Something sort of interesting

[Teleklos Archelaou]

One little thing that we had started doing with 0.74 but that we have pretty much complete now, is more of a distinction between these rebel sub factions. Unfortunately, on the strat map we can't change the way the rebels look. They seem to have to have only one model for each general and for each captain. And they share a banner over their cities according to their culture (and they have to remain one color per culture). Still, we have found more ways to differentiate them.

Here is an image of a lot of different ways. This shows the Getai rebel faction.


It's a bit of a mess, but you can see rebel sub faction captain portraits in the diplomacy window in the middle, and in the prebattle screen window on the bottom left. Then you can see their regular banners on the battlefield in the top right. If you look harder, you can see a little of the general's banner for that subfaction also in that battle image - it's a different symbol, but still one for that rebel subfaction. Now the newest thing we've managed to do is to get cas files for "symbols" for these rebel subfactions and put them in as the banners that fly over rebel cities either (1) when the fog of war enshrouds them, as you can see on the top left, or (2) when the city is empty/attacked. The bottom right image shows the city being zoomed in on as an attack is occurring, but I've never been able to take screenshots of those - so you see the load screen fading in. But in the background the rebel sub faction banner is still visible over the city.

So, not a really big deal, but it is making our rebel sub factions much more unique than any other mod has been able to do and than we thought would be possible when we first started modding this area. It's a whole lot better than seeing just culture-specific banners and cards.

[MSB]

Amazing. In effect you just added about 90+ new factions. Keep up the good work

[Teleklos Archelaou]

Nah, it would be more like 21 new ones. If we could only get those strat map army banners and strat map characters/models to change - oh man, that'd be awesome! It really does feel more realistic when you are fighting groups like this. I had a battle a few days ago when two rebel armies attacked me. They both showed up at the same time, and they were two different rebel subfactions. It was like a custom battle, but it was definitely in an imperial campaign - the "thracians" were attacking me on one side with their blue banners and gold eagles, and a subfaction of gauls were attacking me on the other side, with their brown and green hound banners, and both sides having different types of units. It was very cool indeed. So much better than having two generic barbarian banner armies coming at me.

[Kull]

This is definitely a kick-ass new feature. It may seem like "mere" eye candy, but the ingame effect is to individualize the rebels in a way never seen before in RTW. You guys are so going to love this!

[Puupertti Ruma]

This looks really awesome! It's just the thing I've wanted since first realizing what the EB had done with the rebels (besides having diplomacy with them, of course).

There is one thing I'dd like to ask though. What kind of written information can be found in EB about the different rebel factions? Lack of written data is a thing that has bugged me quite, since my own knowledge about the various tribes, greek colonies and some such is very limited.

Also, as a side note, I think all factions should start in peace with the rebels. This would mean there is a possibility to live in peace with your neighbors, instead of just conquering them.

[Slartibardfast]

EB just gets cooler and cooler.

[Obelics]

if it is what i have understand, it is great, so for example the Pergamon rebel stack has its own banner and color when you attack that city?
if so, this extetical change, is how to have a real faction, and changes a lot your view of the game, hope we can see it in the new version!

[Teleklos Archelaou]

There aren't unlimited numbers of these. Not sure if folks know it, but every rebel city has what we call a faction owner, that has to be a rebel faction (you have to put a captain in that city, or a general rather in EB to keep them immobile, who has an appropriate name for his faction). Some factions wind up with a rebel sub faction that is vast. The Aedui and Arverni rebels fill up a lot of provinces from the English Channel to the Bosphoros almost. And there are a lot of KH rebels in greek cities across the map. But some don't have any at all, like Pontos. There aren't any Pontic rebel provinces at the start of the game I believe. Very few Epeirote ones too if any. So Pergamon would have a KH rebel sub faction set of banners. The Ammonion would have a Ptolemaic set, the Numidian provinces a set of Carthaginian ones, etc.

For some we have clearly tried to make a rebel "faction" out of them - like the Carthaginian rebel ones are really just inland African ones so we made them look Numidian. The Makedonian ones we made "royal pretenders", so they have an alternate royal makedonian set of standards. That goes for Baktria too, their rebel provinces are mostly in India, so we gave them an elephant and a royal Baktrian insignia to serve as a sort of "royal pretender" also. For the Seleukids, where rebels pop up for them, they have old Persian banners, so that you are fighting armies that look like uprisings that are attempting to restore the old rule. The Ptolemaic ones look like a traditional Egyptian eye of Ra, so it looks like a native uprising when you fight against them. Saka and Sarmatian rebels just look like other Steppe factions' banners might. Roman rebels have the Italiote bull, that you sometimes see charging the wolf on coins. I believe Epeiros' subfaction just has alternate royal banners too to represent a royal pretender. Parthian rebels look like another eastern horse faction set. Hayasdan rebels have another set of traditional Armenian symbols, so it seems appropriate when you are conquering those other armenian and iberian territories in the region.

[Obelics]

that's very interesting, especially if you can see a banner of a different colour on the battlefield... that make you think you are fighting that or this rebel/indipendent faction in a way more easy.
And it is even more interesting if you can see the different colour banners even on the Campaign Map as i see on your picture.

[oudysseos]

This seems as good a place as any to post something I've been meaning to suggest as it fits in very well with the (amazing!) work that you have just previewed. What I'm talking about is the campaign map characters themselves- I've been browsing through other mods just waiting for EB 0.8 to come out, and many of them have some very nice little touches that I think EB should have a look at (how presumptuous of me!). In particular the latest release of Chivalry TW has very nice campmap characters that would fit in with the work ye have done on the banners. Instead of gargantuan titans striding over the landscape, ChivTW has subtle little characters that fit in very nicely with the scale of the map. The armies are little colums and squares of miniscule marching men, the spys are teeny little guys on horseback and the diplomats get little wagons to drive all over. A picture is worth a thousand words, so take a look if you have the time.
It takes a little getting used to but I felt that it made a huge and positive diffrence to the campaign map. This would fit in with the individualized banners that ye have done, as the little squares of marching men are culture neutral- eveyone looks the same from that height, so to speak, so the fact that all the characters for the 'rebel' armies look the same wouldn't be a problem- they'd be meant to look the same. Make a virtue out of necessity, as it were.
If you really wanted to get fancy you could have one character for the 'civilized' factions that's orderly and compact(Rome, Carthage, Diadachoi etc.) and another character for the 'barbarian' factions that's more messy and dispersed.

I'm sure it wouldn't be hard to find out how ChivTW did it or even (if we all asked reakky nicely) to import the characters. Whaddya think?

[MSB]

So basically you just made emergent factions without using any faction slots. Amazing! Will these rebels be stronger than before so that it can look like a proper, BI style, civil war?

[Teleklos Archelaou]

No, they still act like rebels in every other way - just that you now will see more differentiation in their battlefield-banners, some-strat-map-banners, captain-cards, and captain-portraits. They aren't individual factions, though we'd love to be able to separate their money within their own factions instead of as a whole, and the strat map problems I mentioned above.

We'd love to have more unique strat map models too - and we have been planning on it, but they have been one of the last things on the agenda.

[Obelics]

This seems as good a place as any to post something I've been meaning to suggest as it fits in very well with the (amazing!) work that you have just previewed. What I'm talking about is the campaign map characters themselves- I've been browsing through other mods just waiting for EB 0.8 to come out, and many of them have some very nice little touches that I think EB should have a look at (how presumptuous of me!). In particular the latest release of Chivalry TW has very nice campmap characters that would fit in with the work ye have done on the banners. Instead of gargantuan titans striding over the landscape, ChivTW has subtle little characters that fit in very nicely with the scale of the map. The armies are little colums and squares of miniscule marching men, the spys are teeny little guys on horseback and the diplomats get little wagons to drive all over. A picture is worth a thousand words, so take a look if you have the time.
It takes a little getting used to but I felt that it made a huge and positive diffrence to the campaign map. This would fit in with the individualized banners that ye have done, as the little squares of marching men are culture neutral- eveyone looks the same from that height, so to speak, so the fact that all the characters for the 'rebel' armies look the same wouldn't be a problem- they'd be meant to look the same. Make a virtue out of necessity, as it were.
If you really wanted to get fancy you could have one character for the 'civilized' factions that's orderly and compact(Rome, Carthage, Diadachoi etc.) and another character for the 'barbarian' factions that's more messy and dispersed.

I'm sure it wouldn't be hard to find out how ChivTW did it or even (if we all asked reakky nicely) to import the characters. Whaddya think?

sorry to being off topic, but could you odisseus put a link to an image? this kind of think very interest me, just to see, since im not a mod, but when i was speculating on how id like it i thought somethink like that, i like the idea so much, and want to see how it could be implemented. Me too dont like those "Morgante" giants, Thanks!

[-Praetor-]

sorry to being off topic, but could you odisseus put a link to an image? this kind of think very interest me, just to see, since im not a mod, but when i was speculating on how id like it i thought somethink like that, i like the idea so much, and want to see how it could be implemented. Me too dont like those "Morgante" giants, Thanks!

Check these out:

(You have to click on the spoiler button to enlarge )

Here is shown the agents. In the crusades mod, it isn`t mounted on a little horse, but it has just the skin changed.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Now, in the next image, it`s the army. It has no banner, so you can`t know how many units it has, nor if he`s commanded by a captain or FM... so you have to make extensive use of your spies network.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

And here are the fleets, not much different to what already is in EB.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Cheers!!!

[Slartibardfast]

They look awesome. Well done the CTW team.

[Teleklos Archelaou]

Yeah, they look really good. We have thought about this for some time now (reducing size of strat map models, and turning them into various things like a litter for ambassadors or little armies and such), but as I said above, they were not as high on the list, so hopefully we can get around to working on these soon too.

There is something that Caius and his Crusades mod has given us permission to use, but I won't say what it is yet. Just that it rocks.

[fallen851]

I'm getting this bad vibe from you Telekos, with this thread, and the other one about the lost nomad buildings, and Hellnic Standard Bearear thread, that EB 0.8 won't be released in November, that these threads serve as "previews" to hold us over.

Tell me it isn't true!

[Teleklos Archelaou]

Hehe. No bad vibe needed. I'm just doing tweaks on things and corrections in text. I've got nothing to do with the big issues at hand - the unit recruitment finalization and the UI image work for units. So I'm going back over some things that have been sitting here for a bit. I've got another one for you if one of our members can do some screenshots (my cpu is too crappy to do shadows correctly). That hellenic standard bearer post was purely to thank Rob and get him some more appreciation among our fans and because that was almost exactly what he showed us to summarize his work - so why not show everyone else? No need to keep everything hidden till the last second anyway now. Just a few big things. I'd really love to show some of Aymar's new work too. Hmmmm...

[scourgeofrome]

Looks good.Now get back to work (I love smilies)

[MarcusAureliusAntoninus]

We'd love to have more unique strat map models too - and we have been planning on it, but they have been one of the last things on the agenda.

It should be higher on the agenda, it would add another layer of 'shiny' to EB. And as M2TW has taught us, people like 'shiny'.

[CountArach]

This is awesome guys! Keep up the awesome work! At this rate, there will be no need for M2TW until someone can get it for me for Christmas :P

[Kull]

It should be higher on the agenda, it would add another layer of 'shiny' to EB. And as M2TW has taught us, people like 'shiny'.

First of all the reason we prioritize our tasks and projects is because resources are not limitless and we can't do *everything*. So with that in mind, what you are saying is that we should take our modelers off of new units and have them work on shiny stuff for the Campaign Map? Meaning that our new factions will have fewer native units and game play will suck for them. And you'll be OK with that?

That may seem a bit harsh (and I know you meant well), but it drives me insane when people make suggestions about our priorities without having any idea of the reasons WHY we set them as we do.

[Birka Viking]

Nice work guys..Cant wait for the 0.8

[MarcusAureliusAntoninus]

I was joking, with M2TW as the butt of said joke...

[Obelics]

@k-raso thanks for the pics... now im just speculating how it could be nice...
pheraphs in EB1.0...

resources mod + rebel banner mod + somethink like those little armies mod, and the EB CM become almost perfect... ah and dont forget that miniature cities (dont remember pheraphs it was called prometeus, i saw that in one of Teleklos posted pic of its own game if i well remember...)

[Kull]

I was joking, with M2TW as the butt of said joke...

Gotcha. A smiley would have helped tho. We get serious comments just like that, all the time.

[abou]

I would blame Kull, but Kull scares me.

[MarcusAureliusAntoninus]

Gotcha. A smiley would have helped tho. We get serious comments just like that, all the time.

(the problem is the lack of a good :P face, back in the day before premade 'smileys' I only used :P for jokes and :( for disappointment)

[Slartibardfast]

No, they still act like rebels in every other way - just that you now will see more differentiation in their battlefield-banners, some-strat-map-banners, captain-cards, and captain-portraits. They aren't individual factions, though we'd love to be able to separate their money within their own factions instead of as a whole, and the strat map problems I mentioned above.

I take it that the rebel sub-factions don't work at cross purposes as they share the same common Eleothuroi bank balance, but will the regional rebel sub-factions work to achieve specific regional goals within their specific map areas?

Also how soon can I get my hands on this in game?

[Teleklos Archelaou]

No, this doesn't mean that they behave more like a faction in diplomatic or military aspects any more than they do in vanilla RTW.

No announcements on release dates yet, other than to say we are still optimistic it will be released this month.