Suggest a faction

[orwell]

I've given up waiting for .8, they need to release .75.
I've been leaning towards Carthage but how complete are they? I've already played the Romani several times. Any particularily unique factions that I should try? Ptolmics?

[Dayve]

Do what i'm doing buddy...

Uninstall RTW entirely and build up some anticipation for the 1.5 port release.

[abou]

Yeah, we are all very anxious. The good part though is that several EB team members appear to be professors, who should now have plenty of time with summer on its way. Ergo, more time devoted to scripting.

[stalin]

Double post sorry

[Slider6977]

Carthage is among the most complete factions in the game. I find the Romani, Baktria, and Macedon, along with Carthage (#1) to be the most fun in my opinion. All are pretty complete factions, Romani and Carthage especially. However, unlike Rome, all these other three factions will be in the financial decline after the first turn.

With carthage this is pretty easy to get under control, I always disband all but one or two of my fleets, but keep all my troops intact because I can use nothing but my starting army in sicily and africa to conquer the rest of western-north africa. Then fly my iberian cavalry and infantry north to get retrained and ready to pillage Iberia. Very fun faction with a great selection of troops.

Macedon is a little bit trickier. You are a little more in debt, and can either disband some units and a couple fleets (which I always hate disbanding units), or you can blitz either Athens or north to Sardika. This will stop your debt but you must make some more moves to start gaining good income. Maybe attack the weakened Eperios. Only watch their elephants.

Baktria is in much the same boat as Macedon. You must blitz south or north to conquer an additional settlement to be in good shape financially. I suggest teaming up your initial armies and blitz the closest southern province. Then build up and go for the india before they have nothing but stone walls with a full stack of Indian elephants and Indian longbowmen.

[stalin]

Well if you recall a lot of players left medieval and its' mods after rome was released. I for one am gona switch to medieval 2 as soon as that comes out the graphic whore that i am. That is not far away anymore. I strongly second the motion for 0.75 or at least making the material for it available to those that want to upgrade their 1.2 game. There is nothing wrong with the gameplay in 1.2: factions expand there is challenge on the battlefield and so on. I just think that the team is running out of time even tho there are still people playing MTW mods around the majority will move on.

[Krusader]

Well if you recall a lot of players left medieval and its' mods after rome was released. I for one am gona switch to medieval 2 as soon as that comes out the graphic whore that i am. That is not far away anymore. I strongly second the motion for 0.75 or at least making the material for it available to those that want to upgrade their 1.2 game. There is nothing wrong with the gameplay in 1.2: factions expand there is challenge on the battlefield and so on. I just think that the team is running out of time even tho there are still people playing MTW mods around the majority will move on.

Ever modded a RTW mod? The EB team wants to finish off this MOD and that means not creating extra work for ourselves. a 0.75 will not happen, as we are focusing all our energies on getting 0.8 done.

[stalin]

How much effort can there be in adding missing units. unit cards and sprites and fixing the recruitment issues? Hmmm. the 0.8 is gonna need fixing too mind you.

[Rodion Romanovich]

I've given up waiting for .8, they need to release .75.
I've been leaning towards Carthage but how complete are they? I've already played the Romani several times. Any particularily unique factions that I should try? Ptolmics?

Makedonia is fun. The first part is a bit challenging (not much for me ), but then it gets easier if you pick your next conquests (after dealing with Koinon Hellenon and Epeiros) wisely. If you want a quick interesting campaign part (the initial part of a Makedonia campaign) with a pretty complete faction I suggest Makedonia. I'm having a lot of fun with Makedonia right now with my current campaign which has reached about 90% of the faction objectives (but the Ptolemaioi who are my enemies happen to have both the Seleucids and Carthage as protectorates, so it's a tough fight - I just wiped out 7 full stacks of Ptolemees in 3 turns outside Sidon ).

[Slider6977]

How much effort can there be in adding missing units. unit cards and sprites and fixing the recruitment issues? Hmmm. the 0.8 is gonna need fixing too mind you.

If it is so easy why don't you sign up and help. Or do you just want to sit back and complain that work is not being done. The fact is they didn't even have to release the beta. It is a free mod that is very fun and has to deal with a lot of hardcoded issues. You might as well uninstall this mod and sit back for Medieval 2, because you are not helping the cause.

[stalin]

Wow you're in a good mood. The opposition released a finished version of 1.2 ( gold I believe it was called) before moving on to 1.5. As much as I love to hate "the other mod" I believe strongly that it was a right way to do things. Squashing any suggestions the fans might have is not a good way to get more people interested in helping you rude little man...
Edit: Oh wait I just realised: you're not even member so why am I discussing this with you anyways

[Ludens]

Wow you're in a good mood. The opposition released a finished version of 1.2 ( gold I believe it was called) before moving on to 1.5. As much as I love to hate "the other mod" I believe strongly that it was a right way to do things.

I realize everyone is eager for an update, but I really doubt a 1.2 upgrade will take less time than a 1.5 port now that the building bug has been "solved" (that is: declared not to be a serious problem). In fact, it will probably take more time, as the team has to downgrade their work again. Anyway, why should the EB team keep working on a 1.2 version when 1.5 is superior in every way?

Also, I think you should mind your tone a little better, stalin. That message is still rude.

[stalin]

I will, this being my last post

[Cheexsta]

How much effort can there be in adding missing units. unit cards and sprites and fixing the recruitment issues? Hmmm. the 0.8 is gonna need fixing too mind you.

You clearly do not understand modding.

UI images aren't *too* hard, but it does get rather confusing. You have to make sure the name of the file is right and that it's in the right place. You can't simply tell a text file to look at a certain image; you have to actually name the UI file so it's the same as the building or unit name. Then you have to put them in the right place: sometimes they go in "culture" folders, sometimes they go in "faction" folders. From my understanding, the main problem with converting EB as far as UI images go is that they had to change the cultures around, so all the culture swap issues from 1.2 are fixed. In doing so, they have to move all the UI images from one culture folder to another (eg since the Greek factions in the game had the "roman" culture, the relevant UI images would have to be moved to the "greek" culture folder).

Sprites? I still havent gotten the hang of making sprites. It involves telling the game which units you need sprites for, and making it generate sprites for you. Not easy, since some preference settings have to be set to a specific value. You can't generate sprites when you have anti-aliasing on, for example. Then you still have to reference your shiny new .tga files properly.

And then the real difficult bit. Have you seen EB's recruitment files? Do you even know which file this is? It is extremely difficult to comprehend. Take, for example, what the files call "steppe cavalry scythianhorsearchers" - they require the internal faction name "armenia" (which, IIRC, is the Sauromatae...which kinda makes sense...). But they also require the hidden resources alpha, beta, gamma, delta, zeta, eta and also requires the absense of the hidden resource theta. Do you know what this means? I sure as heck don't; all I know is that it's restricting recruitment to one or two regions. And this is only one line for their recruitment! I count 14 instances of this unit in this particular block of the file. 14!

Now, I will have to disagree with the suggestion to make a v0.75. Simply put, the EB team has already put a ton of effort into porting their mod to the 1.5 patch. Backtracking now would mean practically having to start all over again, and that means more waiting, more wasted time when they could be making the 1.5 version. Which, from my experiences with comparing RTR Gold to RTR Platinum, is definately worth the effort; on every level, you will see changes in the AI. I've seen changes in their strategic moves (particularly sieges), and I've seen changes in the battlefield AI (how many times in 1.2 have you seen a numerically superior enemy split up his attack and surround you completely?).

Have patience mate, that's all I'm trying to say

[orwell]

By .75, I'm suggesting just release whatever they have done now and amuse me. Since that won't happen, I went ahead with carthage and am finding the seeminly low morale to be a real problem. Romani I can just run into the enemy and usually find them a minute later. Of course, this just means its that much more exciting. Romani H/H seems a challenge, but I think for carthage I'm going to restart as VH/M, my phalanx tactics aren't quite up to par.

[Wardo]

How much effort can there be in adding missing units. unit cards and sprites and fixing the recruitment issues? Hmmm. the 0.8 is gonna need fixing too mind you.

Honestly, I've tried playing with unit profile images, and if you want to know how hard it is, ask Obelics.

I have NO idea how annoying and how massive the workload of this mod is.

I have NO desire to help with any of the heavy stuff (considering I can't even make a decent unit profile tga), it's much more difficult than it appears from the surface.

But to everyone impatient, I'm also impatient with the slow progress of Mount & Blade, but there are other games, and even other things to do, other than EB, Rome Total War and M&B.

In all honesty, if one can't offer help, then just screw it and go play or do something else, come back a few weeks later and you'll have your mod or game updated.

[Equilibrium]

Guys, calm down a bit; I know everyones eager to see a "complete" version with fixed bugs/new features etc. We are implimenting so much new stuff practically everywhere and we're all just humans with private lifes that we can't neglect, and we want 0.8 to be as good as possible. So please be patient and enjoy the previews we are giving you, 0.8 will be a great version, but it will take it's time(hopefully not too long).

[orwell]

Humans? A myth. EB uses immortals otherwise it wouldn't be so good. And this private life thing must be a lie. There is no life except for a RTW mod. Will we be seeing any new previews again before it comes out?

[Equilibrium]

Will we be seeing any new previews again before it comes out?

Sure

[paullus]

darn, i guess that means its not coming out all that soon. previews are nice though (ESPECIALLY if the preview features one of the new factions, or a faction that has undergone significant changes!)

[Equilibrium]

It won't take too long, I can assure you that in a month or 2 you'll be happily playing 0.8 and thinking something like "Damn it was worth the wait".

[Dayve]

It won't take too long, I can assure you that in a month or 2 you'll be happily playing 0.8 and thinking something like "Damn it was worth the wait".

I sure will... I haven't played any form of RTW for about a month now, i uninstalled it to build up the anticipation and i've been learning more about Romes history so i can recreate a perfectly accurate Roman expansion when 0.8 is released...

[khelvan]

When all development has switched to a new version, trying to put out a piecemeal version on the older platform makes no sense at all.

We couldn't finish off a version in 1.2 because the major bugs we faced were caused by 1.2. What is the point of continuing to develop on a flawed version when, ostensibly, the point of the beta was to find and fix bugs?

[Trithemius]

Is there anything that people can do to continue to help? Or have most of the bugs been found and attended to by now?

I've started playing again (Oblivion + real life sort of owned me for a while there...) and want to know if I should be taking notes and screenshots if and when weird things happen.

[khelvan]

At this point, we have learned all we can learn from 1.2, I am afraid. 1.5 will be somewhat of a fresh start for us in finding bugs, and I think we've pretty much addressed all of the miscellaneous problems, or are at least aware of them.

It never hurts to collect information, but the person who was doing our bug collecting has semi-retired (Simetrical). If someone has a good amount of time and wants to help, they can continue his work in the bug area; this would be greatly appreciated.

[Krusader]

At this point, we have learned all we can learn from 1.2, I am afraid. 1.5 will be somewhat of a fresh start for us in finding bugs, and I think we've pretty much addressed all of the miscellaneous problems, or are at least aware of them.

It never hurts to collect information, but the person who was doing our bug collecting has semi-retired (Simetrical). If someone has a good amount of time and wants to help, they can continue his work in the bug area; this would be greatly appreciated.

Put an application at the EB Required Help thread and leave behind a blood sample and 3 hair samples from random parts of your body. We will come back to any applicant when results have returned from the lab.

If the vB Spellcheck detecs any spellinge errors in your application you will be disqualified.

[abou]

It won't take too long, I can assure you that in a month or 2 you'll be happily playing 0.8 and thinking something like "Damn it was worth the wait".

Heh, and then about two weeks later everyone will be clamoring for a 0.9 release.

[Aymar de Bois Mauri]

Heh, and then about two weeks later everyone will be clamoring for a 0.9 release.

Two weeks? Nah. Two days...

[Dayve]

Yeah like when there's a tiny bug like the Romans having the Seleukid flag... There will be 15 new threads per day... ZOMG TEH ROMANS HAVE SELKID FLAG I DEMAND NEXT VERSION!

[Trithemius]

Yeah like when there's a tiny bug like the Romans having the Seleukid flag... There will be 15 new threads per day... ZOMG TEH ROMANS HAVE SELKID FLAG I DEMAND NEXT VERSION!

Doesn't 1.5 culture code fix this? OMG the whingers will need to find something new to complain endlessly about.