.2-compatible version out the door ASAP, then 5.3 was rushed because 5.2 had critical flaws, then 5.4 wasn't rushed but also wasn't playtested. 6.0 is being fully playtested. 5.4 can't really compete with either the coming EB beta or RTR 6.0 in polish, balance, or historical accuracy, to be sure, but it's not a bad mod to play while you wait for either, IMO.

A quick unofficial fix for the hoplite unbalance can be found here. Drop it in your Rome - Total War\data directory.

-Simetrical

Once you go RTR you can never go back. ~:)
Vanilla feels like an arcade game compared to it.

I'm still hoping for the EB and RTR teams to come to their senses and merge the two mods though. They should overcome their differences and do what's best for the community.
I'm not going to have two copies of Rome on my hard drive so I'll only play the mod that's the most realistic (I want a sim not a game), even if the 'runner-up' also is great and has features that are lacking in the 'winning' mod.
So merge the mods now! It's an order... :duel:

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Originally Posted by GeWee

I'm still hoping for the EB and RTR teams to come to their senses and merge the two mods though. They should overcome their differences and do what's best for the community.
I'm not going to have two copies of Rome on my hard drive so I'll only play the mod that's the most realistic (I want a sim not a game), even if the 'runner-up' also is great and has features that are lacking in the 'winning' mod.
So merge the mods now! It's an order... :duel:

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Abandon all hope...

~:cheers: I play RTR and i think it's the best mod for the moment. But when EB will relice its beta i will play that instead. :duel:

Merging the mods is out of the question. Aside from any enmity, real or imagined, there are entire core concepts and plans that are totally different; it'd not be a matter of compromise so much as screwing one mod out of their plans for a region of the game. It's better as two, and gives the community a superior size of selection. That, in turn, allows a larger portion of the gamers to be pleased with their game, since they can have their mod of choice, and not some Frankenstein's monster we stitch together.

Right. My wish is only that they become sister projects, sharing ideas and research to a greater extent than they currently do. There's really no reason RTR and EB should research everything separately—it would be more efficient if we pooled our research, and then built our mods based on the same research but different concepts. (Of course, the exchange of research would be mostly one-way, but I hear you people need a dedicated but not necessarily professional Hellenic researcher—driddle would fit that role nicely.)

Anyway, even that's not going to happen anytime soon. Alas.

-Simetrical

let rtr be a mod and eb be another

Now, why is it that I feel that this thread is 'threading' on thin ice? ~;)

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Originally Posted by Aymar de Bois Mauri

Abandon all hope...

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I've trying to find out a DVD of that tv show......do you know if they have been released?

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Originally Posted by Shigawire

Now, why is it that I feel that this thread is 'threading' on thin ice?

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Nah....it's all good.

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Originally Posted by Simetrical

Right. My wish is only that they become sister projects, sharing ideas and research to a greater extent than they currently do. There's really no reason RTR and EB should research everything separately—it would be more efficient if we pooled our research, and then built our mods based on the same research but different concepts. (Of course, the exchange of research would be mostly one-way, but I hear you people need a dedicated but not necessarily professional Hellenic researcher—driddle would fit that role nicely.)

Anyway, even that's not going to happen anytime soon. Alas.

-Simetrical

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Yes, I suppose cooperating is almost as good as merging.

I don't see why that won't happen anytime soon though.
Just tell the people with the egos to skip the whole "my mod is better than yours"-attitude and force them to work together! It would make the development of both mods progress faster and that's the only thing that matters.

Well, there are problems like that, admittedly. It's not shared by everyone on either project, mind you, but even a handful would make even the most basic sharing relationship very complicated and difficult; possibly more difficult than it's worth.

RTR thinks that units should have names like "swords men" EB prefers "Dghhshshshshshsghsdhs"

They would never really work together...just download both to different folders ~:cheers:

True... but you don't have to like someone to successfully compare notes.

On the topic of RTR: I just downloaded it, and it's a world of improvement over Vanilla. If I'm not mistaken, EB won't be out for some time unless you are fortunate enough to be a beta tester, so to anyone considering RTR I'd say "do it" :charge:

There's the open beta coming soon...

I play RTR now, I will continue to play RTR till EB comes out and then I expect to play both.
When they are out I plan on playing Sengoku Jidai, Chivalric, Punic & Americas Mods too :)

I initially considered RTR to be a useful stopgap during the wait till EB came out.

The extended development time (& extended extent) of EB combined with rapid improvements of RTR fairly quickly led me to the conclusion that by the time EB is actually out there will be little in terms of modding quality (art quality, scripting, improvements over RTW etc.) between the two.

Differences will be there in the details of art and aspects of gameplay.
Most obviously (at least in screenshots) there are differences in interpretation of generally pretty sparse historic evidence.
RTR may not have the same level of primary/academic evidence but in contrast to opinion in some circles its my opinion that there has been clear effort by RTR to differ from EB on a number of points even if just to be different.

RTR is 'damned if they do & damned if they don't' to a fair extent on the matter of historical evidence.
If EB produces good evidence of some point then and RTR goes 'oh, well in that case I guess we should do it that way too' they get 'look RTR copied EB again' however if they stick to their previous direction they will be accused of not sticking to Realism.

Similarities will be there because of limitations of the game engine and both mods being set in the same time period.

At the very least, while EB will doubtless be awesome, RTR has playable stuff out there now and its already vastly better than RTW, so go play it!

~:grouphug:

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Originally Posted by hoom

I play RTR now, I will continue to play RTR till EB comes out and then I expect to play both.
When they are out I plan on playing Sengoku Jidai, Chivalric, Punic & Americas Mods too :)

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where are these mods you are talking about?
they sound pretty good, all the other mods i have found bar RTR are not finished yet.

I have to admit... so far RTR is better than I expected. I think my days with Vanilla have come to an end. I enjoyed facing down pyro of epidermus right off the bat. It is, as one member put it, an effective "stopgap" until the release of EB or RTR 6.0.

I had a look at 6.0 via their website... not bad. I saw many similarities to EB, especially with the faction symbols.

Unfortunatley, I did not have the good sense to duplicate a vanilla before installing 4.6 or 5.4, or whatever it is.

I will probably playtest both to death and make a decision on which is better, er, more playable. Then I'll write a cheesy self-important review of both, as I am sure four million other people will do on every Rome site in existence.

On that note... "playable"... I kind of like the evil killer unrealistically deadly hoplites. For once, I felt a little angst going into battle after my first experence on 'emperor' against "Athenain hoplites" (which, according to records on the Peloponnesian War, were good but vastly inferior to Spartan Hoplites- and that makes me wonder how supercharged uber the Spartans are in 4.6, 5.6, whatever since I have yet to encounter them)

Well, yyyyyyyyyyaararafgfghhhhhhh. I still drool in anticipation of EB.


Regards,

DA

yeh, RTR is a good mod. best out there at the moment.
the difference between RTR and EB wont be in quality, but in ways of production. EB started gathering Info a long time ago and have one 'recently' started to mod. while RTR started modding from day one. so there will not be a quality issue (correct me if i'm wrong but i thought i saw one modder work for both mods)

I'v eplayed RTR from 4.0 to now. and i love it. altough my experience with hoplites was good. i play greek cities and on normal (wich is death-difficulty with 1.2) so that compensated everything.

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where are these mods you are talking about?

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None are out yet but here's links to their various forae:
Sengoku Jidai This is on the .org. I only noticed it recently & there's heaps of TW.org oldtimers hanging out there.
The rest are on TWC
Chivalry: Total War (ChivTW) -I believe there is a multiplayer/custom battle release of this but no SP campaign yet
Native America: Total War (NA-TW)
Punic: Total War (PTW)
There are a bunch of others that will probably be quite interesting over there at TWC.

There's a whole heap of really really good modding goin' on ~:grouphug:

Where's RTR available from?

Not that I'll need it til my exams are over. ~;)

pyro of epidermus? is that some superhero with flaming powers, living in epidermus "skin-ville"? ~;)

i do believe he means pyrhus (sp?..can never get him right...) of epirus. =)

but pyro of epidermus sounds cool too =) ~:cheers:

deguerra

I recently downloaded RTR 5.4 and, well...it's awfully slow-paced. Is it intended for use with the "four turns per year" script?

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Originally Posted by deguerra

i do believe he means pyrhus (sp?..can never get him right...) of epirus. =)

but pyro of epidermus sounds cool too =) ~:cheers:

deguerra

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Ya. That guy. The greek who the Romans defeated in Southern Italy prior to the punic wars.

I think the inclusion of this character at the outset of the campaign makes it more historically neato. After reading about the origins of the very very very early Roman army, this event really set the stage for them. It was after all, a demonstration of the power of the new tactics against the classic phalanx warfare of the greeks.

I don't want to turn this into a historical argument, so I will just say that this is my interpretation of this early conflict.

(btw, I was making fun of his name. teehee silly rabbit, trix are for...)

yargh.

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Originally Posted by GeWee

Just tell the people with the egos to skip the whole "my mod is better than yours"-attitude and force them to work together!

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A problem arises when one of the mod's leaders hates the other mod. As to comparing notes, well, RTR has relatively little historical research—but RTR has most of our sources compiled. EB has much more historical research—but it's generally not available for outside examination (because it would be ridiculous for a professional historian to note down his source for every tiny detail of everything). So EB has no need of RTR's historical research, and RTR can't access EB's historical research. Not much exchange of historical notes possible there. Mechanical ideas, sure, and those are pretty freely exchanged—EB is now using RTR's unified Rome, for instance, and RTR is now using EB's unique buildings idea.

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Originally Posted by Divinus Arma

For once, I felt a little angst going into battle after my first experence on 'emperor' against "Athenain hoplites" (which, according to records on the Peloponnesian War, were good but vastly inferior to Spartan Hoplites- and that makes me wonder how supercharged uber the Spartans are in 4.6, 5.6, whatever since I have yet to encounter them)

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I was directed to make the Athenian Hoplites slightly inferior to the Spartans, and the Corinthians slightly inferior to the Athenians, if I remember correctly. There should be about two points' attack and defense difference between each tier, so nothing major. As most things in RTR 5.4, the research that went into that decision was probably a bit shoddy, but we're improving—the Seleucids, Ptolemaics, Romans, Parthians, and one or two other factions should see a big leap in accuracy in 6.0, with more factions to follow.

The way I see it, the difference between RTR and EB is something like this:

https://img.photobucket.com/albums/v...TW/EBvsRTR.jpg

I should've extended it more, so you could see what it would be like by January of next year or whatever, but you get the picture. Realism-wise, RTR was clearly superior for the past nine months, just because EB didn't release anything. Once EB is released, I expect it will be substantially more realistic for quite some time, with both steadily increasing until they're roughly equal.

-Simetrical

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Originally Posted by Simetrical

EB is now using RTR's unified Rome, for instance, and RTR is now using EB's unique buildings idea.

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TESTING the idea! Nothing is set in stone yet, and the configuration for the open beta is yet to be revealed. ~;)

ha, that's a sweet graph simetrical.. very scientific. :laugh2:

@simetrical.
That is very honest of you. altough it probably doenst mena anyhting to you, you've gained my sympathy. But i think 6.0 will be just as good as EB in term of modding quality.

Well about quality mods don't forget Blue lotus
But yeah its probably good to have two mods like RTR and EB to compete between each other :duel: Better end product
Im against monopoly in RTW

could khelvan and/or simetrical give us an idea on what they see as the philosophical differences (if any) between RTR and EB? or is it pretty much all a matter of method, not philosophy? also, why did khelvan leave RTR back in the day? not looking for anything too specific or breathtaking, just curious.

I'm sorry, but regardless of what has happened in another forum, I don't think it is appropriate to go into this. It can only lead to emnity, and there has been enough of that going around lately.

well poop.

Hey, I know what will make everyone cheerful. Another preview! :balloon2:

Right, Khelvan? ~:)

Don't ask me, I'm not doing it anymore. Our new preview person should be saying hello sometime soon, though it is looking more and more like he's going to save his introductions for the next preview.

EB's all about the surprises huh? ~;)

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Originally Posted by khelvan

Don't ask me, I'm not doing it anymore.

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Well, Khelvan, you did a great job while you were doing it - they were a real labour of love. Thanks!

More on topic, I just downloaded RTR. EB looks great and I may consider trying the beta. But I confess I prefer polished games and RTR seems pretty tried and tested. With it being my first mod, I was also pleased that it does not deviate too dramatically from vanilla (yes there are many differences, but sufficient similarities for me to feel comfortable). I rather like some of CA's game design decisions and am a little saddened when modders through away the baby with the bathwater (sheds a tear for the Senate in RTR 6.0...).

Simon, EB is also going to be quite polished when it's ready. Otherwise, we'd just release it right now. ~;)

However, I would urge everyone not in the lucky group of people like myself or closed beta testers to play RTR, or any of the other quality mods. (Almost) Any mod beat the vanilla game, from my experience. :bow:

And about the Rome thing, I happen to agree with RTR's desicion to do so. The senate was ahistorical, and a waste to all factions that aren't Rome. I understand that many people may like Rome (for some crazy reason ~;) ), but I believe that an overall game improvement would result from any mods desicion to do so.

Oh, and I know who the new previewer is! ~;p

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Originally Posted by Steppe Merc

Oh, and I know who the new previewer is!

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You horse-hugging steppe barbarians are cruel, cruel people. ~;)

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Originally Posted by Simon Appleton

More on topic, I just downloaded RTR. EB looks great and I may consider trying the beta. But I confess I prefer polished games and RTR seems pretty tried and tested.

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My, my, Simon Appleton! What do you think was one of the main reasons we have been at it since Jan 2004? We do not like to release unpolished products. That is why we haven't released any version yet.

Sorry, guys, I did not mean to insinuate that EB will be shoddy. I expect great things from EB, but I also think it will be a very complex mod and so will be hard to get right in one shot. One of the old timers' arguments about RTWs failings (in AI and in MP balance) are that they partly arise from the increased complexity (more units, more open campaign map etc) compared to say, STW. But for all my talk, I know I won't be able to resist downloading the EB beta.

On the Senate, I really like the direction and rewards it gives to the Roman - rather like the glorious achievements of MTW. But then, as a fan of story-based role-playing games, I like that sort of stuff. Others value player freedom or historical accuracy more.

Playing the slower combat of RTR reminded me a little of the mods for Steel Panthers. That was a great game - probably consumed more hours of wargamers lives than any other computer game in the 1990s - but was rather "beer and pretzels" with lots of unhistorical features and imbalances (e.g. infantry and artillery were woefully underpowered, orders of battle were not accurate etc). A great team of modders (actually rival teams) worked for years diligently making it more historical. They are still at it now. And they succeeded - the mod I know best, SPWW2, is a pretty hardcore wargame now, rather like Advanced Squad Leader. However, personally, I find SPWW2 very hard to play - it is just too slow, laboriously chipping away at the enemy. Scenarios take evenings, when they used to take an hour.

I don't know how I'll end up finding RTR (or EB). I have high expectations but I've been warned that RTR is slog. In a vanilla RTW campaign you may play 150+ battles but few last more than ten minutes or so. The lightning speed makes each RTW battle much less memorable and satisfying than those in MTW and STW, but it does propell the campaign on. We may dislike some of CA's game design decisions, but I suspect in many cases they had their reasons. Give me a choice between playing a game and a simulation, and I'll play the game anyday.

Talking about what goes into EB is great, but the title of this thread might be misinterpreted (though it's not by an EB member) and lead to something we don't necessarily want. I'd politely suggest we move on to other topics. ~:)

Like nice green balloons for example: :balloon2:

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Originally Posted by Steppe Merc

Oh, and I know who the new previewer is! ~;p

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It better not be someone who likes to use a lot of teasers! No holding back please. ~:handball: ~:)

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Originally Posted by Teleklos Archelaou

the title of this thread might be misinterpreted

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the thread has been hacked!! i suspect "deepthroatrtw"..

Hmmm..... I knew EB secretly was a front for the FBI.

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Originally Posted by khelvan

Don't ask me, I'm not doing it anymore. Our new preview person should be saying hello sometime soon, though it is looking more and more like he's going to save his introductions for the next preview.

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That makes me sad.
-either its because we drove you nuts (when I/we were just havign a laugh, not at the cost of you)
-or you're to busy to do it, and I'm sad for you that you dont have the time to work on you baby.

eitherway, good luck khelvan! :bow:

Yeah, thanks khelvan for taking a lot of care to make those previews. I hope the next person will do the same. ~:cheers:

Khelvan thank you for your great previews and updates ~:)
I enjoyed the updates/previews very much
I hope you didn't stop making the updates because of spoiled fans ~;)

Nah, he had a bunch of things to do with the new version of the internal beta. At least, I think so... ~;)

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You horse-hugging steppe barbarians are cruel, cruel people. ~;)

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Not to our horses. :charge:

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Originally Posted by Teleklos Archelaou

Talking about what goes into EB is great, but the title of this thread might be misinterpreted (though it's not by an EB member)

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It has already been changed once ( and not by me).

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Originally Posted by Simon Appleton

I don't know how I'll end up finding RTR (or EB). I have high expectations but I've been warned that RTR is slog. In a vanilla RTW campaign you may play 150+ battles but few last more than ten minutes or so. The lightning speed makes each RTW battle much less memorable and satisfying than those in MTW and STW, but it does propell the campaign on. We may dislike some of CA's game design decisions, but I suspect in many cases they had their reasons. Give me a choice between playing a game and a simulation, and I'll play the game anyday.

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I have not found RTR battles to be unbearable. The only REALLY long battles are those with hoplites. Man, that will aggravate you at first... but then you will be overjoyed because the game is actaully a challenge again, YAY! The campaign is gruelling, but only because difficulty has been ratched way up.

I am very pleased with RTR at the moment, though I continue to await EB.

DA