Re-presenting Imperium TW: General Info and Features

[Atheist_Peace]

Hello Imperium TW fans and TW community.

Although we have already given information about Imperium TW in many ways, we feel it is best to present all of our up to date infromation in one thread, so you can truly get a feel of what our mod is.

Imperium Total War is a modification for RTW: BI. It will feature many factions (detailed below) and have a well made map, with many scripting features and a well balanced game. We will put an emphasis on being historically accurate in our work, but we also put a huge focus on gameplay issues and making the game enjoyable for people to play, not just a history lesson.

The first, all-important detail is the Faction list.

As you may or may not know, we plan to include more than 20 factions in Imperium TW. For information on how this works, you can visit this thread.
To make it easier, I will offer the explanation here as well. What we will be doing is using a regular faction in the game, and switching it using batch files, like this:

We will use this faction to represent numerous factions that weren't included in the initial faction list. What this will do is allow you to play as any of the various factions we will include. You will run a batch file that switches the files around, and makes the extra faction become the one you want. For example: If one of the factions we include this way is Illyria, and another is britons then you can play as both this way:

If you want to play as Illyria, you will run the appropriate batch file and then the campaign will feature a faction called Illyria and the rest of the factions will be there as well. Then you get tired of Illyria and decide to start a campaign as the britons. What you'll do is quit the game, run the batch file for the britons, then reload the game and you now have the britons as a playable faction. You'll notice that the Illyrian area is now rebels, but you will have a full briton faction to play as.

This will extend to about 20-30 new factions you'll have to play with that aren't already included. Obviously, some of these factions will have fewer units and buildings, etc. than others, but they will all be playable and functional. And to reiterate, we are not using the rebel faction as was previously planned, so it will not affect the rebels in any way.

Using the normal 20 factions and this feature, this is the list of factions we will most likely be including, with many more also.

19 Base Factions
-Mauryan Empire
-Republic of Rome
-Carthage
-Makedonia
-Ptolemaic Empire
-Seleukid Empire
-Epirus
-Baktria
-Pontos
-Pergamon
-Nabataea
-Sarmatia
-Armenia
-Parthia
-Dacia
-Germans
-Aedui
-Arverni
-Iberia

Factions added with method mentioned above
-Meroe/Nubia/Ethiopia (Axum)
-Sparta
-Aetolian League
-Achaean League
-Syracuse
-Numidia
-Galatia
-Scythia
-Cyrenaica
-Lybia
-A Briton tribe (you will help us chose which one)
-A second german tribe (again we will want the input of the fans)
-Bosphoran Kingdom
-Bithynia
-Moors or Mauretania
-Thrace
-Yuezhi
-The Sabeans (Arabia Felix)
-Caledonians
...and more, but they are not decided yet

The Rebels:
We will also be going to many lengths to improve the capabilities of the rebels and make them more formidable. The rebels will have strong custom units based on the region you encounter them and many family trees will exist for the different rebels around the map. This will make it possible to modify and improve the rebels via traits, ancillaries and scripting, and it will also make them stronger in general. We also have other plans we are developing.


The Map and AoR:

Another important part of the mod is the map. We will be using Mundus Magnus with our own editing done to many areas to help it fit our mod and factions more appropriately. We will also be working very hard on improving the campaign map AI, something which has more possibilities with the use of BI's features.

We will also be featuring an in-depth Area of Recruiment (AoR). This system is used by other mods such as Rome total Realism, and has proven to add much to gameplay and accuracy. We will feature many different areas with dynamic cultural assimilation methods and units available to you. This will work hand in hand with the mercenary system we aim to implement. We hope to have very dynamic mercenary hiring, that does not remain the same throughout the game. This way, you won't be recruiting hoplites in Massilia in 50 BCE.

Planned Scripting Features

We plan to use scripting extensively in Imperium Total War. Below, I will mention some of our planned scripting features, but some things we want to keep secretive for now.

Some of our planned scripting features:

-Multiple military reforms, this can be used to demonstrate changing army composition, one instance would be the multiple changes that took place in the Roman army over the time span of the game.
-Some scripted invasions: We will most likely script some famous invasions to increase immersion and fun. One example would be hannibal invading Italy.
-Scripts like the "client kingdoms" script. We will use this to represent client factions lending their troops. We are also looking into extending this to buildings.
-Victory Conditions. Although we have the great new feature in BI, which we will very much use, we can also make victory conditions more complex and interesting through scripts.
-Prisoner Exchanges. We are working on a script to simulate similar prisoner exchanges/ransoms to what were found in MTW. We will provide more information on this later on.

Traits and Ancillaries

We will be working on an improved Traits and Ancillaries system. We will most likely integrate things like the Cherry Vanilla Pack and Genetics Aging Family and Health mod. We will also be designing our own traits, which we will discuss more in depth later.



Of course, a crucial part of a good mod is it's units. Here are a few shots of some of our units:









Of course, those are just a few of our many, many units we have done. If you want to see a much larger assortment of unit shots, view this topic: http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=32470 Or you can see some cool pictures of our units in battle, Here

You can visit Imperium TW's IRC channel also.

Server: irc.quakenet.org
Channel: #imperiumtw

If you are interested in joining the mod team, please visit the Recruitment Threa or just send me a PM.

Thanks very much for reading, and we hope you enjoyed it! If you're interested in it, please post suggestions and feedback, and of course questions are always welcome.

[GiantMonkeyMan]

i love the idea of having many factions! this will be great! but how big will the files be to download?

[Atheist_Peace]

Since we aren't finished yet, we don't know. However we hope it won't be too big.

[Geoffrey S]

It's looking good, and the multiple factions trick is a great touch. How are the rebels going to work in this mod? Will diplomatic contact be possible with rebels, and will rebels fight each other and generally also attempt to conquer neighboring lands?

Anyway, looks most promising!

[Atheist_Peace]

It's looking good, and the multiple factions trick is a great touch. How are the rebels going to work in this mod? Will diplomatic contact be possible with rebels, and will rebels fight each other and generally also attempt to conquer neighboring lands?

Anyway, looks most promising!

Diplomatic contact with rebels will certainly be possible. The other things, we are working on, but we can't state for certain at the moment.

[Atheist_Peace]

Weekly Update #10

Hello Imperium TW Fans and TW community!

Over the past week we have brought you some exciting news. First was the news about our plan for 'unlimited' factions. And of course the news that we are using BI to build our modification, as well as that we successfully converted our map to BI.

Here is a pic of the map so far: Note that not all the factions are in place and it will not be so empty



We have also been working on units of course, and coding them into BI.

Some of our latest units:

Pergamene Tarentine Cavalry



Nabataean Spearmen



Nabataean Slingers



Carthaginian General



Pergamene Peltast



Mauryan Heavy Swordsmen



The above skins were created by spirit_of_rob and Flavius Quintus


Another piece of big news we have is that we have received permission from the talented Atilla Reloaded to use his Galatian skins for our Galatian faction and AoR.
Here is a picture i took of 8 of the beautiful skins in photoshop.




We hope you enjoyed this update and please give feedback and suggestions to our work and plans, and don't forget to give input on which 'unlimited' factions you want us to include. And please visit our TWC forum for further info on the mod.

Thanks for reading!

[Dromikaites]

It's looking good, and the multiple factions trick is a great touch. How are the rebels going to work in this mod? Will diplomatic contact be possible with rebels, and will rebels fight each other and generally also attempt to conquer neighboring lands?

Anyway, looks most promising!

Well, the rebels can offer ceasfires if they are controlled by AI. They do so in some mods already not because of the mod but because the RTW engine allows it. So if you put a rebel diplomat on the map or if he can be trained by the rebels, he'll ofer sometimes ceasefires. Funny enough if as humans we make the rebels playable and train diplomats, we can't even offer ceasfires like AI does. I'm currently looking into that among other things because undesranding the causes of this asimetry might lead to a breakthrough in modding diplomacy beyond what we can do currently.

We can, however, simulate some diplomatic arrangements between the player and the rebels through scripting instead of the diplomat's actions (a player-controlled diplomat can only bribe rebels).

Rebel subfactions behave towards each other quite like the Roman factions before the civil war. But they will invade everybody elses territories.

[Geoffrey S]

We can, however, simulate some diplomatic arrangements between the player and the rebels through scripting instead of the diplomat's actions (a player-controlled diplomat can only bribe rebels).

How do you mean this? Is it something along the lines of a protectorate, so if another faction attacks a rebel region they ask for assistance?

[Atheist_Peace]

Weekly Update #11
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Hello Imperium TW Fans and TW community!

Before you see some new units, here are a couple of the things we've been doing in development this week.

First, we have a plan that you hopefully will all like when you hear about it in detail. We plan to use a new feature we are developing to counter the problem of having too many sieges on the campaign map, many people have expressed dislike for having too many sieges and we feel we have a solution for this problem. We will not reveal it yet as the details are not ironed out now.

Two other major things that have gone on in development this week are some very in depth research into the functioning of the campaign and battle AI by two of our members, and that our AoR has been implemented. The AoR has been implemented and we are starting development on new buildings to help our system function. We of course do not have all of the units completed yet, but this will come in due time. A more in depth preview of our AoR should be posted soon.

And of course, a few units that have been developed in the past week.

Cretan Archers:



Thracians (yes the square around the shield will be gone, its just the alpha channel)



Egyptian Machimoi: (wip)



Pergamene Hetairoi



We hope you enjoyed this update and please be sure to give feedback and suggestions.

Thanks for reading!