General comments and praise

Well seeing so far there's just been debugging threads, I figured we could use a "whatever comes to mind thread".

1) Incredible interface. The skeletal hand, the blue moving background is just unprecedentedly professional. I don't think I've seen any RTW mod like that. The unit icons blend in perfectly, even better than in vanilla. The little touches are incredible.

2) New terrain really brings out more of the potenial of the RTW engine. It's not MTW2, but hoggy makes RTW look more like 2006 than 2000.

Yeah I loved the new grass , never tought it could be moddable ^^ , all the game is a dozillion times better than the crappy stuff Vanilla wants to sell us calling them Expansion packs .... lol why bother buying Alexander when we can play Blue Lotus for free ? Great Job Hoggy , I enjoy the Indians the most ^^ , but rebels are just ... superb ....Ho and the Dragons , the bulls lol , too much stuff to say but its really the best mod ever made in all RTW community , nobody did or will do something like this ^^ ....Ho and we wonna talk about the firballfiring monks ? Those are the best lol ... too cool .... ^^

Fantastic mod (in every sense of the word)! Love the music too, that "Marching through camp" track is the best piece of game music since the version of Barber's Adagio used on Homeworld. Great work.

I can only agree with everything said before.

Graphically this mod surpasses everything ever seen on the engine, you've got a wonderful and unique style!

The music fits in perfectly, as does all surrounding artwork (loading screens, GUI, ...).

The cultures have a great variation and the lay-out of the campaign is genious.

Have only tested a few custom battles for the moment as I am now at work but all I can say is wow!

It's soo pretty! All the units are so colourful, and the models look amazing. I played using the monks Vs Deamons and got beaten very badly! As I did give the deamons 3 units of gold Wang-Liangs! They proved rather tricky to take down haha.

I have taken a look at the campaign map and it looks so nice! It's such a lovley change from the great Rome game we all lov, very refreshing and a brilliant mod I must say!

Only gripe I have found so far is the leader of the Wang Liang unit cxan't keep up with the rest of the giants! But in some ways it seems quite fitting as he probably wouldn't be able to keep up with them! :D

I had a bit of a moment to myself when I first watched the monks firing the blue lotus at some deamons, I paused it and took a good look at the amazing graphics, it's so nice to see in all its glory! Just a lovley great well thought out thurough effort on the teams part!

Well done fellas!

Mayeb we can hope to see something similar for M2:TW Love to join the team aswell if there was ever an invite :2thumbsup:

Long time lurker at The Guild, first time poster.

I registered just now so I could post a reply here.

This is one of the best mods I've seen for RTW.

Only had a chance to play 2 hours as the Indians, and I'm loving it.

Please don't let this mod die.

Thanks

This game makes me warm and fuzzy about the old STW days..

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Originally Posted by BlorkTheImpaler

This game makes me warm and fuzzy about the old STW days..

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Definitaly, It's good to see Samuris chopping at each other again I think! :D

It's..it's...magic...the strat map alone is incredible.the units are fantastic, the whole team deserve big shiny medals for such great work.

Best mod ever made for RTW, the one I've enjoyed so incredibly much in its first few hours. Your work is utterly amazing my friend. :2thumbsup:

Monks' cities are without buildings and with few troops. The result is massive rebellions and no monks after the first turns.
Solution: substitute government buildings' health bonus with a law bonus. This way cities' growth will be reduced (and it NEED to be) and the monks will put down the rebellion before it's too late.

Well, I am in awe of Hoggy and the team - this is an amazing piece of work! I've had so much fun in the first few hours of playing - I'm losing battles because I'm constantly gawping at the fantastic units, not to mention the terrain and the brilliant choice of music!

This morning before going to work I encountered my first unit of Ghost Mercenaries - when I saw their flaming skull ammunition explode, I nearly fell off my chair. Needless to say I was late for work, and will be leaving early!

Congratulations all round!

It looks like the team was unhappy about having hand-made drawings instead of 3D pictures like in RTW. In my humble opinion, these drawings bring the soul of this mod and it's particular athmosphere. It's like reading an old history book with only such hand-made portraits and imagining what they really looked like. It's far from being a lazy shortcut to me. Quite the opposite actually.

When it will be a little bit more balanced and with less CTD, it will be a whole new game.

I generally praise Hoggy and his helpers!:2thumbsup: :2thumbsup: :2thumbsup:
This is Fantasy mod!!!:2thumbsup: :2thumbsup: :2thumbsup: :2thumbsup:

Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful!!!! ~:thumb: :dancing: :bounce: :knuddel: :jumping: ~:cheers: :charge: ~D :jawdrop:

Also I have no CTD so far, but only played 3 turns.

This mod is wonderfull.

Why Creative Assembly doesn't add mod support to their games, the modding community is making mod since Shogun and yet still they do not react... :furious3:

Maybe it's because their games became lame (you know 12 civilizations with all the same units but different colors).

Anyway Thanks a lot Blue Lotus Team :2thumbsup:

I hope a crash fix will come soon.

Keep it up !

I have played a bit as Choson and I most say that this mod is excellent.
Just seeing those rebels troops(that goes for all units I have seen so far) is such a treat for the eyes.
Haven't gotten any CTD's yet which I'm pleased about :sweatdrop: .
Also the drawings of the buildings works very well with the mod and I sure hope you won't remove them. Think it adds to the feeling of the mod.

I haven't seen Blue Lotus news posted at totalwar.com or twcenter.net

Someone should enlighten them there.

I don't have accounts on either of these sites or else I would.

Not really a big poster, I just created my org account yesterday, lol.

They know.
Someone created a thread yesterday about it, general Sun I think it was.

I love Ashigaru. :) Nothing beats cannon fodder. :)

First off, gotta say I absolutely love the map, the UI and pretty much everything. However, I do find that the rebel spawn rate is a little high. Seems every turn or so I have at least one rebel army in every one of my provinces and most of the time its two. Also, almost forgot, General units seem a bit over powered they practically insta-rout anything they touch. Other than the text being darker I can find no other faults. Great job hoggy!

The art is excellent! No surprise there after all the screenshots :wink:

When starting a campaign I was pleasantly surprised about its relatively small size. The wonders are really adding alot to the immersion and I can only wish that there were more.

The music is fantastic! Those first sound effects when entering the main menu immediately sets the tone. It's a must download if you play BL.

:2thumbsup:

High rebel spawn rate is due to small map size. You should really pump up rebel and pirates values on the descr_strat.
Pirates are a MAJOR issue. They have very strong navies and after some years block every port of every faction, eliminating naval trade and keeping money low for small factions. Worse thing is that AI faction never build fleets in order to free their ports...solution: 99 pirates spawn value ;)

Best mod ever!!!
:2thumbsup:
Urke

Yes, I must say the atmosphere and presentation of the mod are unbelievably good - reminds me a lot of the old game 'Cosmology of Kyoto' (which I loved as well), but in grand strategic form - ~:thumb:

(and I don't see how something as bog standard as the Alexander expansion can compete with this!)

One thing though: are there any plans to do anything with the voices? It does kill the atmosphere a bit to have my brilliant looking Mongols talking like vanilla R:TW barbarians! Getting voice actors might be a bit of a pain, and there may be copyright issues with plundering sound files from other sources, but it would make the game immensely more enjoyable.

Well I work in a sound studio with hundreds of friends willing to do VO, I was actually thinking about this the other day!

Would love to do the Deamon Voices now thats would be interesting! :D

Hi all,

Thanks for all the input and compliments. It was a great team to work with and fun to do. The music really does add atmosphere, I am slowly working on voices.

We have a few voices done but the trouble is some factions use the same voice files. So the Indians would talk like demons and vise versa. Now that would really ruin the sound. After my holidays, I will put a voice mod together and ship to Hoggy for download. I will not be able to work on it till August, June/July is prime camping month, by August Blue Lotus will be GOLD...lol... De-bugged and ready for prime playing.

Thanks again everyone your enjoyment makes the work worth it! Now go kill some demons. (If you’re a demon lover -like me- ignore the last statement)

SKR

Hi Hoggy,

Excellent work, best mod I've played so far!

Any chance an Annamese faction could be added to control Nam Fong and Udon? They could be very similar to the Zhuanshi in terms of troops but wouldnt have chariots...

Unbelievable, this mod ist a real piece of art. So many nice little details, fantastic units, even on the stratmap (i love this little spy), and this music, wow, it fits perfect. I like the ui-pics for buildings and units too, please keep them. All parts together = fantastic atmosphere.
I hope you had as much fun making this mod as i have playing it.

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Originally Posted by Sykotyk Rampage

Hi all,

Thanks for all the input and compliments. It was a great team to work with and fun to do. The music really does add atmosphere, I am slowly working on voices.

We have a few voices done but the trouble is some factions use the same voice files. So the Indians would talk like demons and vise versa. Now that would really ruin the sound. After my holidays, I will put a voice mod together and ship to Hoggy for download. I will not be able to work on it till August, June/July is prime camping month, by August Blue Lotus will be GOLD...lol... De-bugged and ready for prime playing.

Thanks again everyone your enjoyment makes the work worth it! Now go kill some demons. (If you’re a demon lover -like me- ignore the last statement)

SKR

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:2thumbsup: Very pleased to hear about the planned progress and development!

Aren't there 4 different sets of voice files in vanilla RTW (barbarian, Roman, Greek and Eastern)? Would it be feasible to apply each of these to the different factions, so you have sets of Demon, Indian, Japanese and Chinese voices (with the Korean and Mongol factions probably using the last two), or would this require the modded game files to be completely redone?

Even though it's still downloading. I just want to say Thank you.

Thank you for having a mod in Asia, but more importantly. Thank you for having a mod which as India in it.

I was distressed to find that the recent Alexander expansion only had Macedonia as playable in the Campaign. But am relieved to have found this.

That's also some fantastic conceptual artwork. Actually reminds me of the style similar to Firaxis' conceptuals.

I hope you continue with this and get it out of Beta, despite how hard the work will be. You deserve to show this off in a complete package, because this is one of those rare gems that rarely shine to us.

Again, thank you.

I just love this mod in general. Takes place in Asia, music is great, units are fantastic, concept art is great and my favorite part, it doesen't have to follow strict historic rules. Mythology is so much cooler anyways :p

This is the kind of mod I've always wanted and the genius team granted it, I have to thank you guys. Awesome awesome job, I can't wait for later versions and I will follow this mod until the end of time.

Thanks.

To add to everybody else's praise..

:bounce: :bounce: :bounce: :bounce: :bounce:

Hoggy and his team have clearly created something of a wonder. ~D
Keep up the absolutely incredible work.

Yerp.

I gotta say. Just downloaded and played it. Wow.

I got shivers when playing as Demons sending my army in one roiling devastating wave into the enemy. Oh boy do I anticipate some fun playing against them.

I usually don't like mods. I like to be immersed in games, and many betas released feature to many missing unit icons or descriptions for this to work.

But this Beta has it all. I started out as the Akiga samurai (even though I loathe samurai) to show my friend, who is a big samurai freak. And I liked the way the mod was structured. It was all fiction, based on facts. I mean, the kamikaze unit itself is nonsense but it brings another level to the faction.

And add to that, the beta is the most complete I've ever seen! Almost no missing unit icons, I've yet to see a missing description, there's a new interface and everything. Great work, really great work! I'm looking forward to playing with the chinese after this, or maybe the Choson. I'll give those blasted Samurai a run for their money...

Best mod yet. Definetly.

The Choson, although having very few unit types, are personally my favorite. The idealism of the farmer state rising to the height of empire pulls me to them.

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High rebel spawn rate is due to small map size. You should really pump up rebel and pirates values on the descr_strat.
Pirates are a MAJOR issue. They have very strong navies and after some years block every port of every faction, eliminating naval trade and keeping money low for small factions. Worse thing is that AI faction never build fleets in order to free their ports...solution: 99 pirates spawn value ;)

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brigand_spawn_value 10
pirate_spawn_value 28


so to change both those values to 99, would completly stop all spawning of rebels/pirates right?
and to put them on 85 would just make them less likely?

i ask because one of those rebels laid seige to one of my cities and the game CTDd, but it didnt happen when a rebel named character did it, so i think its the unit with the displacement text in it causing the ctd, so i wanna play with minimum rebels to see if there are bugs faction vs faction

There is no way to completely eliminate rebels. Even with a 99 value they will still occasionally appear. But the reduction is significant. And if you REALLY hate them you could mod rebel units stats to 1 attack, 0 armour, 1 moral and autoresolve all your battles against them.

Good lord! This is utterly amazing! If you haven't downloaded this mod yet, then what the hell are you waiting for? The sheer beauty and variety is outstanding. You said that this mod was made for a bit of fun - try 'ecstasy and euphoria'!

Now if you just ('just' - ha!) made some new animations, some new buildings, and maybe some fancy AOR system, it would be totally sublime. Oh, and add in a Malaysian faction.

Thank you very much for your hard work Hoggy, your mod is a masterpiece, I am enjoying it a lot, I hope you can fix campaign's ctd soon.

I have been playing as the Indian faction so far on my first VH/VH campaign and I must say it's a blooody handful!

The first thing I noticed to my surprise is that the enemy are bringing full stacks of silver experienced units at me, at quite a hefty volume!

Had to fight against a deamon army that had 4 two silver exp Kappas!

Well I rode those down pretty swift ish of course heh heh :D

But still has anyone else nopticed that the enemy has got seom decent forces going on!?

Right now I have an incoming stack of Japanese who have 5 Units of Naginata! Aswell as the rest, all I have is horse archers, Golden archers and standard sword guys! I am getting my but wipped I bloody love it!

There are a few niggles for me as Indian faction though!

First one being is that to expeand you have to trudge through a hell of a lot of Rebel factions to get to your first 'real' faction!

I recon there is definitley space for say a malaysian faction or something! Maybe this is intentional from Hoggy I am not sure!

Also On Vh/VH I know rebel forces are a bit more frequent but I have got one in my empire at any one time even if I destroy ity in one turn another appears...kinda annoying really!

(I actually have assembled a force of 6 Horse archers and a general to eliminate them all! Quite a lot of fun but they still take heavy losses form the rebel archers ...Gits lol!)