Accurate city maps

[Kull]

Thanks for sharing those pix, brad. And that pretty much cinches it. I'm going.

[shifty157]

I having some major problems with saving textures. I have no idea what could be wrong. I created a new thread in the "modding questions" forum. If anyone knows anything about this i could really use some help. This problem is really setting back my progress.
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=63287



Again thank you nemesisvsbrad. Any information is a big help.

[Angadil]

I'm awfully sorry to hear, Shifty. Wish I could be of some help, but I am totally useless when it comes to graphics...
Good luck

[shifty157]

Well ive still been working along. Finding time when i can. Despite my textures not having an alpha channel.

I dont plan on posting any more pictures until im done with the first settlement level. Itll be more impressive to see it all at once i figure.

[QwertyMIDX]

Well I can't wait to be impressed.

Have you tried posting in a more technical sub-forum about your alpha channel problem? EB is obviously chronically short on these sort of skills so we may not be the best folks to ask. Incidently that's also the reason we're so happy to have your help.

[Teleklos Archelaou]

Yeah, we're doing great on some areas, better than great even, but in others like this we've got almost nothing going. But I just had the same problem you had and I fiddled around with it a bit and got it to work. I dunno what the answer is really though. I posted on the thread you asked the question in. Thanks again for all of this shifty!!

[shifty157]

Well I can't wait to be impressed.

Have you tried posting in a more technical sub-forum about your alpha channel problem? EB is obviously chronically short on these sort of skills so we may not be the best folks to ask. Incidently that's also the reason we're so happy to have your help.

Well ive posted my problem for several days now in the "modding questions" forum. But i guess nobody knows or nobody cares or just nobody looks in that forum anymore. Im debating simply reinstalling photoshop but i figure ill do as much as i can before i get to that point because of my extreme unfounded fear that photoshop will not work when i reinstall and then ill have nothing.

[QwertyMIDX]

Well I hope Teleklos' issue was the same as your's and we're all good to go again.

[Greek_fire19]

Haha, awesome! I'm playing as the sarmatians ATM and it would make it sooo much more interesting if all the steppe tribes I'm fighting had buildings like this.

[Angadil]

Haha, awesome! I'm playing as the sarmatians ATM and it would make it sooo much more interesting if all the steppe tribes I'm fighting had buildings like this.

Hi, Greek_fire19. It's nice you have chosen the Sarmatians. We are a bit worried about problems playing this faction. Some were obvious and are already being corrected. For others, however we would really need feedback from the players. Sadly, not many people seem to play as them. Therefore, we would really appreciate your impressions and information on your campaign. However, let's not hijack this tread. Perhaps, if you go ahead and tell us, you could post in this thread, or maybe even start a new one in the "EB - Gameplay Guides" subforum. Good luck with the nomads!

[Greek_fire19]

Yeah, I'm still pretty early on, but it's a lot of fun.

Fortunately for you, I'm sick atm, so I got a lot of time, you can expect a full review (with screenshots) in the gameplay forum in a couple of days when I'v played a more complete campaign.

[nemesisvsbrad]

for those who like nomad warfare, I wanna give some useful info as much as I can. We know that RTW every unit has 2 attack options. In real life nomads had more than that. A horse archer had a total of 60 arrows. 30 arrows for assault only. 30 arrows for defense. Each horsemen had 2 bows for different purposes. the 30 assault arrows are light (short) and not designed to cause so much damage. When nomads do the fake withdrawal, then they use bigger bows with the long, heavy, armour piercing 30 arrows to shoot down the pursuers. Their horses are trained to enable their riders shoot accurately. The masters of psychological warfare, nomads, had to confuse their enemies about their true numbers. Ages from 15 to 60 were required to serve their masters and women were trained in archery. Because of their natural way of living, the nomads adapted the new situation so quickly than any other foes. They see agricultural society as inferior way of living and treated them as low lives. Their religious practices are worship of water, fire, wind, land and the most importantly tingri (the eternal sky). They believed that every mountain has its own masters and those invisible master would be pleased if you pay the proper respect. Even nowdays some nomads on Mongolia still has these belief system. Ancient mongols never allowed themselves eat birds and fish. They were afraid to anger the underworld lords. Christian sects and Muslim sects were popular among them, too. Nomad swords were curved, single bladed and half moon shaped like Arabs. It's good for slashing than stabbing. Some rich nomad warlords bought their swords from Damascis, Syria. Nomad lances had hooks on the front and designed to bring down the enemy in case he missed him on the charge. He would quickly turn around his lance and drop him on the ground (with the hook) and finish. Some arrows had different purposes than others. One of them would be the "whistle" arrow that designed to make a terrifying sound when loose. It would make sound like thunderbolt and cause the enemy panick. Another one would be slashing arrows that designed to cut limbs to terrify the enemy. When nomads escape they use metal objects to halt the pursuers. This metal objects had spikes that no matter how it lands one of the pikes would always upside. Constant warfare among themselves or the Chinese, the nomads were experts at warfare. Their discipline were unmatched in military history.

[shifty157]

Those are some very detailed tactics nemesis. Its too bad however that the RTW engine wont allow for us to make any of them possible though.

[nemesisvsbrad]

I was just checking what happened yesterday in world history at rotten.com and saw this:

Apr 9 1241

Mongols collect nine bags of ears after a battle with Henry, Duke of Poland, at Liegnitz. A feigned retreat separated the 500 Teutonic Knights from their infantry, and the Mongols slaughtered the entire infantry. Apparently you can fit 25,000 ears into nine bags

Too bad for the Hungarians, Germans and others. And remember only right ear counts as a head, not the left ones. This battle was a result of brilliant actions of the two of Genggis' best generals, Subedei and Zebu. His another general Muhulai was fighting the southern Song dynasty in China so he couldn't be part of it. When Gengis called Muhulai for a conference, Muhulai committed suicide out of shame, because he couldn't subdue some parts of the fragmented chinese forces completely. Zebu wasn't really Zebu's real name. When Zebu's tribe fought against Gengis army, Zebu's arrow wounded Gengis' throat causing him fell unconsious. After the battle, impressed by his mastery of bow, Gengis spared his life and promoted him to general. Zebu was the man. BTW, Zebu means "arrow" in Mongolian.

[nikolai1962]

Well ive posted my problem for several days now in the "modding questions" forum. But i guess nobody knows or nobody cares or just nobody looks in that forum anymore. Im debating simply reinstalling photoshop but i figure ill do as much as i can before i get to that point because of my extreme unfounded fear that photoshop will not work when i reinstall and then ill have nothing.

Unfortunately, i think there are only a few people who understand the graphical stuff .

[shifty157]

Ok. Theres alot more to settlements than i expected and as a result things have gotten more complex. I cant find anything about what im currently doing anywhere else on the boards (these and others) so it seems im researching completely new ground. That said. It will obviously take me a little longer to put everything together. But no need to fear I have everything competely figured out. As far as my research has gone at least. In a day or two I may arguably be the most skilled person in the community in the area of settlements. I havent seen anyone else do what i currently am doing.

In other news. Work is progressing. Although things are getting progressively busier in my life. This coming week i may have no time for modding at all and perhaps very little the week after. But beyond that my time frees up considerably.

[Teleklos Archelaou]

Cunctator has been doing some great work with settlement plans for us recently shifty. He might be able to answer some questions, but he doesn't do anything new with skinning or modelling or that kind of stuff. But he is making it so that our eastern greek cities will have a combination of greek and eastern dwellings, and that we get to keep some egyptian buildings inside old egyptian cities. Very exciting stuff!

[shifty157]

I dont have any questions. The way the settlement system works is pretty straight forward. Itll just take some time and some patience to really explore all of its ins and outs and unfortunatly thats not something that someone else could really help me with.

Although there are some things that i thought were impossible before that i now know how to do and the settlement will look that much better for it.

[Kull]

Shifty - had you seen the Settlement Editor?

[abou]

Shifty - had you seen the Settlement Editor?

So, what you are saying is that we should have all seven hills in Roma.

[shifty157]

I have seen the settlement editor.

The problem with trying to make historic cities however (such as rome or carthage or any of the others) is that while it is possible to do you can only have one settlement plan for each level of city for each culture. So you could make Rome and replace the huge city settlement plan and that would work fine as long as rome was the only huge city. As soon as another roman city became a huge city it would look exactly like rome as well. By the end of the game every city in italy would be a clone of rome and this would be rather odd.

That said however. I think it would be possible to make one of a kind historical cities . . .

But this is something ill have to do more research into. If its possible it would take quite a huge amount of work.

Actually. The more i think about it the more im almost positive that its possible to get around this limitation. The settlement plan system is much more flexible than i first thought it was. Now if we could only make BPI files we could do anything.

[The_Mark]

So you could make Rome and replace the huge city settlement plan and that would work fine as long as rome was the only huge city. As soon as another roman city became a huge city it would look exactly like rome as well.

Actually, you can specify a plan set for a specific settlement in the descr_strat.txt, so that's not a problem.

faction	seleucid, balanced caesar
denari 5000
settlement
{
	level city
	region Latium2

	year_founded 0
	population 8770
	settlement_tax 51
	plan_set default_set
	faction_creator seleucid
	building
	{
		type core_building governors_palace
	}

Beat you to The Mark, c.

*badam-chingg*

[cunctator]

You can define plan sets with 5 levels for every culture, for every city in descr_settlement_plan.txt idependently. I've already made some for 0.8.

In desrc_Strat these plan sets can be assigned to different cities instead of the default set.

[shifty157]

Ok. I didnt know that.

Well about 30 minutes of hard thought just became obselete. Oh well. Thats really about thirty-thousand times easier than the way i was thinking it would have to be done.

[Teleklos Archelaou]

Any progress in implementing the yurts or gers shifty?

[Steppe Merc]

Here are some representations of the windsock standards the Sarmatians and Parthians used, which the Romans adopted.

[Angadil]

Those are very good examples of the general look of the thing. However, I'd rather not rely too heavily on the head of the draco standard of the 1st pic. It has details added from a later Roman draco exacavated in Niederbieber, Germany (most notably the crest) which are probably inadequate for the earlier Sarmatian wind-sock standards.

It is quite possible that many Sarmatian standards in EB's time were just simpler wind-socks like the example below.

Archaeology has not found anything like the Niederbieber draco headin Sarmatian contexts (though, if we consider that the whole Roman army has left just one draco head to us, this needs not be terribly definitive). In contrast, metal staff-tops like the one that can be seen (or at least guessed) in the pic above are quite common and, as in the pic, windsocks may have been attached to them. A couple of examples of those staff-tops:


Nonetheless, dragon-like heads may have been around too and I think some variety of designs is actually good. I'd suggest modelling those heads after the examples from Trajan's column, which are somewhat closer to EB's time. Here they are:

[shifty157]

Ok. Thanks for the pictures. They helped alot.

Over the past week or so i have been overwhelmed with work and have not had any chance to mod. Im just reaching the worst of this. By next weekend i should be back on track and hopefully ill have somehting for you in a short time after.

[edyzmedieval]

The Getai used the same windosock standards.

Anyways Shifty, any progress on the stuff?

[Teleklos Archelaou]

He's not been able to work on anything for the past couple of weeks. He will try to get something going later this week or next weekend.