Slightly controversial what if...

[Zarax]

Let's suppose for a moment that the EB team decided to base EB1 on the BI exe rather than the RTW one...
What would have changed in the way factions and units are represented?

[A Very Super Market]

It would be the same as the current BI mod for EB? Fewer people would be able to play it? Honestly, I don't know, but the difference between the two does not seem massive.

Alex.exe on the other hand....

[Zarax]

You don't think that hording, loyalty, religion and the other triggers/special formations/event messages wouldn't have been put into use?

[A Very Super Market]

Religion was very, very unreasonable in BI, as you could convert territories completely in all but 6 years. In any case, there was no hard-core conversion in the EB timeframe anyways.

Hordes? Hmm. This is interesting. However, I don't think there were many mass migrations in the period either. Apart from the Yuezhi, I suppose, but they aren't an actual faction in 1.2.

Ah, loyalty. I think EB haves enough traits to portray that well enough. I've had many different Selfish generals being bribed off.

As for the triggers, messages and such, I don't recall them in BI. Can you explain which ones they were?

[Zarax]

roman emperor election, huns hording, romano-british emergence and many others...

Religion can be toned and made much harder to use (been there, done that in XGM), some factions could have been represented starting as hordes and loyalty would pretty much give an edge in representing the diadochii in all their backstabbiness...

BI features and the senate have been vastly underused in mods, that's why I'm curious to know the EB team opinions...

[MarcusAureliusAntoninus]

I doubt much of BI's advantages would be used to a great extent. Shield-wall might be used. Maybe one or two units could swim. The religion system might be worked to something, though I know not what. It is rather constricting. Other than that, it would be about the same.

[antisocialmunky]

Shieldwall + swimming + torrents of corpses floating down stream. I think that Alex.exe actually has extra unit slots.

[bobbin]

Hordes? Hmm. This is interesting. However, I don't think there were many mass migrations in the period either. Apart from the Yuezhi, I suppose, but they aren't an actual faction in 1.2.

My reply to someone how said the same thing a couple of weeks ago.

There's the Cimbri-Teutones right in the middle of EB's timeframe, galatian migrations just before, yuezhi around 180bc, Saka before that, the Parni (Phalava) around 250bc and the Helvetii around 50bc. Those are just the ones i can think off the top of my head.

I usually enable hording for the steppe factions, its especially fun if your playing baktria as you can send the Saka and Pahlava scuppering westward into the AS and europe where they wreak HAVOC.

[Ludens]

You don't think that hording, loyalty, religion and the other triggers/special formations/event messages wouldn't have been put into use?

Loyalty requires shadow factions, which require additional faction slots, of which EB has none left. The Aedui and Averni could be each other's shadow faction, and I guess you could stretch it for the Seleucids/Ptolemies and Macedon/KH, but everything else is going to be ahistorical, so it isn't going to be used.

I don't like the hording mechanism either. Yes, the Germans and some Celts migrated, but there was not mass migration when the Romans conquered Gaul. Hording occured when a population was displaced, but R:TW makes no difference between displacement and conquest.

[Zarax]

Well, of course not all factions would have loyalty (and I was thinking about more or less the same options as you) but imho would represent nicely the backstabbing nature/civil war of certain factions.

Hording could be used for the game start rather than ingame, for example (i'm not claiming historicity) the saka could have started as horde instead of in a settlement similarly to the emulated yuezhi or baktrians could emerge if baktria is captured by the enemy or if unrest is caused.

[Aemilius Paulus]

I think that Alex.exe actually has extra unit slots.

That is most interesting. Can anyone else confirm this? If true, the EB Team or some fans could release a patch adding a couple of more units to the game. That would be marvellous.

[Zarax]

Not completely true I'm afraid.
Alx.exe supports more than 256 models but the unit cap is still 512.

[oudysseos]

Loyalty would have been out: you can't have a faction shadowed by another playable faction: it leads to CTDs (when the shadowing faction is eliminated, for example), and I'm pretty sure that you can't have the rebel faction shadow everybody either. It functions in M2TW however.

So really, not much difference, and the BI and ALEX fan-made mods pretty much cover it as is.

[Zarax]

Can't blame you for loyalty, although IIRC that was easily fixed by not adding the "shadowing" part but just the "shadowed_by"...