Suggestions for v0.8

[Tellos Athenaios]

Quick question.Will I be able to play BI and Alexander with .08 downloaded?

Probably not, as BI is RTW 1.6, and not 1.5 - the RTW version EB 0.8 will be using.

There might be a way around this though (IF it is possible to have both a working version of RTW 1.0 and RTW BI):
first install Vanilla RTW, then make a backup of 1.0;
then install BI over the original RTW 1.0;
make another backup of your 1.0 folder;
patch it that backup to 1.5;
install EB 0.8;
play.

The second backup is just for safety: if something should go all wrong, you still have 1.0. You could therefore skip the second backup, and patch your first to 1.5 on which you then could install EB 0.8 and play it.

As I don't have either BI, or Alexander, I'm not sure though: still you could find out for yourself, by trying to do these steps for EB 0.7.4.

You could even try the same with Alexander, resulting in at least 3 versions of RTW on your computer...

[Foot]

Ah no, BI does not overwrite vanilla files (and neither does EB), it sort of acts as an add-on, whereby a seperate .exe tells the game to access different files (BI files) instead of vanilla files. BI files are 1.6, but vanilla files are still 1.5. This is roughly similar to how EB works at the moment. All its files are installed in a seperate folder in the RTW folder, and we use a shortcut with the command line -mod:eb to tell the RomeTW.exe to look in the EB folder for files rather than the vanilla folder. The great thing about this is that you don't need a seperate install of RTW to play EB and vanilla (though other mods that don't use the -mod: command will need a seperate install as usual).

Foot

[scourgeofrome]

Okay I really don't understand all of what you just said (I'm not really computer literate).So what your saying is I can access vanilla stil with EB installed.1.How and 2. Does that mean I can still add on BI and Alexander after .8 comes out. And for backing up files,how do I do that.I tried it once but nothing worked when I tried to install it to the new copy.

[Lovejoy]

What about giving carth some mercs to hire in there "homeland"? I'm playing a carth game right now, but I cant find any.

From what I've understand carth used mostly mercs and alomst no native carth soldiers.

As it is right now its hard to play historical, because I cant find any mercs and it takes years to transport iberians back and forth. (plus iberia doesnt have that many mercs eighter)

The aim should be to make the historical way the easy way, since I pretty sure carth didnt use, gauls, iberians, numbs and whatever only to make it more of a challange. :P

[Foot]

Okay I really don't understand all of what you just said (I'm not really computer literate).So what your saying is I can access vanilla stil with EB installed.1.How and 2. Does that mean I can still add on BI and Alexander after .8 comes out. And for backing up files,how do I do that.I tried it once but nothing worked when I tried to install it to the new copy.

0.8 works in the same way BI works. You'll notice, with BI installed, that there is a seperate folder for BI within the RTW folder, it is in essence a completey different set of files from vanilla. BI is accessed through a seperate .exe file, not the RomeTW.exe for normal RTW. Because they use different .exe files, they are essentially different games and thus have different version numbers. When BI is 1.6, RTW is 1.5. In just the same way that you can choose to play either RTW or BI from the same install, we have modded EB so that you can choose to play RTW and EB from the same install. We are able to do this because we can add a command line to the RomeTW.exe that tells the game to look in a seperate "EB" folder for the modified game files that we use.

This means that on the same install, ie in the same RTW directory, you can have vanilla RTW, BI, Alexander and EB all working seperately and correctly.

the data files for vanilla RTW are found here:
Rome - Total War/data

the BI data files are found here:
Rome - Total War/BI/data

The EB data files are found here:
Rome - Total War/EB/data

Because they are all in seperate data folders the files don't affect each other and thus the all the different games can be played without fear of messing the others up.

Foot

[scourgeofrome]

0.8 works in the same way BI works. You'll notice, with BI installed, that there is a seperate folder for BI within the RTW folder, it is in essence a completey different set of files from vanilla. BI is accessed through a seperate .exe file, not the RomeTW.exe for normal RTW. Because they use different .exe files, they are essentially different games and thus have different version numbers. When BI is 1.6, RTW is 1.5. In just the same way that you can choose to play either RTW or BI from the same install, we have modded EB so that you can choose to play RTW and EB from the same install. We are able to do this because we can add a command line to the RomeTW.exe that tells the game to look in a seperate "EB" folder for the modified game files that we use.

This means that on the same install, ie in the same RTW directory, you can have vanilla RTW, BI, Alexander and EB all working seperately and correctly.

the data files for vanilla RTW are found here:
Rome - Total War/data

the BI data files are found here:
Rome - Total War/BI/data

The EB data files are found here:
Rome - Total War/EB/data

Because they are all in seperate data folders the files don't affect each other and thus the all the different games can be played without fear of messing the others up.

Foot

Does that mean right now I can install Bi with the .74 version of EB?

[Foot]

No, for two reasons. EB 0.74 does not use the - mod: build and so overwrites the vanilla data files. Only if the mod uses the -mod: build can you use BI and vanilla RTW with it. The second reason is that EB 0.74 must have RTW 1.2, but BI must have RTW 1.3 to work (and automatically upgrades RTW when installed).

Foot

[Geoffrey S]

I don't know if it's hardcoded, but is it possible to set the amount of mnai gained for destroying a building? If so, perhaps a building can be created representing a money stockpile for times of need; it takes a while to build, but when completed it can be destroyed when money is running low for instant cash to build much-needed units/buildings.

[Darkarbiter]

0.8 works in the same way BI works. You'll notice, with BI installed, that there is a seperate folder for BI within the RTW folder, it is in essence a completey different set of files from vanilla. BI is accessed through a seperate .exe file, not the RomeTW.exe for normal RTW. Because they use different .exe files, they are essentially different games and thus have different version numbers. When BI is 1.6, RTW is 1.5. In just the same way that you can choose to play either RTW or BI from the same install, we have modded EB so that you can choose to play RTW and EB from the same install. We are able to do this because we can add a command line to the RomeTW.exe that tells the game to look in a seperate "EB" folder for the modified game files that we use.

This means that on the same install, ie in the same RTW directory, you can have vanilla RTW, BI, Alexander and EB all working seperately and correctly.

the data files for vanilla RTW are found here:
Rome - Total War/data

the BI data files are found here:
Rome - Total War/BI/data

The EB data files are found here:
Rome - Total War/EB/data

Because they are all in seperate data folders the files don't affect each other and thus the all the different games can be played without fear of messing the others up.

Foot

Ive been thinking.... doesnt that meen that having the BI folder is essentially the same as having -mod. Because i know that BI mods that alter vanilla files only can work with the BI directory deleted and since 1.5 is the same as 1.6 the only difference between 1.6 and 1.5 is the BI.exe otherwise BI may as well be a mod.

Im a little hazy about the only difference between 1.5 and 1.6 being the exe (and BI folder) though can anyone correct me/back me up? Obviously registry says its 1.6 too but thats not important.

I was wondering, again, about something I noticed in EB. Whenever my thureophoroi or thorakitai are in melee and I order them to attack an other unit than they were attacking first, they start to 'throw' javelins instead. Now, whenever they do such a thing they get slaughtered in droves (a unit of peltastai once killed half my unit of thorakitai that way ). Could this be due to the 'missile' class of the infantry? Some way to fix it?

Also: aren't the current overhand style animations just missile animations? If so, you could try the overhand style formation in XGM (only if you get permission of course) instead.

Use alt right click to use alternate weopen (missle is allways primary weopen). If you use alt right click they will allways go into melee.

[Corinthian Hoplite]

Are Auxilia units going to exist in 0.8? I think I missed them, are they historically incorrect? What about militia units to act as garrissons?

[Corinthian Hoplite]

I'm looking forward to see realistic unit armour/shield/skill values. Vanilla and most mod's stats were so stupid. Ex: a unit with a helmet and greaves having no armour or two units having the same armour value with completely diferent types of armour, skill values based on gameplay rather than reality, all cavalry having 4 shield defense (regardless of the actual shield size) and infantry shields restricted to 2 and 5, representing it's size in a very rough manner.

[Tellos Athenaios]

Use alt right click to use alternate weopen (missle is allways primary weopen). If you use alt right click they will allways go into melee.

Yes, but the point is, that both thorakitai and thurephoroi aren't supposed to pretend that they are some sort of skirmisher. They should be the same sort of unit as hastati in this way that while intended for melee only they have the means to soften the enemy up before closing in. However when they have closed in, they should stick to melee, and to melee only - just like Vanilla Hastati and Principes do.

Methought that this 'fault' could be due to the fact that they are rated as missile infantry, whereas Vanilla Hastati are not.

[Watchman]

Naw. Any and all troops with precursor missile weapons will do that, or at least when they finally get into their thick virtual skulls they're ordered to shoot (they can be a bit slow on the uptake). If you right-click the enemy and they still have ammo left - ie. the cursor changes into that javelin thingy - you're telling them to fire at the enemy period, and if the command gets through the "fog of war" they'll soon start reloading and toss their javelins or whatever at the foe.

This is actually quite useful at times. There's quite a lot of units that have a low armour rating but quite a high defense skill and are thus rather difficult to kill in melee, but them javelins only care about the armour value (and shield)... Judicious use of this technique makes urban assaults against the unarmoured but skilled and numerous African eleutheroi with Libyans rather quicker, for example. And conversely if your unit has AP missiles and non-AP melee weapons (Scutarii come to mind), tossing a volley tends to reduce the numbers of heavily armoured enemies fairly quickly. That all missiles in EB (well, except the javelins on one of those Central Asian light cav... bit of an oversight that one, methinks) have kill rate of round 1 and no melee weapon had above 0.5 doesn't particularly hurt either.

That the soldiers drop everything else and turn into a bit of sitting ducks for the loading and firing sequence is of course a bit troublesome, but may well be worth it given the number of enemies that may well drop in one go. Plus in my experience the throwers usually don't actually suffer too badly, but then again I use Medium battle difficulty...

Anyway, the unit type designation doesn't AFAIK have any game-mechanical effect. It's just there to tell the AI and the assorted formation files where the unit in question is supposed to go and what it's supposed to do; the Other/Missile/Light/Heavy distinction in weapon type AFAIK has no real significance beyond what weapon upgrades the unit gets - in EB nothing gives the upgrade to Missile or Other, but conversely many units have their missiles (typically higher-end infantry with precursors) tagged as for example Light ("simple" in the EDU) instead of Missile ("archery" in the EDU, IIRC) and thus get the bonus (which incidentally affects both the ranged and melee attack value). Thus for example Thureophoroi (whose javelins are rated "missile") never get the upgrade, but Gaesatae (whose javelins are tagged as "simple"/Light) do.

[Sdragon]

Yes, but the point is, that both thorakitai and thurephoroi aren't supposed to pretend that they are some sort of skirmisher. They should be the same sort of unit as hastati in this way that while intended for melee only they have the means to soften the enemy up before closing in. However when they have closed in, they should stick to melee, and to melee only - just like Vanilla Hastati and Principes do.

Vanilla Hastati and Principes have the same javalin throwing problem. Used to drive me nuts. (Lost more than one unit of Hastati because of it before I learned Alt) Any unit that is melee but has a javalin WILL want to throw it if you order an attack, nomatter how retarted that doing so is. So it's vanilla thing and not just a thorakitai one. (Not of course if you hold Alt when ordering an attack)