Htw Spin-off Mod - Ancient: TW

[Lord Zimoa of Flanders]

Good luck everybody, very nice to see this old beaty HTW being kicked alive again.

I will not be of much help, I have lost all HTW files over the years, Komninos may have an old back-up, if the man still hangs around here.

If you all have time, visit our new game developing company The Lordz Games Studio one day, as the road from modding to actually building your own games is hard work and stressful, but also loads of fun.

Take care and threat HTW with respect, the old lady deserves it.:-)

Cheers,

LZoF

[macsen rufus]

Hi LZoF, good to see you back around these parts!

I like to keep the old HTW heritage alive, and bring life to all those half-finished units in the animations . Another part of the pay off is I intend to go back and do more on the HTW BA campaigns as well, I only really got halfway last time, then my old PC died

Good luck with the new venture, by the way - it looks very exciting, and I'll be sure to give it a try. After all something has to be the first game I buy since getting MTW, and nothing else has even come close yet

[macsen rufus]

Over the weekend (well Sunday, anyway...) I had another session, and have tried out the latest changes.

The Sea Peoples are in need of more work, as they are still decidedly unscary and incapable of destroying three Middle eastern civilizations on their own. They are much more likely to attack the rebels in southern France than go after the rich pickings of Hatti or Kemet. Maybe I need to reduce the navies of the "civilized" factions, and also make the Ligurians a faction (which was in the plan anyway).

The Cimmerians are also rampaging quite well across the steppes, but looking at their armies, I think the tribal warriors will have to go, but shall replace them with Jav Cav. Also I think the CimCav (horse archer) units are too large. The Prytani seem to do okay, slowly taking over the whole of Britain from the rebels.

I've enabled the rebels to train tribal warriors, so their armies are no longer huge stacks of slingers

Also had bit of a clear-out on the tech-tree, removing a few "too advanced" buildings, adding a couple of new ones, and tweaking some build-dependencies. Barbarians can no longer build citadels, and emissaries come from unique buildings, except the pagan shamans. The result is that "civilized" factions can ONLY get their full morale upgrades from a single province.

EDIT: continued after interruption ....

New units in the pipeline:
Egyptian
* menfyt spears (once I work out the weapon co-ordinates )
* nakhtu-aa heavy infantry (the "strong-arm boys")+ dismountable version with javelins

Libya
* Libyan tribesmen (low-defence axe maniacs)

Sea Peoples
* Lukka (archers?)
* Meshwesh (tribal axe type, also for Libya, trainable in Tunisia)
* Ahhiyawaa (sp?) - "Achaeans" based on Myc amippi

Illyrians
* Illyrian raiders from HTW (HIGH onwards)
* Illyrian cav (LATE era)

(the Illyrians are in a tough spot, I gave them a try and had to fight off a couple of Mycenaean invasions, no wonder the AI Illyrians always get wiped out...)

Barbarians
* Hunters (hide-in-open bowmen, small units, good melee stats, like hashishin etc)

But the main issue for now is getting the Sea Peoples into "character", and get them raiding before they go bankrupt....

[western]

Hi Macsen

Don't know how to make the Sea Peoples aggressive, but if you want to drive them to expand south and west, you could play around with sea regions. Looking at your set-up, if they only had coastal ships, you could close Ligurian/Tyrrhenian and make Gulf of Gabes deep water - et voila. Other factions could still get everywhere through the deep seas (not that the Celts ever did invade Africa, but I guess you want your phoenicians and greeks to be able to go west). Just a thought.

[western]

Oops, I meant "south and east"

[macsen rufus]

I had the most frustrating session ever last night - three hours to add ONE BUILDING..... and in the end it seemed it wasn't working just because MTW didn't like the NAME of my latest build_prod file. Having checked EVERYTHING to do with the building over and over, to find this glitch.... aaaagh

It was just one of those days yesterday

[macsen rufus]

@Western - interesting ideas, but I think the presence of the Ligurians as a faction will certainly help, and I think the Sea Peoples will need a better economy. They have certainly picked up their ideas a bit since I made them FN_07, but keep losing Nicaea to the Thracians (which is not too inaccurate, as it's believed the Phrygians were a Thracian tribe who crossed the Bosporus - though not quite yet Might have to remove the land-bridge here, or make Thrace more rebellious so they're less likely to invade.) The Sea Peoples often manage to invade Phoenicia so long as the Egyptians/Hittites/Assyrians haven't already taken it....

Regarding the ships, they're all designated as deep sea, as per HTW (though I have now made a few tweaks, and might make the basic ship coastal only again, as well).

Hopefully tonight I'll be able to put my time to better use than tracking down odd quirks

[Bonfire]

yeahim having trouble launchgin your mod.. i have total war ERAS MTW VI

so its fully patch and all but when i install your patch to .

the creative assembly/mtw gold eddition

then when i click on the icon on desktop it continuly ask for the cd-rom.

lil help please im dying to play the greeks which in fact were the first ones to conquer the known medaterian.. then the phoicians came. then the persians..

anyways yeah i wanna change history

lil help fixing this problem. i'll post the cure in apothacary

[macsen rufus]

Hi Bonfire - the Ancient mod is designed to be installed over the XL mod version 2.1 (to get the right campaign map), so you will need that one first. I must admit I have never used the Eras install, so I don't know if that has any other issues compared to the original game. It might be best to check in the Apothecary, if it has cropped up as an issue it will have been dealt with in there by now

[macsen rufus]

sorry double post...

[macsen rufus]

Sorry - TRIPLE post.... another one of those days

[Bonfire]

the only thing im having troubles is that when i install your mod to the MTW VI gold eddition directory. it like i think overwrites the source info of the e.e so that it doesn't recognise the cd-rom..

i been playing samuari warlords MTW mod andMTW XL so it not a issuse of tech diff. i think you mod is not total war era's friendly. ohh well next version maybe.

[barocca]

ah...no

this mod does not alter or edit the executable in any way shape or form,

if you are having DVD issues they are not caused by HTW

[Bonfire]

ok i installed.

gold eddition for MTW VI already patched to 2.01 cause its gold..

then installed MTW XL then patched to 2.1

then installed Hellenic Total War

and i still get the message that correct cd rom needs to be in there.

meanwhile it is still the MTW VI Gold cd is still int eh cd drive....

i know it works if i just figure this out.

cause Samuari warlords and MTW XL still works for me in copied MTW VI 2.01
other folders...

[Bonfire]

ok i got it figured out.

the hellnic patch overwrites the mtw VI exe and requirs another cd-rom other then the cd rom i had in there it was probably lookin for an older version of the cd-roms. so whati did was over-write it with a previous exe tha ti took from the XL mod exe folder.

i now have. 3

samuari mod
xl mod
and hellnic mod.

[Bonfire]

i don't wanna rain on oyur parade bro. but somthing came ot my attention that must be fixed as because of time line and wars through the world.


---------------
the first WAR to reach the 5,000 + were in japan with shogun total war.even int he history books when eourpe started dukign things out with lil over 2-3,00 with the crusades thats per battle leading there.

so your unit size's in HTW and bronze age well there not historicaly correct. there a wet dream of pamela at night if i may say..

not to mention having such huge armys .. comptly utterly invite CTD's

reccomend units size no greater then 100..

but thats just my opion.

[Iron Lord]

No offense man, but you might want to look back over your history books. I may not be a history buff when it comes to the bronze age time period, but i know if you move on to the hellenic period the persians had armies of more than 100,000 men. The shogun total war period is far past what this mod is about, so what does that have to do with this time period? Oh and I think the unit sizes are fine, at least based on the limited knowledge i have on this time period.

[Aurelian]

Hi. Regarding the Sea Peoples:

Have you considered having the Sea Peoples launch crusades to simulate their migrations?

The Fall of Rome mod uses the crusade function to simulate the barbarian invasions... and it works quite well. As long as the Sea Peoples are "Catholic", and the target areas are "Orthodox", "Muslim", or "Pagan" it should work. You could make the Anatolian/Middle Eastern cultures Orthodox and Muslim... and the Western/Northern European culture "Catholic". That would channel the Sea Peoples in the appropriate direction.

In Fall of Rome, the barbarians seem to target the high value Roman provinces when they launch their crusades. If you made Egypt, Hatti, etc. particularly high value provinces, I believe you could direct the Sea Peoples towards those provinces.

You can also play with the strength level of crusades so they would be an appropriate threat.

While it seems logical, using the pagan Viking faction slot probably won't achieve what you're looking for because it's just too undirected.

Crusades!

[Bonfire]

No offense man, but you might want to look back over your history books. I may not be a history buff when it comes to the bronze age time period, but i know if you move on to the hellenic period the persians had armies of more than 100,000 men. The shogun total war period is far past what this mod is about, so what does that have to do with this time period? Oh and I think the unit sizes are fine, at least based on the limited knowledge i have on this time period.

to respond to you ..

what i mean is. the most ppl on the field in was the japanese. the persians came in waves.


im tlaking total war. against 1 faction vs another. you think the persians and the greek were the only ones going at it.
take a look at the expansion map of the persian empire. in the bronze age you will notice they didn't have everything.

i will admit they came close. but the history books state

that the most ppl to go all out war. not still traveling not mobilizing im talking battle all in the same day.. not how big the army is in waiting.

im talking engaged in battle the most i have ever red was in japan. when armies starting reaching the 3-5,000

----------
100,000 men you say i think you took that from 300. anyways to tell you the truth about the war of sparta VS the persian. IT WAS GUERILLA war fare

HOLLYWOOD likes to exagerate films.

(sooo back to topic of war)

the most arimes to be ENGAGED IN BATTLE. was by the japanes in the segjoku dai era<-- sory for mispelling.. when the entire country was in civil war.

[Bonfire]

also would like to say that in response if your gonna say troy VS sparta.

that war lasted so long the death toll was in the 10,000 but it came no where near the 1,000 mark of the most men duking it out.

im sure the greeks had 10,000 but it wasn't all out battle.

inthe segjokudai era.. is when the portugese and the english began there gunpowder and christian missionary's in japan. so if therefor the most men to be engaged in battle. was in the japan

anyways i think i'll just stop piping about the unit size and just lower the units myself.

@iron lord

but i will say this. Sparta and Persia was just guerilla war fare..btw. the history bookstate many things about that war.

they say 300 spartans held of 1 million persians it also says they held off 100,000 for that matter they couold have said 1 billion. all we know is that its advertiseing at its best to get the interest of the ppl.

but i will say this one last time. the most ppl to be in engage in sword to sword spear to sword etc fighting at the same time. was in japan way lafter after the roman empire after the crusades.

[macsen rufus]

@Aurelian: interesting idea about "Crusades" for the Sea Peoples. I shall think about it a bit, as I'm not 100% sure about how to deal with the presence of the Pope, and, to be honest, changing all the cultures sounds ... daunting

I have made a few more tweaks, and the Sea Peoples are getting their act together a bit more, but they do have that annoying MTW habit of going for rebels first...

Later...

... cont.

As for the size of armies in the Late Bronze Age, most respectable near-eastern kingdoms could field somewhere in the region of 1,000 chariots (any less and there was no point even turning up for the battle), and typically infantry support was around ten times this. At Kadesh the Hittite forces amounted to either 17,000 or 37,000 depending on how you translate some ambiguous Egyptian hieroglyphs, and the Hittites had contingents from quite a number of allied/vassal states, which each contributed between 100 and 1000 chariots apiece plus infantry, according to Hittite records, indicating that Kadesh must have seen anywhere from 30,000 to 50,000 men on the field. Of course the majority of the infantry did not engage on the Hittite side, and only two out of four Egyptian divisions engaged. Chariots operated in groups of ten, and a "squadron" typically was composed of 50 chariots (5 smaller units under one officer).

As for the Hellenic era (and HTW is a totally separate mod by the way), one thing we do know is that the Persian "Immortals" were maintained at 10,000 men. That's how the regiment got its name. And that was just the elite. Other regiments were nominally organised in units of 10,000 (or "chilia", I believe) though not always kept up to strength like the Immortals. Quite a few records of battles from the Peleponesian (sp?) War indicate numbers of hoplites alone in the 10,000 range PLUS a similar number of skirmishers when an alliance of "city-states" took to the field.

[axel]

And thats how it is

[Bonfire]

hell yes. goood job bro. nice.

[macsen rufus]

Some more new units added:

* the Egyptian nakhtu-aa infantry are done, with a dsimountable version with throwing spears
* "Lukka pirates" added, ALL_FACTIONS in Nicaea only (so initially for the Sea Peoples ). They're a melee-capable archer unit, with compound bows + swords, but quite small units (80-man)

I'll be taking Saturday off work so hope to get the rest of the new units and factions sorted over the weekend, and try for the next Patch / Beta v2 in time for next week.

[axel]

cool mate
you led me know if i cane do somme

[macsen rufus]

Well, it didn't like the Ligurians much, and I can't see anything wrong with the new faction. I may have corrupted the startpos file, so will have to do it over again. Hate to go to bed on a CTD, as that means I have to start the next session with debugging That's the joy of MTW, it always has something new in store

It's possible it didn't like having FN_21 without an FN_20, so I guess that's where I have to start looking. FN_20 is going to be Ugarit, so might as well get that one in place as well, see if that sorts the CTD

[macsen rufus]

Good news - now that Ugarit is in there, the Ligurians work as well.... mostly! For some reason they cannot have tribal chariots What I mean is that they work on the campaign map, can recruit them etc, but every time I try a batttle with them, I get a CTD every time I hit "1 - do battle personally" (or rather at the end of the laoding screen)..... MOST frustrating. I've ruled out most combinations of what can be wrong: same with different faction colours/ shields; same when the chariots are not the royal unit; same whether the Ligurians are human or AI controlled. Same when the same animation is used under a different name. BUT every other faction can use this animation no problem

In the end I have invented "Ligurian chariots" using a different chariot animation, and that works fine

I think this problem relates to another little bug I've spotted - the tribal chariots and the hittite light chariots (which use the same animation) often have an MTW flag superimposed on the "aim" frames, and it's a different flag for each faction. I don't know where these come from - possibly the old "faction shields" from MTW/XL (it doesn't happen in HTW so far as I can see). So I suspect when this bug is sorted, the Ligurian chariot issue may be sorted too. Meanwhile they have a slightly different chariot to other barbarians

Ugarit works quite well, with a mix of Hittite and Syrian units:

* Hittite Heavy Chariots (BG unit)
* Light chariots
* Tower shield spearmen
* Eastern archers
* Hittite javelinmen
* Eastern swordsmen
* Slingers (of course )

And also the "all faction" troops in various homeland provinces are available (Lukka pirates, Cretan archers, Aramaean camels, Sherdan mercenaries etc)

I got so engaged "testing" this faction I've played nearly 100yrs of the campaign! Which gave me a chance to watch the rest of the map on God mode. With the Ligurians in place, everything seems remarkably stable in Europe - no faction has been wiped out except the ones I've killed off as Ugarit, most of them still have their original capital/homelands, and no giant steamrollers are evident anywhere. Rebellions are quite common, so holding down a large empire appears quite challenging. The AI is using agents a lot, and the rebels are building ships! So much so I've had to raid a few rebel provinces around the Med and Black Sea just to destroy the shipyards. I also found that the AI is RETRAINING units (another piece of MTW received wisdom shattered!) The proof is that a rebel stack was progressively upgraded for weapons over a few years. One thing that doesn't happen though, is the understrength unit was not brought up to strength when it was retrained, it only got the upgrade.

In this campaign, it seems the strongest AI faction is the Cimmerians, who have taken most of the steppe provinces, and the weakest is the Balts, who did expand but then got pushed back and now hang on miserably in Finland. The Sea Peoples continue to disappoint, and are lurking in their islands nursing a huge overdraft, having lost their entire navy somehow But in the previous campaign they rampaged over over most of Western Europe (though this was before the Ligurians were introduced and ship ranges reduced). Generally though the various territories have ebbed and flowed quite nicely. Switching between factions has produced some interesting insights though. Instead of the usual "spamfest" that AI factions go in for with huge stacks of poor quality troops, quite a few factions have smallish armies of maximally teched-up troops and quite substantial treasuries, so if they did suddenly decide to expand aggressively, they could easily do so...

[western]

Hi Macsen

I had similar with the Romans in Fall of Rome Mod. Everyone else could use ballistas, but if they had them and I played personally, CTD every time. Never did find out what caused it I'm afraid - I just went your route and made ballistas unavailable to them.

I wonder if Ligurians actually had chariots....? Pretty hilly round there today, but I guess their territory used to be much larger!

[axel]

Hi mate s
Yes i think they got chariots and even horses but i am not shure yet
Here s a link : http://pirate.shu.edu/~vigorimi/gene...lenium_BC.html
http://www.angelfire.com/nm/massimol...i/prerome.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chariot

[macsen rufus]

@Western: glad I'm not the only one with picky factions, choosing what units they want AFAIK the modern day "Liguria" is only a tiny fraction of the lands once occupied by "Ligurians", being just the Italian part. Seems Ligurian culture spread out at least to Provence, as that's who the Greeks encountered when settling Massilia. As to whether they had chariots, well, I'm guessing they did, but shall go have a look at Axel's links shortly They seem to be pretty widespread around Indo-European peoples.

That's the problem with all these illiterate barbarian factions, they didn't leave us much to go on


Hmmm, may need to rethink some of the Italian factions - there's a lot of disagreement between sources over who came from where. I'd always understood Ligurians to be an offshoot of western IE, from a common Celto-Ligurian root, but now I see references to them being related to Iberians (West med group, not IE at all!) And as for Estruscans, well certainly not IE as their language attests, but were they really Aegean immigrants or relict West Med types? If the Aegean myth is true, then they should be removed until the Late era of the mod..... ho hum.... maybe should replace them with Villanovans for early and high?? I need to find the most up to date scholarly opinion on that one