WarMap v1.0: Released

[IceTorque]

Ciaran, First let me thank you for your detailed feedback.

Now I'll try to explain my reasoning for the changes.

The game starts post marion (as far as unit selection goes anyways)
All men were created equal and the aim of the unit stats was to:
Allow for more realistic advantages of moral, experience and terrain only and NOT level 2 unit can beat level 1 unit which is so gamey and creates a fundamental gameplay flaw that is apparent in all TW games.

e.g. I strive to build armies composed entirely of elite units, but when i do i am rarely if ever challenged by an AI army of equal quality. I concede STW was'nt too bad but MTW and RTW are. Hence the need to create a more level playing field with what i think are more realistic advantages and my claim of "The most consistently challenging campaigns and battles".

Brutii use the urbans, julli have cohorts i, scipii have cohorts ii, senate has praetorians. This was to keep the roman armies uniform.
Barbarians and most other factions have a wider variety to achieve the exact opposite.

Gothic cav only at the start but when you conquer rome you can recruit praetorian cav and praetorian cohorts but only in Rome of course.
As you will find in all other capitols you will be able to recruit a special unit.
Which represents your regional/mercenary troops. Also as your empire grows so does your troop diversity.
But the player and AI's powerbase is always in their respective homeland.

Normal non-retrainable mercs were deleted to keep the AI's armies consistent in quality and numbers.

Cities starting off well developed was necessary to stop the AI from depleting their populations by training rubbish units, and basically going bankrupt and not advancing up the tech tree.
Also to speed up the game opening and allow for the start to be relatively easy and get harder as the game develops.
The exact opposite to vanilla.

Squalor i never did like it, and i wanted the AI to direct their attention at me or expanding their empire not fighting endless uprisings.

Diplomats, assasins, spies were restricted to being recruited from capitols only in an effort to reduce their numbers and to reduce micro-management by countering them all.
I was playing a version with none of the above and the feeling of a huge burden being lifted was tremendous allowing me to concentrate on the core gameplay attraction of TW. which is of course the battles.
But i concede they are a necessary evil.

I concede the moral is a bit high and units rarely rout but again i thought this preferable to time wasting battles of chasing routers. Also to have consistency in the quality of battles for more of a challenge.

Archery range again to me looking at the scale of the battle maps seems more realistic. I once shot an arrow out of an ordinary looking bow which travelled at least 300 metres. and i was a total n00b at it.

v1.1 just makes all factions playable as was intended.
Vanilla-WarMap is just the map with all vanilla units/stats/buildings etc.
It has been submitted to TWC downloads section and should be available soon.
Aso my first post has been updated with a new link.

I hope this helps in explaining the method to my madness.

[Ciaran]

Thanks for clearing that up, I´ll download v.1.1 and the vanilla map. Your approach is good if you´re going for the fighting part, but occassionally I like some empire-management, too. Great work, anyhow

[Boudicca]

I do think that this map has great potential to be used mod wise. It is simply great work by IceTorqe and so absoultuely delighfully huge....

[IceTorque]

WarMap has been updated to v1.3 for RTW v1.5

[LestaT]

It looks great, the map, honestly. The only thing is that I prefer to start the game much earlier (like vanilla or RTR) and before Marian Reform. Guess I'll use your map and.. mhmh.. if you be so kind to remind me what else the files I should tinker ... the desc_strat obviously .. :-)

[IceTorque]

It looks great, the map, honestly. The only thing is that I prefer to start the game much earlier (like vanilla or RTR) and before Marian Reform. Guess I'll use your map and.. mhmh.. if you be so kind to remind me what else the files I should tinker ... the desc_strat obviously .. :-)

I would suggest the Vanilla-WarMap. This version uses just the map files,
all else is vanilla. Units, stats, gameplay etc.

[LestaT]

Thanks for the reply. Just to clarify. meaning if I choose Imperial Campaign I will get your map instead of vanilla one , with starting units etc and all at vanilla ?