Suggestions

[Odysseus]

I like the idea of your mod and everything. I have a few suggestions here:

Well first, I think you guys should mod (or at east try to) the Carthagians agressiveness and units to balance them. And you should have the Samaritans come in at a certain date as mercenaries or a nation.(Like the Golden Horde) I would like to see the barbarians(Mainly Germans) have troops only loyal to a warlord and you would have to call up the warlords to help you in a war instead of automatically controlling the units. It would be nice to see the Romans lose their edge in calvary and basically make their clavary bad. And also for the Romans, instead of having one kind of auxillia, implement different types mattering on where your recruiting from.(ex. Instead of getting average auxillia in Germania, you get Germania auxillia) Well that's my two cents.

[Aymar de Bois Mauri]

I like the idea of your mod and everything. I have a few suggestions here:

Well first, I think you guys should mod (or at east try to) the Carthagians agressiveness and units to balance them.

Partially done.

And you should have the Samaritans come in at a certain date as mercenaries or a nation.(Like the Golden Horde)

Samaritans??? Who are they?

I would like to see the barbarians(Mainly Germans) have troops only loyal to a warlord and you would have to call up the warlords to help you in a war instead of automatically controlling the units.

Not possible.

It would be nice to see the Romans lose their edge in calvary and basically make their clavary bad.

Done.

And also for the Romans, instead of having one kind of auxillia, implement different types mattering on where your recruiting from.(ex. Instead of getting average auxillia in Germania, you get Germania auxillia) Well that's my two cents.

Good idea.

Thanks for your imput.

[Stormy]

Sarmatians Good sir.

Only the future will tell.

[Aymar de Bois Mauri]

AH! The Sarmatians! I was having difficulty in associating RTW with the concept of the good samaritan...

[Odysseus]

I was wondering, do you guys need any help?

[Steppe Merc]

The Sarmatians will be a real faction... once we figure out how to add factions.

[Aymar de Bois Mauri]

I was wondering, do you guys need any help?

And what would be the area of imput you would like to concentrate on?

[Alexander the Pretty Good]

Suggestion:

Could you guys start a screenshots thread? That would be pretty nice, and a good way to:

1) Visually demonstrate your progress
2) Better illustrate the purpose of the mod - for people who won't read
3) Build anticipation for the mod
4) Give me something to look at while waiting for your mod

I am very interested in your mod, and will definitely try it when it comes out.

[Aymar de Bois Mauri]

Suggestion:

Could you guys start a screenshots thread? That would be pretty nice, and a good way to:

1) Visually demonstrate your progress
2) Better illustrate the purpose of the mod - for people who won't read
3) Build anticipation for the mod
4) Give me something to look at while waiting for your mod

I am very interested in your mod, and will definitely try it when it comes out.

There is already a screenshots thread. Check:

Unit changes/New unit implementation/3d and 2d unit graphics

[Alexander the Pretty Good]

Sorry. Boy, that's embarressing.

[Odysseus]

I'm incredibly good at researching and unit stats.

[Crownsteler]

Hi.

I'm kinda Carthage freak, so I'm gonna bother you guys about it :P
So I have some questions (and suggestions) about Carthage. :)


-How will you be dealing with the recruitment system for Carthage, will you be implenting some kind of ZOR as in RTR? Because to me it would be rather silly if you could recruit iberian ce.... whatever you called them, in say, arabia, or those elite african mercenaries in britania. Instead would it be possible to not have a fixed unit list (well, maybe some fixed units would be good), but instead have them rely solley on mercenaries by making those recruitable in town instead of the regular troops.
-Will you be changing Carthages banner? I made a perfectly good one here *hint*hint* nah, just kiding, but I am rather fed up with the moon (and especially the white-blue color combination, which is ugly!) so will you be changing it. Also, will you be changing other banners, like the one for Macedionia
-Carthage name will be changed to Carthago?
-will you be making Carthage a superior trading faction or something? if so how?
-if it is possible, will you be remaking the cities? if so, what kind of style do you guys have in mind for Carthage?
some things about religion:
-will you be redoing the temple bonusses? if so, how?
-what gods are you going to include? I read somewhere baal, tanit, melqart and astare?
-will you be refering to baal just as baal, or as baal hammon? (just my personal preference, it doesn't really matter)
-could someone please explain the Carthaginian pantheon to me? I am confused. I always thoughed tanit and baal were the most important (and most worshiped gods), but when reading this board I came across astare and malqart as being important gods, while I also thoughed; astare = tanit

Now some minor sugestions:
-could you replace the public baths with something more appropiate? according to the Channel 4 history site they say that Carthaginians all had private baths and no public baths; under the header of "a society of individuals"
perhaps it could be replaced by an extended sewers?
-could you remove all the references to royalty from the game? I mean, wasn't carthage a republic? Instead, name those things to something accordingly with carthaginian government, so something like senate instead of imperial palace, people's assembly instead of governours palace, sufet palace instead of something, eehhh, council's chambers instead of something else. this would be cool :)

there were some more points, but I forgot them :$

[khelvan]

Hi.

Hello Mr. Carthage freak! I am not actively part of our Carthage group, but I will attempt to answer your questions for you.

-How will you be dealing with the recruitment system for Carthage, will you be implenting some kind of ZOR as in RTR? Because to me it would be rather silly if you could recruit iberian ce.... whatever you called them, in say, arabia, or those elite african mercenaries in britania. Instead would it be possible to not have a fixed unit list (well, maybe some fixed units would be good), but instead have them rely solley on mercenaries by making those recruitable in town instead of the regular troops.

EB will use our own system of recruitment based on the Homelands concept created by, and made popular by, Wes's MedMod for MTW. We have several ex-MedMod members as a part of our team, and this concept has been in the works for a long time in EB, even before RTW came out.

Factions will have fixed unit lists, where appropriate. They will have shared units, where appropriate. Also mercenaries in certain areas, where appropriate.

I will say that the Carthaginians will be able to recruit Iberian units in historically appropriate places, and not, for instance, in Carthage itself.

How accurate we can get depends on how well our theoretical system works in practice. However, we are confident, and testing on this is slated to begin presently.

-Will you be changing Carthages banner? I made a perfectly good one here *hint*hint* nah, just kiding, but I am rather fed up with the moon (and especially the white-blue color combination, which is ugly!) so will you be changing it. Also, will you be changing other banners, like the one for Macedionia

Yes - I believe I have not yet heard of a faction banner/icon that will be kept as-is from the vanilla game. Your banner looks quite nice! However, we are creating our own banners and attempting to keep the style and substance relatively consistent across our factions, and I think work has already been done on the Carthage banner.

I believe you can see a prototype of our Carthage icon concept in the last bit of our screenshots thread - I think Prometheus spilled the beans, so to speak.

-Carthage name will be changed to Carthago?

Faction names have generally stayed English, unless you are referring to the city itself? Cities/provinces are generally using ethnic/culture-specific names from the period where available, and where not, using Greek or Latin where appropriate. As to the city of Carthage, I do not know our specific plans in this regard.

-will you be making Carthage a superior trading faction or something? if so how?

Carthage will hold its historical place as a true power in the region. Paramount in this are our expanded map and new provincial holdings, unit balance, and economic resources. Specifically there is far too much detail to go into here. :)

-if it is possible, will you be remaking the cities? if so, what kind of style do you guys have in mind for Carthage?

I am not sure what you mean by this. Remaking the cities in what way? Changing buildings? Changing the city view? Changing the way city build queues work?

some things about religion:
-will you be redoing the temple bonusses? if so, how?
-what gods are you going to include? I read somewhere baal, tanit, melqart and astare?
-will you be refering to baal just as baal, or as baal hammon? (just my personal preference, it doesn't really matter)
-could someone please explain the Carthaginian pantheon to me? I am confused. I always thoughed tanit and baal were the most important (and most worshiped gods), but when reading this board I came across astare and malqart as being important gods, while I also thoughed; astare = tanit

Yes, we will be redoing temple bonuses. This is going to be a change for all factions, and we are still working out the details on our new temple system. I think I will let our member who is doing his thesis on ancient religions of the region answer your religion questions.

-could you replace the public baths with something more appropiate? according to the Channel 4 history site they say that Carthaginians all had private baths and no public baths; under the header of "a society of individuals"
perhaps it could be replaced by an extended sewers?

Don't worry, all factions are getting a new building system put in place, with more faction-appropriate buildings.

-could you remove all the references to royalty from the game? I mean, wasn't carthage a republic? Instead, name those things to something accordingly with carthaginian government, so something like senate instead of imperial palace, people's assembly instead of governours palace, sufet palace instead of something, eehhh, council's chambers instead of something else. this would be cool :)

I will let someone from our Carthage group answer this one.

Thank you for your suggestions!

[Urnamma]

-could you remove all the references to royalty from the game? I mean, wasn't carthage a republic? Instead, name those things to something accordingly with carthaginian government, so something like senate instead of imperial palace, people's assembly instead of governours palace, sufet palace instead of something, eehhh, council's chambers instead of something else. this would be cool

Well, this depends. The suffete himself was a kind of royalty, for his period of election. Also, the old royal palace was the place where the Suffete (which is the latinized version of the word, btw) held court. People's assembly is misleading and sounds too... republican. Carthage could more adequately be called an Oligarchy. The citizens (who were mostly either rich or middle class) made the decisions that the subject populations had to live with.

I agree though, and some name changes will take place. I'm a historian specializing in the near east btw, and Carthage is my pet project. I can assure you they'll get the works as far as being historically correct goes.

As far as the temple thing... Baal (hammon is superflous, it's just a title..) It's like calling you Jim the King, or something. Baal, Astarte, Tanit (who the carthaginians made a different Goddess than Astarte, for some reason) and Melquart.

Carthage is a fine name. Carthago is latin.... Kart-Hadasht is the Phoenician transliteration.

[Alexander the Pretty Good]

A few questions/suggestions:

1)Will you incorporate some of the Trivium mods/enhancements into your mod? Can you identify which ones?

2)This is a a little like stealing, but I read something in the Sengoku Jidai subforum that sounded pretty cool: hiding trait effects. That is, the description of the trait does not show what bonuses it conveys. I like the idea, as it focuses the game less on the math of what this or that trait does. And in real life one doesn't see number values of a persons intelligence, influence, and tactical abilities; hiding the trait effects reflects this. If you do incorporate this, you might want to talk with Duke John and the Sengoku Jidai team first.

3)I sincerely hope you rework the experiance bonuses from some of the units - it seems a little cheesey that a temple can make all the troops trained in a province more experianced. Maybe shift those bonuses over to barracks or something, with larger barracks conveying some experiance... But I think most of the experiance in the game should be from hard-earned fighting.

[khelvan]

1)Will you incorporate some of the Trivium mods/enhancements into your mod? Can you identify which ones?

We have already incorporated the Cherry Vanilla Pack into EB. However, in general, the EB project team is doing just about everything else one could think of from scratch. The scope of the project is huge, and we have already had other TTO members decide to shut down work on their own projects to join the EB effort - see the DBD mod as an example.

2)This is a a little like stealing, but I read something in the Sengoku Jidai subforum that sounded pretty cool: hiding trait effects. That is, the description of the trait does not show what bonuses it conveys. I like the idea, as it focuses the game less on the math of what this or that trait does. And in real life one doesn't see number values of a persons intelligence, influence, and tactical abilities; hiding the trait effects reflects this. If you do incorporate this, you might want to talk with Duke John and the Sengoku Jidai team first.

Hidden trait effects is something we have already discussed internally in the EB project in another context (and know how to do). However, one thing we do not do is "steal" work from other mods. In general, if we know something can be done we will figure out a way to do it ourselves, rather than take from someone else's work, even with permission. We consider it common courtesy.

However, we have a good working relationship with Duke John and our two mods share the spirit of cooperation. We provide assistance to each other, so if this sort of thing is what we would like to do and we cannot find a way to do it, we'll ask. That goes for things in general - we have no wish to reinvent the wheel, so to speak, and if SJ has done something that took a lot of work and effort to figure out, and we would like to do the same, I am sure we will ask for permission to use their work, and I am quite sure they would do the same.

3)I sincerely hope you rework the experiance bonuses from some of the units - it seems a little cheesey that a temple can make all the troops trained in a province more experianced. Maybe shift those bonuses over to barracks or something, with larger barracks conveying some experiance... But I think most of the experiance in the game should be from hard-earned fighting.

The entire building bonus system is being reworked. However, keep in mind that often the bonuses are abstractions and not indicative of an actual effect on troops - for instance, giving +1 to experience due to some historic function of a temple does not imply that the temple is actually somehow granting battle experience.

Rest assured though that we have ancient religion experts working on just what sort of benefit these temples would provide for the cities in which they are found and the system will seem more realistic, though of course within the limitations of the game engine.

[Alexander the Pretty Good]

Thanks, khelvan! All I want for [next] Christmas is Europa Barbarorum!

[Crazed Rabbit]

I read that you are using the 'Homelands' concept, and I had a few questions about that and how you plan to implement it.

Having played WesMod for MTW, I didn't really like the homelands concept in that mod because it meant you couldn't hire any soldiers outside of your starting borders. To me, this seemed somewhat ahistorical. I could understand that it might take time for conquered provinces to assimilate, but perhaps you could have each faction have specific buildings they need to build in a city, like "Roman Stables" which would take 3-5 years or so and not make any units by itself, but inable the player to use preexisting stables in a conquered city. So roman calvary would need a generic stable and the roman stable. This could be used to simulate assimilation and integration, and mean you couldn't instantly retrain units in a captured city (No more "Well, they just killed my family and burnt my house, but I guess I'll go fight against my countrymen for them anyway" for example.)

Or are you planning an having region specific troops, like Celts in Gual, that could only be hired there? Like the homelands thing in WesMod, but if you invaded another faction's lands, you could hire their units, instead of your own. You'd probably still need a generic building you have to build to raise troops, like "Roman Barracks" that would inable all units to be built so there wouldn't be instant retraining (see example above).

Perhaps you could do a mix of the two, where you could build your own units in a different province after building some things, but also be able to hire some original units.

Anyways, keep up the good work!

Crazed Rabbit

[Crownsteler]

Thank you for taking the time to answer my questions Khelvan and Urnamma. :)

EB will use our own system of recruitment based on the Homelands concept created by, and made popular by, Wes's MedMod for MTW. We have several ex-MedMod members as a part of our team, and this concept has been in the works for a long time in EB, even before RTW came out.

Factions will have fixed unit lists, where appropriate. They will have shared units, where appropriate. Also mercenaries in certain areas, where appropriate.

I will say that the Carthaginians will be able to recruit Iberian units in historically appropriate places, and not, for instance, in Carthage itself.

How accurate we can get depends on how well our theoretical system works in practice. However, we are confident, and testing on this is slated to begin presently.

Okey, good to hear this :) Lets hope it works out well :) But personally, with Carthage, I'd like to be able to train some (light/weak) Gaul troops in Gaul :)

Yes - I believe I have not yet heard of a faction banner/icon that will be kept as-is from the vanilla game. Your banner looks quite nice! However, we are creating our own banners and attempting to keep the style and substance relatively consistent across our factions, and I think work has already been done on the Carthage banner.

I believe you can see a prototype of our Carthage icon concept in the last bit of our screenshots thread - I think Prometheus spilled the beans, so to speak.

I understand, and with the prototype in the screenshot treath you are refering to the lybian spearman screenshots? If so, I like it very much :D and I find it good to see you are going to change it to the horse with the palm icon :)

Faction names have generally stayed English, unless you are referring to the city itself? Cities/provinces are generally using ethnic/culture-specific names from the period where available, and where not, using Greek or Latin where appropriate. As to the city of Carthage, I do not know our specific plans in this regard.

I was refering to the city, I like the name Carthago so much because it is the same as in Dutch ;) (my native language)

Carthage will hold its historical place as a true power in the region. Paramount in this are our expanded map and new provincial holdings, unit balance, and economic resources. Specifically there is far too much detail to go into here. :)

Then I'm looking forward to the release if the mod to see it for myself ;)

I am not sure what you mean by this. Remaking the cities in what way? Changing buildings? Changing the city view? Changing the way city build queues work?

I was refering to the appearince of the city :) But any change you can make to the cities to make it more historicly accurate is good :)

Don't worry, all factions are getting a new building system put in place, with more faction-appropriate buildings.

:) I hope I gave you some information you didn't have yet though ;)

Well, this depends. The suffete himself was a kind of royalty, for his period of election. Also, the old royal palace was the place where the Suffete (which is the latinized version of the word, btw) held court. People's assembly is misleading and sounds too... republican. Carthage could more adequately be called an Oligarchy. The citizens (who were mostly either rich or middle class) made the decisions that the subject populations had to live with.

I agree though, and some name changes will take place. I'm a historian specializing in the near east btw, and Carthage is my pet project. I can assure you they'll get the works as far as being historically correct goes.

Good to hear that such an expert is working on my favorite faction :D:D Do you have any idea on what some of the new names could be (a)

As far as the temple thing... Baal (hammon is superflous, it's just a title..) It's like calling you Jim the King, or something. Baal, Astarte, Tanit (who the carthaginians made a different Goddess than Astarte, for some reason) and Melquart.

Hhmmmm, I thoughed Baal ment Lord and then Hammon would be his name. Oh well, my bad.
And those are the 4 gods Carthage will have in their pantheon?

Thanks again for answering my questions :)

[khelvan]

Having played WesMod for MTW, I didn't really like the homelands concept in that mod because it meant you couldn't hire any soldiers outside of your starting borders. To me, this seemed somewhat ahistorical. I could understand that it might take time for conquered provinces to assimilate, but perhaps you could have each faction have specific buildings they need to build in a city, like "Roman Stables" which would take 3-5 years or so and not make any units by itself, but inable the player to use preexisting stables in a conquered city. So roman calvary would need a generic stable and the roman stable. This could be used to simulate assimilation and integration, and mean you couldn't instantly retrain units in a captured city (No more "Well, they just killed my family and burnt my house, but I guess I'll go fight against my countrymen for them anyway" for example.)

Or are you planning an having region specific troops, like Celts in Gual, that could only be hired there? Like the homelands thing in WesMod, but if you invaded another faction's lands, you could hire their units, instead of your own. You'd probably still need a generic building you have to build to raise troops, like "Roman Barracks" that would inable all units to be built so there wouldn't be instant retraining (see example above).

Our plan is simple - to allow the recruitment of troops where it is historically accurate to do so. If certain troops could be recruited after their region fell under the control of a greater power, those troops will be recruitable in that context in our mod. Mercenaries, regional troops, faction troops, all will have an area where they can be recruited based on historical conditions.

I think you will be pleasantly surprised by how much detail we are able to put into this area of our mod.

[khelvan]

Okey, good to hear this :) Lets hope it works out well :) But personally, with Carthage, I'd like to be able to train some (light/weak) Gaul troops in Gaul :)

See my note above.

I understand, and with the prototype in the screenshot treath you are refering to the lybian spearman screenshots? If so, I like it very much :D and I find it good to see you are going to change it to the horse with the palm icon :)

Yes, we are putting a great deal of effort into finding faction-appropriate icons and banners. I think you will enjoy the choices we end up with, including that of Carthage.

I was refering to the city, I like the name Carthago so much because it is the same as in Dutch ;) (my native language)

The Carthaginian cities will probably end up in their Phoenician transliteration, if the current vote we are taking stays true to course.

(ik hou van jou? Fear my Dutch!)

Good to hear that such an expert is working on my favorite faction :D:D Do you have any idea on what some of the new names could be (a)

We have more than one professional historian working on this mod, including at least one of those crazy guys that gets down in the dirt and digs up the stuff we all go gaga over! :)

All of the factions receive this sort of treatment, and we have members from all over the world who contribute. The mod will be as historically correct as we can make it. And, if someone comes to us with primary evidence that states we have done something wrong, none of us are vain enough not to change it. Our goal is as close to historical accuracy as you can get in this game.

[Alexander the Pretty Good]

OK - as you may be able to tell, I will have a difficult time waiting for your mod. But could you please use the ModSwitcher program - I already have three installations of RTW on my computer, and it is such a hassle to add more. If need be I will of course make another installation for your esteemed mod, but I would prefer a tiny .rmod file instead! Thank you!

*grovels in anticipation of an awesome mod*

[khelvan]

Thank you! We are eagerly looking forward to it as well!

Yes, the creator of the .RMOD format is a member of our team, so our public releases will definitely be in this format.

[Divinus Arma]

Hi folks. I am thoroughly impressed with the dedication of the modding community. I am looking forward to your work.

RE: Suggestions-

Browsing your team's many postings, I've not seen any mention of decreasing uniformity in the skins of units. While I am not historically educated, I would imagine that many poorer units in classical armies would have had a variety of arms, clothing, armor, war paint, etc. I suspect that duplicating this lack of uniformity would be difficult, but would it be impossible? Currently, some units do have two-three skins per unit. These three skins are (1) the basic element of the unit, (2) the religious figure or standard bearer, (3) the unit leader. Could a unit be comprised of an expanded group of supporting skins? Thus, a peasant unit could have elements carrying pitchforks, torches, axes, shovels, etc. Imagine the possibilities! Dirty, blood-stained roman armor; barbarians with swords & axes and multiple woad designs; etc, etc. I understand that this would probably be a ton of work, but it would be visually impressive and historically accurate.

Secondly, any plans for visible injuries on casualties? Flying limbs and blood stained fields are the truest depiction of this ultra-violent period in human history. Even as an educational tool, how can we omit the horrible reality of war?

Just a few thoughts I've had.

Warmest Regards...

[ah_dut]

I am the village idiot organiser at EB as opposed to a modder or historian so I may well be incorrect. AFAIK, all people in a unit apart from the leader and standard bearer are identical and must remain so. Also, there is no way to depict visible injuries in this game.

[Aymar de Bois Mauri]

I am the village idiot organiser at EB as opposed to a modder or historian so I may well be incorrect.

HE!HE!HE! No you're not. You're correct.

AFAIK, all people in a unit apart from the leader and standard bearer are identical and must remain so. Also, there is no way to depict visible injuries in this game.

Each unit in RTW is made of copies of a single 3d model. Each 3d model can have as many textures as you wish. As such, you can have a multitude of looks for a unit but not specifically diferent textures within a single unit. The officers (centurions, captains, standard bearers, etc) are independent and are added independently to the unit. They have a max limit of 3 per unit. So, the most variablity you can achieve is: 3 different officers + unit skin = 4 different skins within the same unit.

This for each of the factions that uses this specific unit.

[Wikingus]

Hi,

I'll just post this here then :)

Whenever I play RTW the Julii faction is extremely reluctant to spread towards Gaul, while the Scipii and the Brutii occupy their spheres of influence quite happily. Is that a common problem? How will this be addressed in EB, even though I know that the Roman families will get a major overhaul.

If I'm the only one with this problem, please ignore my question.

[Aymar de Bois Mauri]

Well, from my short experience with vanilla RTW, the Julii are the ones that get by the best. They tend to be the Roman faction that expands sooner and stronger. But this is in the release version, so I don't know what is happening with your campaign. I stoped playing vanilla RTW in October last year...

As for EB, the Roman factions will get a overhaul but we're still discussing the many possibilities to modify them. So, it is too soon to reply to your question.

[SwordsMaster]

Another thing that needs to be tweaked is the experience scale.

Yestarday campaign: Brutii, H/N, After battle report:

General : lost 0, killed 5, gains +1 experience. (51men)
Legionary cavalry: lost 1, killed 204, no experience awarded. (80 men).
Archers: lost 0, killed 48, + experience.

I dont think thats fair, specially because the archers were the most experienced unit of them all (3 chevrons). the rest had 1 chev.

[khelvan]

Excellent suggestion!

If only it weren't hardcoded.