Colosseum: Total War

[Lucjan]

I've been giving this a great deal of thought as it slowly occured to me just exactly what our precious Rome was missing... THE GAMES!

There have been countless ideas tossed around for full, partial or even only supplementary alterations to Rome, but the greatest thing about the republic and later the empire has evaded us since Rome's original release. The gladiatorial games.

This mod will seek to add historically known gladiator types to Rome and maybe a few extra nasties such as lions or leapords. Intended to be played with the smallest unit sizes on custom battles only to recreate the action of Rome's great Colosseum, I'm also hoping that it may also be able to include at least three city variants to replicate the Colloseum itself.

This mod will require at least 2 interested skinners/modelors, and someone with strong knowledge of battle map and structure editting.

As my ideas stand now, C:TW will add the following to custom battles (only custom battles, as so not to interfere with other peoples mods and all the hard work they put into it).

Andabatei - Chainmail armored cavalry similar to the eastern kataphraktoi.
Bestarii - Spear or knife armed gladiators who excelled in combat against beasts.
Dimachaeri - Gladiators who wielded a sword in each hand.
Eques - Fought from horseback with a spear and sword.
Essedari - Celtic style charioteers
Saggitarii - Mounted bowmen.
Secutores -
Mirmillones -
Samnite -
Hoplomachus -
Scissores - https://i9.photobucket.com/albums/a5.../scissores.jpg
Thraces -
Velites - Javelin armed gladiators.

Any interest is appreciated, contact me if you've got modding experience and would like to help.

[Comrade Alexeo]

I'd be willing to do some skinning and research work. If its possible to use GMAX for RTW modeling, I can do some of that too, as my 3DS Max trials have run out...


I don't particularly see how engaging this would be though. All you would do is select a gladiator unit, right-click to attack... and then... what, watch? Since RTW is stats and not skilled base it would just be He With Biggest Sword Wins essentially.



EDIT: I've tried doing some modeling in GMAX, and it seems to work... and then, suddenly, I find that I cannot switch around heads. Whenever I reload them or merge them, they almost literally explode and disappear from sight. :(

[Lucjan]

Historically certain gladiator types were intentionally paired against others to provide the most entertainment because of their natural difficulty of performance against one another. For example.

Secutores were paired against Ratiari because the ratiari had difficulty getting the net to hook a Secutors sloped helmet. Resulting in the secutors name, which means "chaser" in English, when the ratiari realised it couldn't tie his opponent down and ran like heck.
Thracians were paired against hoplomachus or samnites because their speed gave them an advantage over the weightyness of their opponents bulk in armor.
There are only (to my knowledge) 5 documented images of a scissores gladiator in existance, all of them in the east, and it is assumed they would be fielded against a medium opponent like a mirmillo, who would have trouble dealing with the scissores hook.

I could continue but the point is, that gladiator games really were just as tactically involved as full fledged battles between opposing armies, it was a matter of strategic application between the two opponents.

I would presume to recreate this by using some of romes features like "strong against armor" "strong against cavalry", etc.

For example, the computer takes 2 units of mirmillo and a secutor into the pits, the player chooses ratiaris, samnites, and a velites. The samnites, being heavily armored, could hold the two mirmillo while the ratiari skirmish with the secutor, the velites using their javelins to take out the more lightly armored secutor chasing around the ratiari, freeing up both the velites and ratiari to help their samnite allies against the medium mirmillo units.

[Woad Warrior]

Well, all the different gladiator units would have unique strengths and weaknesses, so there would be some tactics involved.

It would be cool if you could edit cities to appear as a colosseum so the units could fight inside it.

[Lucjan]

We know it's possible to alter buildings...so if buildings could be changed to appear as columns and walls, which were most certainly known to have been erected inside the colusseum pits to make fights more interesting sometimes, we could definately have a really interesting battle map.

[Crusader Invasion]

How are you going to make 1 man units?

[Lucjan]

Unforetunatly, as I don't believe it is possible to make one man units, some minor concessions will have to be made. Using the smallest of the unit sizes available, which would be for vanilla arcani, and using the small setting in the video section of the options, the units would be small enough to be considered a gladiator stable. So in selecting four units, you would, in essence, be taking four, seperate, eight man stables, into the colosseum.

In my opinion, a unit of 8 is more than sufficient to make it small enough to represent a large gladiatoral game without having to sacrifice gameplay.

The largest battles possible in this way would include twenty stables on both sides, thats 320 men total...the size of a regular campaign battle between two armies each with only 2 units.

[snevets]

Hmm no the smallest unit size I've been able to work is 4, where its only two on small settings. That would be fully realistic, since gladiators often fought in teams.

You realize you could make this a fully interactive adventure type game- you could have a campaign map where you complete against other schools- and when you win in an arena you've bested that city's gladiators and it becomes 'your turf' to recruit local gladiators and profit from local games (so winning in an arena replaces city conquest in RTW). You could start out with just a small 'camp' which would amount to your gladiator training school.

You talked about animals- you could have the rebel faction be mother nature, so that your gladiators traveling around the countryside would have to fight animals on the way.

I don't agree with what was said about it being uninteresting, potentially it could be very cool, with alot of work.

[Seasoned Alcoholic]

Yeah this is an interesting concept. You'd probably need to build a new provincial campaign map (or modify the Prologue / Sons Of Mars map), focusing on the Italian penninsular.

For individual gladiator units, you have numerous approaches. You could strip all vanilla units from existing faction rosters, and put individual gladiator units under each vanilla faction. Obviously you could then rename the vanilla factions to be a specific type of gladiator.

Alternatively, as snevets has suggested, you could use the vanilla factions as gladiator training schools who compete against each other. Each school could be restricted to specific gladiator types.

I'm not sure how you'd go about sorting out the actual combat environment. Perhaps siege battles (IE the settlement) needs to be replaced exclusively by a scaled-up colosseum venue.

You also need to think about the linkages between the campaign map and the battlefield, such how would specific types of gladiators be able to fight each other at an arranged location. Perhaps diplomats can be used as messengers to offer gladiatorial combat between rival schools? Unless of course as mentioned, you focus exclusively on custom battles, as this will allow you to skip the pre-amble on the campaign map.

Anyways, an interesting concept

[Lucjan]

I toyed with the idea of making a campaign with the arenas as cities and all that, and it would be perfectly feasible as I can deal with all the maps and the scripting regarding the maps. But I wasn't sure if interest in the idea would have extended that far. If this is what most people would be more interested in, it's an idea I'm willing to pursue, I just need some modelers and skinners. Any takers, give me a pm, in the meantime, I'll start working on a campaign map.

[Seasoned Alcoholic]

Do you need historical maps as sources to build the campaign map? I'd used several maps of around the time period when modifying the existing RTW campaign map for areas such as settlement location, settlement naming convention etc. If so, PM me your email address, and I'll email the maps over to you.

Are you building an enlarged campaign map compared to that of RTW, or are you focusing on a specific area in a provincial style campaign?

[Lucjan]

Being that the mod is Colosseum, I don't see any real need to use an extended map, as the gladiatorial games would have little impact on non roman civilizations. So the map would be concentrated only on Rome, factions converted to rich gladiatorial schools from around the empire, historical gladiator models being distributed accordingly and then, just for fun, maybe some fictional gladiator models as special units for the individual schools..

[Helgi]

This looks cool, but I'm going to wait to see. If it gets to beta, I'll play it

[Myrddraal]

There is already a model in Rome of the interior of the colloseum. It's under the items. It's the model they used to make the colloseum building pic.

[Lucjan]

Didn't know that, thanks for the info Myrddraal.

[Woad Warrior]

Perhaps the campaign map could just be of the city of Rome. You would fight against other schools, with the ultimate aim of winning the main Colosseum.

Wait, I think I've come up with a way to sort this out. It would need to be made for RTW, not BI, as the Senate features would be needed. Basically, the Senate would be replaced by the Colosseum, the big famous one that still partly-there today. You would not be able to fight in this Colosseum until you had enough popularity with the people, just as the Roman factions couldn't attack the Senate in RTW until they had enough public support. You win the game once you conquer this Colosseum.

So, as well as this "Senate" faction, there would be three factions, representing the major Gladatorial Schools. They would fight against the smaller schools, simply Rebels, and gain public support and capture these Colosseums in the process.

On the campaign map, Colosseums would replace cities. Governors House, Villa etc. would be replaced by the varying sizes of Colosseums. Other buildings, to replace Barracks etc. could be replaced by Gladiator Schools, maybe defensive upgrades such as Pits or Lion Chambers etc. which would appear on the battlefield (although I'm not sure how far you could take this on the RTW engine).

Special events could also be triggered. For example, replace the Marian Reforms with 'Rome Conquers Gaul', allowing new types of Gladiators to become available to recruit.

Hope all this gives you some ideas...

[Crusader Invasion]

The Romans didn't call it a colosseum. The Coloseum in Rome was known as the Flavian Ampitheater and it got the name coloseum from the statue of Nero next to it. The Statue was called the Colossus.

[Lucjan]

I had considered what you mentioned with the senate, but that feature always seemed very very broken to me. It always seemed like the worse you treated your people, the more supportive they were . So I don't think I'm going to waste my time with that. I had been considering something more along the lines of a re-worked sons of mars campaign map. Governor's villas and such would be replaced with varying sized arenas to keep the people happy and settlements would be measured that way. There would be gladiator schools from most factions, but only the best, most prestigious ones would be able to afford property in the heartland of Rome, the Italian peninsula, so you would have typical generic gladiators, and lots of faction specific ones, without having to worry about stables of gladiators having to march across the whole of Rome..this mod was never meant to be tremendously historic, just a heck of a lot of fun.

So as I'm looking at things right now, I had the following in mind for factions and units, many of these are fictional, but interesting.

Generic Units
Mirmillo
Daemacheri
Velites
Ratiari
Samnite
Secutores

Roman School Units
Eques
Runaway Centurions (Captured cowards who fleed a winning battle. To the arena with them!)
Bestarii handlers with wild boars

Gallic School Units
Gaesetae
Essedari

Thracian School Units
Thracian
Daemacheri Bastarnae (duel-wielding bastarnae )

Macedonian School Units
Hoplomachus
Macedonian Slingers

Greek School Units
Hoplomachus
Bestarii handlers with bull

Carthaginian School Units
Elephant Rider
Bestarii handlers with leopard
Bestarii handlers with rhinoceros

Armenian School Units
Andabatei
Saggitarii

Egyptian School Units
Anubii (gladiators dressed like anubian dog warriors)
Bestarii handlers with crocodile

Seleucid School Units
Hoplomachus
Scissores
Bestarii with lion

Iberian School Units
Cantabrian Jinetes
Devotio Gladiator

--

Any thoughts, ideas, comments would be appreciated.

[Woad Warrior]

So this mod is just adding gladiator units to factions?

[Lucjan]

No, I guess I should re-outline the goals for this mod as they've changed since the 1st post.

1 - Alter the Sons of Mars campaign map to form gladiatorial schools (factions) whose ultimate goal is to hold the mighty Colosseum and outclass the rest of the gladiator schools. (Probably something along the lines of Hold the Colosseum and 25 other arenas, defeat or outlast the two closest competing schools.)

2 - Create a situation where the game plays best with the lowest unit sizes (pairs of 2 gladiators per unit), and gladiator schools do combat with stables (armies) of up to 20 pairs (units) of gladiators in arenas (cities) or out in the open to prove their supremacy over the other schools. Taking all the arenas (cities) from a faction who currently holds the championship there (controls the city) defeats that gladiator school.

3 - Model and skin a number of generic and faction specific gladiator units for all factions and remove standard military units as they hold no purpose in this mod.

Any modelers or skinners willing to help with this mod would be appreciated. If not, it's going to take a while to get this done, but it will eventually get out there.

As things stand right now I'll be using historical references for the locations of arenas, which I have historical locations for 87 of, but this number will most likely be reduced to a more comfortable number of 75, making the goal for victory as outlined above to control the colosseum and 1/3 of the other arenas, effectively outclassing the other schools. All gladiatorial schools and their faction specific units will be mostly fiction. But generic units available to all schools will be historical.

[Myrddraal]

The first thing I'd try to do is get the city battlemaps working with arenas. You can use exisisting gladiator models for the time being. If you can get that far then I'll make you some gladiators

[Myrddraal]

Lucjan - I'm currently working on a mini project of my own at the moment. Not based for Rome, it is an independant game meant to simulate 1v1 combat as accurately as possible.

I'm leaving behind all the traditional first person combat styles of different attacks and special moves and writing a document on actual combat, and different possible methods of simulating this using only a keyboard and mouse.

If you would help me with the historical aspects of Gladitorial combat, that would be great. Interested?

[Lucjan]

I would be interested in helping you with it actually, send me a pm with your ideas, what you'd like help with and what you've got going so far and we'll see what else we can work out. *Hits the books*