Curse of Atlantis - Total War

[Neon twilight]

This mod is a fiction mod, but there'll not be any orcs/dragons ect... magic things are well hidden to make them really fantastic and rare.

What it covers ? :
This mod covers what happened to the Atlanteans after the fall, fleeing by sea some of them get to other civilizations, like a certain Remos (Remus) and Reimulos (Romulus) founded a city in italy but it's an other story. But the major part of the Atlantean decided that they had nothing to do with "inferiors" and they traveled by sea and were caught in a strom. Few ships were lost but the majority was able to land in a new land. Most ships were unrepairable, so the Atlantean leader decided to burn all the remaining ships and to settle his people in this new world. Soon the Atlanteans discovered that they weren't the only humans there...

Few features :
- It'll have 9 original factions (all playable) with different designs and esthetics reflecting their fictional culture.
- The mod WILL feature a camp map.
- One of my aims is to make this mod realistic in it's gameplay and also challenging.

I've lot of things done but I'll show them only when they're really finished.

Few additional comments/informations :

About MTW 2 : If I have motivation there'll be a sequel of this mod on the MTW 2 engine.

When it'll be done ? : It'll be done, when it's done !

Sources : This mod is done by "pure" imagination but really inspired by the antiquity period in all the world.

Ps. Sorry to repeat "really" like an owl every two lines

And don't hesitate to comment or ask questions.

Aproximative progress bar :
Campaign map : 20%
Campaign balancing : 10%
Background story : 90%
Units graphics : 95%
Balancing/unit stats : 30%
Music/new sounds : 90%
Gui/Loading screens/icons : 60%
Descriptions/Unit cards : 60%

[Neon twilight]

The Altanteans

First of all I wish to thank again Cauis Britannicus who allowed me to use his skins as base for mine, Pinnarius for his horse pack and Europa Barbarorum and it's annimator alin for the annimations.

The Atlanteans are a proud navigators, thier prefered weapons are swords, spears and javelins. They rely on well equiped infantry supported by few archers and small cavalry units. They're also able to build war machines such as balistas. Thier warfare and look is a mix of roman and greek, but far superior and advanced in some ways. I do not preview all of thier units to keep some surprises when the mod will be released. As the Atlanteans are a sea people they often use motives that represent the sun and the winds.

I prefered to show them in battle than in 3dsmax renders to show how they're realy in game in large units.


In time of war even the mosdest Atlantean citzen can be mustered to fight in compact units of disicplinated spearmen. They have a large shield to protect them from ennemy fire, a leather amour and a pair of javelins to throw before the engagement. They form the backbone of an Atlantean army.


A part of the Citzens, often the more agile, are also mustered to act as skrimishers on the battlefiled. They're very similar the the greek peltasts but have leather armour and larger shields and a sword what can make them usefull to fight other light troops in close combat.


Those citzen operate in small light cavalry unit, thier role is to harash the ennemy and prushue routers. They're equiped with a leather armour, a small shield javelins and a spear.


Those soldier are professionals, they form the second line behind the citzen they're equiped with a large shiled, javelins and a longswords.


Those soldiers are a special unit made to break heavy armoured formations, but thier lack of shiled makes them very vulnerable to arrows.


The Atlantean marine is a good force that can be sometimes deployed for land battles. They're a mix of swordmen and archers.


The harpooners are a special unit of the marine. Primarly used for fishing, thier harpoon is infact a deadly weapon, superior to the javelin. They can rain death on the ennemy before the engagement well protected behind thier massive shields.


Alteantean sometimes deploy an heavy cavalry equiped with very long spears. As they're not very well armoured they're vulnerable to archers and must retreat after the charge to avoid beign slaughtered in close combat.


The pruple gard is the true elite of the Atlanean people, they gard the generals and are sometimes dispatched as officier in other corps. They're equiped with spears and swords. An Atlantean general always fight on foot what make him less mobile, but the purple guard lead by the general can change a day or lead they army to a glorious death...

[Myrddraal]

Nice work so far, keep it up

[Neon twilight]

I'm looking for someone who can write good english mainly for unit descriptions, story ect... or who can a least correct my texts if intrested just PM me.

[Roman_Man#3]

hey, i can write english pretty well if you need my help, i ws looking to start a mod, but i decided to join one. here is an example of a greek legionarie i modded into the game before i got xgm:

{greek_legionary} Argyraspid Legionaries

{greek_legionary_descr}
As the Greek war machine waged war across the lands of the Mediterranean, the Generals came to realize that as the Greek armies could defend very well and could attack well if need be, the greeks lacked the offensive power of some of the other nations vying for power. The answer came from across the Ionian sea, where the Romans were slowly rising to power. The Greeks adopted the Roman Legionaries and used them to great effect in laying siege when attacking.

{greek_legionary_descr_short}
The Greek need for more offensive punch and talent for adopting good ideas is given solidity in the shape of these Legionaries - copies of the Roman originals!


so just tell me if you want my help.

[Neon twilight]

People of Dalaran

Yep I did gave up or being lazy this week, I worked mainly the battle part of the mod, adding music icons, changing the UI,modifiyng Northen Hammer warcry mod for my needs and finally finished one faction : People of Dalaran


(The good old scipii icon changed into the faction icon of barbarians, roman fanatics accept my appology , anyway I think it suits them well)

Dalaran is a confederation of people living in the northen part of this lost continent. Dalara has an history of internal fightings since ages and united only since one century to counter the growing threat of the Empire (the empire will be prewieved next time). They're hardy people, strangly similar to northen european early cultures so they can be called "barbarians". They identify them to annimals and worship thier ancestors in a way similar to northen american tribes. Honnor and strengh are also important values for them.

In battle they rely on a fast and powerfull light infantry/skirmisher force, only elites can afford heavy armours. Thier prefered weapons are the double handed axe, javelins, swords and spears and don't like the bows because they're not very efficient in cold climate and they grow few horses. Again not all units are in the preview.


A Dalaran warlord leading his men in the exploration of a forgoten temple.


Young wolf band : In time of war young men have to make thier proof and the fast runners are selected to be a part of those skirmishers.


Badger band : Dalaran only respect honnor, strengh and experiance they younger men not selected for the wolfs band have to make thier proof with a double handed axe charging the ennemy to cut them in peices, dishonnored men are also a part of this band trying to recover thier pride. As they don't wear any armour they're very vulnerable and sould be used carefully, they have high morale.


Deer band : These are older and experienced men, they form a solid line of spearmen using thier weapon overhand.


White wolf band : These men are experienced full time soldiers, they're probably the best skirmisher of the continent acting as light infantry once they're out of javelins. They use a spear as second weapon to counter cavalry.


Serpent band : The serpent bands are formed by few hardened veterans trained to furtivity and guerrilla theire job on the battle field is to ambush ennemy, harash him and provide thier excellent fighting skills to support other units.


The Bison band : Those fighters are the only heavy armoured dalaran infantry units, they're veterans and often chosen to escort the general on the battle field as it's not suitable for a Dalaran warlord to be mounted as it's easiest to flee the battlefiled like those imperial cowards !


Heavy cavalry (Kastaphractkos) : Despite the fact the Dalaran don't like horses, they quickly understood the power of heavy armoured cavalry after a crushing defeat against the empire (maybe one of the "historical" battle of the mod) they adapted this new force to their fashion making a savage and fearful armoured cavalry unit.

I've found someone for the texts no further need to apply.

[Roman_Man#3]

neon twilight, am i able to help in any way?

[Neon twilight]

neon twilight, am i able to help in any way?

Yep you're in

[Neon twilight]

A small update to show pics with two units of the next tree factions, to say that the mod will be for RTW instead of BI and that I'm working on the map wich will be smaller than RTW's original but still very big for six factions.

Thanks to EB for the palms

Texture still WIP.

[Neon twilight]

An other preview to keep people interested. (If it is possible...)

I present you the faction I redesigned tree times and ironically it's the one who has less units than the others :

Zalika

Zalika and it's black people the Zalikans, is a small kingdom situated on the south of the new continent. Centuries ago this people has came from the southern jungles to settle in the northen part of the continent.



The Zalikans are strong and disciplinated warriors who've fought many times the empire to keep thier territory. Now as a new people of strangers have landed in the continent the empire may fall and the Zalikan will be able to enlarge thier kingdom. Thier weekness is that their warfaire is very traditional and that they don't have acces to ressources to able to create more advanced weapons such as swords and don't have any horses.


Warriors : Those men are the main battleforce of Zalika, they're hardy fighters able to hold a line and thier natural strengh makes them often able to vainquish other spearmen.


These men are recruited hunters, they use a powerfull longbow to transform ennemies to cactus and a spear to defend themselve in close combat.


Guardians : those elite soldiers use a powerfull falx and are adepts of the "one dived by two" formula


Elephants : Hopefully for them the Zalikans have learned to domesticate those annimals and use them in war to compensate the absence of cavalry.


Skirmishers : Zalikans are good hunters and throwing spear is a "sport" in thier society so any young men can be mustered for this duty.


Royal gard : These men are just better equiped veteran warriors who often accompagny nobles as bodydard. As you can guess they're a powerfull unit.


Jaguars : The jaguar warriors are an old heritage of old primitive Zalikan society who lived in the jungle. They're an elite, able to hide easily anywere to ambush and strike terror in the heart of the enemy.

Hope you liked it

Expect the next preview in few days...

[GiantMonkeyMan]

i like how you have taken cultures and transformed them into different factions... it also looks like you are progressing fast so keep up the hard work

[Justiciar]

Impressive stuff!

[Tzar Vladimir]

Amazingly impressive and fantastically promissing.
This Mod MUST be finished, or You'll be cursed by not only Atlantis but all TheOrg forum members.

[Denizar]

Wow, I hope you can finish this mod. How far are you with the campaign map? If it is possible I would very much like to see some camp. screenshots !

[Neon twilight]

Thanks for the support people

This weekend I made some new descisions for the mod : the map (that I will show soon) was... to big for only six factions so I decided to add tree more factions and divided the Dalarans into two clans (they'll have quite the same units).

So here is one of these new faction wich is more a subfaction than a real faction, I present you the :

Mountain men

*Big drums and roars*


The moutain men lives in the south of the continent in a... you guess... mountainous region in the south of the empire. They're a brave people who try to survive in an arid and hostile environement where the strongest rule. An other way for a man to gain power is to become rich and as thier territory has no real ressources except men power they often serve as mercenaries (many of them can be hired in the imperial regions) those who survive return to thier land and become chiefs or elite soldiers.

Now that the empire can collapse with the arrival of new strangers from the sea and the strange things that are happening in the western regions, the mountain men think they can claim some territory to finaly become realy rich !


Steel is rare in the mountains and not afordable for a poor warrior, so the club can be a good option, after all not everybody wears and armour and if they have one you just need to hit twice instead of one.


Like in all barbarian culture the warband is the backbone of the army consited of brave young warriors.


Bow is usefull for hunting and can be used in battle to weaken the ennemy even if the mountain men bows aren't the best.


Skrimish is an essential part of mountain fighting what makes the mountain people very good at this duty.


Raiders are the only cavalry of the mountain men, they're efficient to harash the ennemy.

Now comes the elite and a note on the gameplay. Every factions army is composed by basic units with a lot of men and small elite units who can change a day if well used, they often have sightly better abilites, equipement and more than 1 hitpoint. This is made to reflect that heavy armour are quite rare and realy too expensive for ordinary troops and that elite, including the general unit can be a powerfull and glorious unit on the battlefield.


The mountain men copied this weapon from thier Zalikan neighbours, they use it with brutality cuting ennemies in pieces.


During thier services mountainers mecernaries saw how officient axes of northen barbarians could be effective and quite cheap to produce. They quickly tried to replicate them and found a way to equilibrate them to be thrown as a deadly weapon. Those me are veterans form imperial campaigns who've learned to fight with two axes and have "afforded" an armour (surely stolen on an dead imperial soldier).


The moutainers obey warlords that use strengh to rule so they're often accompaigned with a small reteniue of veteran fighters.

Here are also few pics of one of the next factions, nomads comming from the far west : The Thragians


Archers


Spearmen


Elite infantry


The storm is comming...

[Neon twilight]

Hello everybody, no preview this time but...

I've a good and a bad news. Let me start with the bad : roman_man#3 has left the "team" so I'm still in need of someone who can a least correct my texts.

The good news is that I'm getting sorted with the models and the graphics coding so I will be allowed to finish the base of the camp map next week.



Cheers I'll make an other preview soon.

[GiantMonkeyMan]

looking good neon... is it that you want someone to just check your english descriptions? because if so i'll do that... but if it is much else i can't help since i have other work to do, pm me

[Byzantine Emperor]

I haven't noticed this so far but it looks good. Keep working this hard and you may get it finished before M2TW.

PS how do you make the symbols look like that? Can you PM me?

[Neon twilight]

I've got terrible news... this mod continues to progress
I had a hard week between modeling/mapping unit cards and I've asked if it was possible to be hosted on the Org and still waiting for an answer.

Finally I can show how the maps looks as I'm working it learning how to map from scratch with just ideas instead of already made geographical map.


This is only the actual WIP map_heights. Zalika is on the south west. A bit western in the mountains are the mointain men. Thragia lies in the extreme south east. The empire itself stands in the center and in a part of the south of the west, it's very large quite 40% of the map I think. The Dalarans lies in the north west mountains and the faction I'll present you this time is situated in the northwest above the mountainous regions.

Here comes :

Maer Dhuna

Maer Dhuna has a celtic design and culture, like Dalara and the Mountain men they're barbarians but not as grunt as they're protrayed in vanilla RTW.

Before the rise of the empire Maer Dhuna was the dominant power in the continent they controled all the west. With the coming of the imperial army and it's superior technology and logistic they were forced to retreat in the forest near the mountain, planning thier revenge...

Maer Dhuna has a long shamanic tradition based on tatoos, every warrior in Maer Dhuna has tatoos wich are suposed to protect him. Some say it's just an illusion of magic some says that they saw arrows stoping before reaching a Maer Dhunan despite this fact Maer Dhunans are powerfull warriors who fight for the honnor of thier gods and thier people. They give concepts names to thier units (this make some change to the classical "spearmen/swordmen ect.." not all the concept name are found if you have some ideas I'm open to sugestions)


The classical barbarian warband adapted to the Maer Dhunan style.


The axe is the prefered weapon of the Dalarans beacause it's cheap and require less iron than swords. The men wielding it are called Bravery


The bow is used by Maer Dhunan to weaken ennemy formations.


The young men are often mustered to serve as skimishers independant from the rest of the army and are called Freedom.


Druids/Shamans sometimes takes part to the fighting themselve using thier chant to keep the troops morale and it's said that they also use a kind of magic.


Brutality is the name of those men equiped with massive pick able to send ennemies in air they deserve well thier name.


Those men with dark tatoos are called Fear and many imperial soliders had fled at thier sight always reporting the strange terror they had when seeing these men, is magic behind this or it's just thier frightening apparence ?


Furry, these men are dishonored men who seeks a good death in battle to recover thier honnor, they fight in a bloodly frenetic trance wich makes them indiferent to pain. Other says that behind this "madness" are drugs and other substance as Maer Dhunan will have an enigmatic smile as he looks at his tatoos.



The bravest of the braves accompagny thier warlord in battle, they're not called honnor just beacause it sounds nice.



The Maer Dhunans learned how the imperial cavalry was effective and dangerous and quickly invented something to deal with it very efficiently at lower costs. (Those pikemen fights as spearmen I don't use phalanx for gamplay reasons and beacause it's very bugy).



Maer Dhunans have a limited knowledge on how to use horses in battle and still use small units of chariots instead of cavalry after all a horse don't have a schycte and a chariot provides a good platform to shoot with a bow.
They use heavy chariots to break enemy ranks and small chariots with bowmen to harsh, purshue and assist the advance of the army. Despite the fact they live in forest regions they still keep those chariots to raid and attack outside of their mainland and maybe one day they'll ride again on the central plains cutting imperial heads !

[Roman_Man#3]

hey man, looking very good so far, gonna work on those other factions when i have time

[Pantsalot]

is their gonna be new maps?
& didn't Atlantis used to be a isle
covered over by a city? so how could there
be hillmen???

just wondering.

[Neon twilight]

No new map for now, one is enought work. And about the Atlanteans you surely missed the first post, they've lost thier home and sail in a new continent.

[GiantMonkeyMan]

looking good NT, keep it up

[Neon twilight]

New update without comments this time, I'm tired of writing for nothing as the interest is very low. I guess it's the price for not beign mainstream and doing something different than historical reskins of romans and spartans.

Here are some visuals, they surely look worst than MTW 2.

New Dalaran rooster (skins for each clan)


Faction icons


Arghuna faction unit rooster

Yeah they look all the same !

Ps. First post updated

[Murfios]

People of Dalaran

Yep I did gave up or being lazy this week, I worked mainly the battle part of the mod, adding music icons, changing the UI,modifiyng Northen Hammer warcry mod for my needs and finally finished one faction : People of Dalaran

Nice! Dalaran... Just remembering that name makes me happy. Keep in mind though, Dalaran is a small, magocratic nation in the fictional realm of Warcraft. Being led by a group of Wizards. The capital of the nation of Dalaran is the Violet Citadel, located at Cross Island. Dalaran was founded several hundred years before the events of Warcraft took place, by the first humans to learn magic. Now it is in ruin, and a place where the Undead and Humans fight constantly.

Will you have any warcraft inspired stuff in it? Or did you only liked the name....? But you know, it would be cool if you could actually consider it as a pre-magic culture, further developing into a greatly civilized nation.


Thats the city.

[Neon twilight]

Mmh now as I say it I remeber of the Warcraft II Dalaran, yes. I guess I kept the name in my mind like you keep some names without knowing why, but it's a nice name. I guess all the name I create are subconsicent randomized deformations of what I read/see everyday About warcraft inspired stuff I guess there'll be nothing as the mod don't aims fantasy like blizard does, but I don't know this was my first strategy game after all.

Dalaran in the mod is more the of a region and it's people than a nation because they're not united at the begining that would be the player hard task (if he choses them) to win the civil war. Basicly clan Bostork is poor but with more men, they wish to unite the Dalaran to become a free nation that rules herself as the rich Klavierk wish to keep his compromise with the empire in the south because they can fight as mercenaries and trade with them.

In battle they're a real nightmare for armies like the Atleateans who relies on heavy armoured troops as the double handed axe (who has an armour penetration bonus of course) is used by thier basic troops.

[Murfios]

hmmm....Well, yeah, it is a nice name. Perhaps you could refere to them divided as Dalarai=Da'laray. Then when they actualy merge toghether after this civil revolt they are envolved in, they can be called the Nation of Dalaran, or simply Dalaran. You know, perhaps you could even include a easter egg, refering to Warcrat II

Another question. This revolt, how many time has it lasted? because if it has been looming for more than, lets say 50 years, or so; culture would have changed considerably.It could prove a great challange to the player to equalice all his settlemets under the same religion and cultural benefits.

[Neon twilight]

The civil war just starts when the game begin.

[GiantMonkeyMan]

i love those faction icons! i wish i had the graphical prowess to do something like that, keep it up!

GMM

[Justiciar]

New update without comments this time, I'm tired of writing for nothing as the interest is very low. I guess it's the price for not beign mainstream and doing something different than historical reskins of romans and spartans.

What? This mod has gotten more support since you put it up then many other mods have over the course of six months. It's a promising project, and if you even contemplate giving up on it I will kill small puppies in protest.