EB2 Dev Blog discussion

[JMRC]

Personally, I think they've gone overboard with permanent stone forts. Looks too clustered, and I fear that field battles (i.e., fun battles) are going to be extremely rare in certain regions. Welcome to siegeworld.

Not at all. All those PSFs will have non-siege battles. Imagine them as settlements that the armies will move against, but then clash in a open field.

The big advantage of this is that now you can have "real" battles. Instead of having small-size stacks roaming the campaign map, we can make the AI consolidate in these positions, so when the players attack them, he will face enormous armies in a open battlefield.

[Gaius Sempronius Gracchus]

Not at all. All those PSFs will have non-siege battles. Imagine them as settlements that the armies will move against, but then clash in a open field.

The big advantage of this is that now you can have "real" battles. Instead of having small-size stacks roaming the campaign map, we can make the AI consolidate in these positions, so when the players attack them, he will face enormous armies in a open battlefield.

That sounds like a really well worked out solution. And the PSFs also offer economic benefits, I take it?

[JMRC]

And the PSFs also offer economic benefits, I take it?

Indirectly, perhaps. The engine doesn't recognize them as separated from the region's settlement economy, so if by chance we had a region with the settlement in faction X and a PSF in faction Y, any economical benefits would be directed to faction X and not Y. So, we'll need to consider another solution.

[Ca Putt]

so no invisible immovable merchants in PSFs?

[B-Wing]

From what I can remember of the British Isles campaign in the Kingdoms expansion pack, PSFs gave free upkeep to a limited number of units stationed there. Is that particular form of indirect economic benefit going to apply to EB2?

[M to the A]

So would these be the starting positions? Anything should be different?

[Brennus]

Almost. Pritanoi start in Arduon now, you need to move the Lusotanann into the province to the north of the one you have them in, and Aedui and Arverni are restricted to one province each.

EDIT: Also, the Bosporans only start with one half of the Crimea.

[Ca Putt]

IIRC Sweboz only hold the upper province, Averni and Aedui territories do not touch, Pritanoi start in arduon, Boii do not have a province in northern italy also, you sure about Nabateans starting there? I thought they started in Edom. other than that good work!

[B-Wing]

So would these be the starting positions? Anything should be different?

Nabatu start in Edom, and I believe all the other responses are accurate too, based on screenshots. Also, I think the Arverni start in Aruernselua, while the Aedui start in Talaeduio. I personally suspect the Boii will only start with Boiotergion, but I could very well be wrong.

[B-Wing]

Not at all. All those PSFs will have non-siege battles. Imagine them as settlements that the armies will move against, but then clash in a open field.

Fascinating! I'm very much relieved to know this, thank you.

[Tyrfingr]

Not at all. All those PSFs will have non-siege battles. Imagine them as settlements that the armies will move against, but then clash in a open field.

The big advantage of this is that now you can have "real" battles. Instead of having small-size stacks roaming the campaign map, we can make the AI consolidate in these positions, so when the players attack them, he will face enormous armies in a open battlefield.

Interesting, but if the AI will consolidate to the PSFs, won't that make the AI very defensive or will they just gather their armies at the PSF and then roll on?

[Brennus]

As Brave Brave Sir Robin kindly pointed out, EBII is a labour of love. All of us are volunteers. Some of us are fortunate enough to be employed in professions which are directly related to their work on EBII, the rest of us make do with the jobs we have (I write this whilst wearing my supermarket uniform, my shift finished 30 min ago). Also, as we are a volunteer group we cannot hold team members accountable when they leave or go AWOL. This has been a major problem this year, indeed when the Arevaci preview was prepared it was a distress preview if you can call it that; we had lost so many older members that it didn't seem likely that EBII would be able to continue. However since then we have managed to attract some extremely dedicated members (I cannot thank @V.T. Marvin and @Saldunz enough for their tireless programming efforts, and the same goes for long time programmer @Tellos Athenaios) also many of our historians took on more work than they were initially asked to do (for example I began as an advisor on Celtic religion, now I am responsible for the Boii, Pritanoi, Aedui, Arverni, Arevaci and if I can get some good literature the Lusotannan will hopefully be added to this list as well).

As Maeran pointed out our plans also change. This time last year we never expected we would be able to have barbarian buildings, we may also be able to have other cultures buildings if we manage to work out some personnel and collaboration problems. Likewise we are hoping to secure new music for EBII. Some aspects of our plan, such as coding for traits and ethnicities or creating new units, will always remain the same. But the team is always on the lookout for new things which we can add for the fans.

However, QuintusSertorius does have some valid points regarding our fan relations. The old approach of releasing a large preview every 6 months, although it generated a lot of excitement, was not the best approach. Hence we have the Twitter account (which we attempt to update at least once a fortnight, if not more frequently, and the Developer Blog). Would you guys be interested in a "An interview with...." sort of series or perhaps a bi-monthly mini-preview of a new feature of EBII? For example the new religion system?

I will also have a word with the team and see if we can't release a statement saying how far along we are with the mod so you can get an idea of how things are going.

I should also add, even if you guys are not members of the team you can still help us to help you; if you know programmers, coders, artists (both 2D and 3D) or specialist historians (Lusotannan, Numidians and Arab factions are currently short on historians) please tell them about our mod and see if they would be interested in helping us.

Finally I would like to say, on behalf of everyone in the team, past and present (and very hopefully future too) Thank you for sticking with us for so long! We couldn't ask for a more loyal fanbase.

[Yavana]

Thank you Brennus for your post I must say I'm touched after reading it, that there are people like you and other members of EB team who have so much love and passion for something and are willing to share it with others. Thank you EB team! I wish you that you all will always have this passion in your lives with you! I cannot speak for whole community but I can wait for this mod another 5 years (Im lurker for more than 5 years now and check the page everyday).

[QuintusSertorius]

It's funny, immediately after I posted that, I had another look at the Dev Blog thread itself (ie the one this thread is for discussion of) and the first post had a very good summary of where things were up to 18 months or so ago. It's notable that nothing has been posted there for months, possibly because of the effort required to put a preview together that's consistent with the ones already in there. Now I'm not asking for a weekly update on that whole list in the first post, but maybe a monthly summary of the change highlights. Not more than a paragraph or two, or a few bulleted lists saying "here's the major things we accomplished this month".

I appreciate there's the Twitter feed, but not only is it possible people aren't following it (I don't have a Twitter account, personally), but it isn't really collected/compiled/constructed into something meaningful. If anything the disconnect is that you've got another source of information that, barring the occasional post in the Twitter thread, isn't making its way back here. Again, I'm personally less interested in previews (I got the one I was most keen on - Pergamon - right at the start), especially if the creation of them takes people out of working on the mod, but summaries of what's been going on help build confidence that the momentum is being maintained. That's not to say mini-previews won't interest other people, especially if they're frequent enough to start generating that buzz we used to have around here.

Just to clarify, I'm not suggesting the team rush this or anything like that. I've waited this long and can continue waiting (I'm a father now, which I wasn't back in 2007/8 when I was first playing EB1, I barely notice the days going by any more!) because I know the finished product will have been worth it. I'm relieved that the team have managed to get it back on track and are so dedicated to that vision. Hell, some of the delays have been through adding even more richness to the experience, who can complain about that?

[Tellos Athenaios]

Well since I am mentioned I thought I'd clarify:

We have basically two kinds of "programmers". Those who do useful work on the mod itself. And me.

Me, I sort of run the tools department. The tools are about replacing the game itself for creating various binary blobs that the mod needs, wherever possible. Well that's not quite true. What the tools really are about is two things:

• Make sure that the mod actually will work out of the box when it is installed.
• Pruning and refining the mod so we apply as much of the tools (and resulting binary blobs) during development as well. This causes the team both joy and grief: joy when it works (far better than the game engine and bugs get caught), grief when bugs in the tools mess up the workflow. This is also about eliminating old cruft from the mod which we no longer use (or should use).

If that all pans out according to plan, the idea is that you can install the mod and get something quite close to installing an official expansion package instead of a copy of a development tree snapshot. Which should hopefully mean that the mod works out of the box, and installation is reasonably fool proof.

Now there are currently two big obstacles in this path (quite possibly more but right now these two are so big they kind of obscure any other ones that exist as well). One is in the form of a bunch of bytes from a largely reverse-engineered CAS (animation) file format as part of the animation packs used by M2TW. The other is the format of the skeletons in the skeleton packs, which is largely (if not almost entirely) unknown stuff.

So what am I working on when I have the time? On improvements to the existing tools to speed up building of the binary blobs (and also to make building an installer easier).

[burn_again]

I just dug out some of my EB1 saves from a few years ago and played a bit and immediately got back into that EB feeling. It will always be one of my absolute favourites, I had so many great hours playing this game. Thanks for that.
I check this forum every few months for news about EB2 and I have to say it is really amazing that you guys have managed to keep this going. I haven't posted anything in recent years, but I'm really looking forward to play EB2 whenever it's ready. It must be really difficult to manage a project of volunteers, who have real lives and real jobs, over such a long time, I admire your dedication. So don't get upset when people complain about waiting or lack of updates, every progress is quite an achievement and when there is a release some day, I'm gonna feel the same childlike excitement I felt when EB 1.0 was released: https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showt...RE!&highlight=
I'm a bit more patient nowadays and check only every few months instead of seconds, but I still do appreciate your work very much, EB team!

[Cybvep]

More frequent but smaller updates is the way to go IMO. That way, the community knows that progress is being made and can comment on the presented features. Personally, I'm most interested in the new gameplay elements. New units are great, but pretty much every mod has them. EB1 had some great new stuff that made the game challenging and flavourful and I hope to see sth similar in EB2. RTW Vanilla was very bland by comparison.

The good thing about smaller updates is that they are not as time-consuming as standard EB previews. Besides, I think that the team members would like to read what other users think about the stuff that has been made so far.

[Skullheadhq]

• Make sure that the mod actually will work out of the box when it is installed.

Aha, so there will be a boxed version.

[LusitanianWolf]

Just to say I've been really enjoying the interviews!