EB news - Friday, January 28

**khelvan** · 01-31-2005, 08:15

Dacia represents the Dacians, the Getae, or the Geto-Dacians (take your pick, they're all the same). They were a group of northern Thracian tribes, with shared language and culture. They will be given their historical lands for 270 BC.

Germania, more or less, represents the Suebi for us. So their lands will be small.

**khelvan** · 01-31-2005, 08:16

The reason certain areas have more provinces than others has been explained ad nauseum. Read the FAQ for more details.

**eadingas** · 01-31-2005, 10:00

Originally Posted by Big_John

just a curious question.. is the aral sea big enough on that map? just "eyeballing" it, it seems a little small, for the time period (compared to the caspian at least). could be way wrong.. besides, i don't know what sort of projection you're using for the map anyway. probably some form of mercator, right? different projections would deform it differently anyway.

here are a couple of figures (note: they're not exact, i'm sure):
http://www.thewaterpage.com/images/aralmap.gif
http://www.fragilecologies.com/img/aral_locator_72a.jpg

Our mapmaker is from Russia, I'm sure he knows what he's doing :) And yes, the map is very much deformed, because of the way CA had it. It's skewed to south-east, and a bit stretched.

**professorspatula** · 02-03-2005, 15:42

Map looks interesting, but there will be serious gameplay balancing issues. Getting the starting resources right is crucial. This is a massive task even before the new units are decided upon. I think the Western European factions look in serious danger of fighting amongst themselves whilst the rich factions in the East have massive expanses of land to conquer. A player controlling the Seleucid (or even the Egyptians) might struggle to hold on to some of those provences, but concentrate on his immediate rivals from the start, beat them back and then start taking the free provences and they're rich, massive and a huge power even before the barbarians get a whiff of their presence.

It certainly looks very interesting though, and the difficulty level will be massively upped for some factions, and down for others. I feel for the player wanting to be the Britons or Gauls trying to expand East though. There could be a couple of superpowers before they've even got close to Rome.

However, perhaps if the rebel forces and brigands are strong enough in the 'free' regions, they'll make process more difficult anyway.

**ah_dut** · 02-03-2005, 23:33

It will not be balanced...it will be historical. However, we willtry and balance it as well as history allows

**QwertyMIDX** · 02-04-2005, 00:11

Hopefully the new rebel AI on the patch will give the easterns a fight professorspatula. As soon as this HUGE thing finishes downloading I can try it out.

**Ar7** · 02-06-2005, 12:10

I knew this mod was going to be great, but this is beyond great, its...its....wow! After seeing the map and some screenshots from other topics I don't even want to play the original RTW. Could you ease the tention on my nerves and give a slight hint about the release date?

**Crownsteler** · 02-06-2005, 12:52

I guess that the only thing they can tell you is that it isn't going to be tomorrow :P

**Akatchi Barkarot** · 02-06-2005, 17:08

Have some patience and keep thinking: First version will be out in this year.

**khelvan** · 02-07-2005, 02:58

We're working on fine tuning the map now. Once we have done that and tested several concepts, we'll move to closed beta testing. I expect 0.5 to be our last alpha, though that will depend on how well our concept testing goes.

How long will that be? Well, perfection takes time, my friend. I am not sure at the moment. You know...Rome wasn't built in a day...