6th Century Italy Mod Proposal

[Spizania]

Well, basically, Ive always been a massive infantry player, which is why in vanilla I always had three or four "The Infantryman" epiphets, and only once did I ever achieve another epiphet, (one of my infantryman acquired "The Great".............. traitor).
So naturally im a hellenophile, the masses of cavalry fielded by most nations being of little appeal to me, (which is why my current Seleukid campaign has me loosing ground to the Pahlava, I physically cannot engage Horse Archers)
So where can I get a time period where there are no horse archers and infact no really heavy cavalry to speak of.... the obvious answer was pre Alexandrian Greece, but thats boring and has been done a dozen times, so I shifted the emphasis to the 6th Century BC in Italy, where Etruscans control (indirectly or directly) half of Italy and most of the rest is either controlled by the Greeks or Gauls.
Ive been scouring the web for sources on this sort of thing, but it appears that the information is rather sparse, with Roman history before 390BC being mostly conjecture (as the Library was destroyed in the Sack of Rome, Vae Victis Forever).
So back to the topic itself, I propose a mod starting in approximately 578BC and ending in approximately ~272BC.
The factions (as far as I can determine so far, would probably be thus:-)
1. The Kingdom of Rome
2. The Etruscan Confederation
3. The Latin League
4. The Sabines
5. The Pisceni
6. The Volscii
7. The Samnite Confederation
8. Some Greek Faction representing the Magna Graecia
9. Relevant Gallic Faction #1 (I have no idea as to Gallic History)
10. The Carthaginians
11. an Illyrian Faction of Some Kind
12. The Aurunci
13. Syracuse
14-20: Additional Gallic Factions, Additional Greek Factions and additional Itallic Peoples (there are so many small ones its impossible to count)

I would also suggest a map covering a similar area to this one: http://www.unc.edu/awmc/downloads/rve_BackLrg.jpg
With as many provinces as we can put on, for a properly epic experience.

I would suggest using a script to feed the Carthaginians additional resources to account for there off mmap empire, and perhaps have a script that creates Pyrhhus' army around Taras if the city is threatened, I would also like to use a script to script militia reinforcements if a city is put under seige, as almost every force in this period is a militia anyway.

[Lysimachos]

Well, this doesn't start that early, but maybe it could become something similar to what you propose?

[Spizania]

Perhaps, but that team appears to have migrated mainly to the M2TW Engine, and the activity on that seems minimal. And yes, its starts later, I want the Rome campaign to be pathologically hard, so that it actually takes till 272BC to gain what they had IRL

[Spizania]

1. The Kingdom of Rome
2. The Etruscan Confederation
3. The Latin League
4. The Sabines
5. The Pisceni
6. The Volscii
7. The Samnite Confederation
8. Some Greek Faction representing the Magna Graecia
9. Boii
10. Simones
11. Technosages
12. Republic of Carthage
13. Liburni
12. The Aurunci
13. Syracuse
14. City of Massalia
15. City of Capua
16. Arverni
17. Insubres
18 - 20. still no suggestion on those :(
21. Eleuthroi

I can see several Reform Events:-
1] The Kingdom of Romes transisiton into a Republic and/or its adoption of Samnite Manipular Military Practices (which could be based on a trait derived from the number of battles fought against the Samnites)
2] The Greek Factions could have a number of reforms, based on the adoption of the Hoplitoi Pelte (Hoplites with Peltast Shields, I just invented the name) by Iphicrates
3] Since Massalia is a young city by the start of the mod, it would start off with traditional hoplite infantry and with traditional celtic infantry, then it could have one (or more) reforms that transistion it more towards the celtic-greek hybrids that you observe in EB-proper.
4] Perhaps a reform to account for the influx of Samnites into the lands of the Campania, and its transistion from Greek city state into a fairly independant culture.

Thats all I can think off right now

[mcantu]

Perhaps, but that team appears to have migrated mainly to the M2TW Engine, and the activity on that seems minimal. And yes, its starts later, I want the Rome campaign to be pathologically hard, so that it actually takes till 272BC to gain what they had IRL

actually, they are working on RTW and MTW2 versions at the same time. i'm helping to beta test the RTW one now. They are much more active over on TWC...

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=91

and

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=620

[Spizania]

Perhaps, but even so, nearly two thirds of this mods time frame, and probably the most interesting two thirds, exists far outside the time frame out that mod, including the difficult to implement bits that will likely need the creative work and thinking, including the possibility of making Rome a hoarding faction and migrating to BI

Also, would it be possible to have just one Estruscan city under the players direct control, with the others being rebel settlements, that by scripts would be added to the players confederation if they were ever threatened by outsiders, to represent them coming together in the face of foreign agression? Or would simply using traits to simulate multiple ruling families be better

[Spizania]

1. The Kingdom of Rome
2. The Etruscan Confederation
3. The Latin League
4. The Sabines
5. The Pisceni
6. The Volscii
7. The Samnite Confederation
8. Some Greek Faction representing the Magna Graecia
9. Boii
10. Simones
11. Technosages
12. Republic of Carthage
13. Liburni
12. The Aurunci
13. Syracuse
14. City of Massalia
15. City of Capua
16. Arverni
17. Insubres
18. The Ligures
19. still no suggestion on this one
20. still no suggestion on this one
21. Eleuthroi

I can see several Reform Events:-
1] The Kingdom of Romes transisiton into a Republic and/or its adoption of Samnite Manipular Military Practices (which could be based on a trait derived from the number of battles fought against the Samnites)
2] The Greek Factions could have a number of reforms, based on the adoption of the Hoplitoi Pelte (Hoplites with Peltast Shields, I just invented the name) by Iphicrates
3] Since Massalia is a young city by the start of the mod, it would start off with traditional hoplite infantry and with traditional celtic infantry, then it could have one (or more) reforms that transistion it more towards the celtic-greek hybrids that you observe in EB-proper.
4] Perhaps a reform to account for the influx of Samnites into the lands of the Campania, and its transistion from Greek city state into a fairly independant culture.

Other features:
1. MOdified City Plans for Rome, Carthage, etc (that is an awful lot of work though)
2. The Use of Additional Unit slots to produce units unique to each area (to show them working more comfortably with people with whoom they share a home region)
3.Use of traits and scripts to show that the Estruscan federation is just that, a loose coalition of city states
4. Use of a script to refund large amounts of the money from maintaining troops in settlements, to make campaigning more expensive.
5. Use of a script to simulate the emergeancy raising of miliita forces in the event of a seige.
6. New More Appropriate Map
7. Carthage money script to show funding and forces from colonies that are not represented on the map (Balearics and Iberia primarily, North African Coast)
8. http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=59978 perhaps do something with this, if i can work out how that works