Htw Spin-off Mod - Ancient: TW

[axel]

found a great link mate scroll down on this maybe you cane use somme thing from it
http://images.google.nl/imgres?imgur...%3Dnl%26sa%3DN

[macsen rufus]

Thanks for that, Axel, I shall have a longer look at it at lunchtime

For the main business of the day:

VERSION 2 is now available for download

The DOWNLOADS STICKY has the updated link. I will soon have a 5-part installation in bite-sized pieces for dial-up users hosted on rapidshare, and these links will be added as each section is uploaded.

The new bonus campaign is included in the full V2.0 install, but is optional for the "dial up" package - the first four parts will give the first three eras. Of course, there's nothing to stop you getting the install in parts from rapidshare even if you don't have dial-up

[axel]

cool mate

must i install it over the first on mate? or do i need a fresh MTW with VI?

[macsen rufus]

It is intended to go on to MTW:VI but I don't see any reason why it wouldn't work if you put it over your first install - it won't be save game compatible though, so if you do this, finish your campaign first And you should also delete your "startpos" files (although I can't quite remember now, they might have the same names, in which case no need to delete the old ones....)

[axel]

where do i find the startpost files???? mate

[macsen rufus]

They're in "Campmap/Startpos" and there will be three .txt files with names like 'ancient_early.txt' or similar.

[amarok]

This is awesome news!!!!!!!!!

Thanks so much for being dial-up friendly!

I hope it wasn't too much extra work - but hopefully it makes all the great work you've done available to more people.

Can't wait to download and play!!!

MTW LIVES!!!!!!!

Thank you again.

- Amarok

[amarok]

Sorry if this is a stupid question :-)

I'm just noticing the install instructions look a little different...

If I remember earlier versions said install over MTW:VI WITH XL mod (- or XL Lite version) or something like that... (meaning you needed VikingHorde's mod first as a base)

while the new instructions say just over MTW: VI 2.01 - meaning a patched Original version of the game (WITHOUT XL)

Am I right that XL is no longer requried?

Thanks!
and sorry for my confusion.

- Amarok

[axel]

hi mate i think you will love this site there a lot of shields with symbols on it

[axel]

oooops sry forgot the link :
http://images.google.nl/imgres?imgur...%3Dnl%26sa%3DG

[western]

Nice work Macsen!
I was wrong about the bonus campaign - but it's good to be surprised. Downloaded really quickly and it is playing great so far.

Amarok - Macsen may not be on line till Monday, so let me say yes, no need for XL.

[Xehh II]

How do I install this with XL?

[macsen rufus]

Morning all, and thanks for stepping into the breach Western Alas, due to the general suckiness of RL and my inadequate employers, I am 'working' another Saturday

But yes, it is quite correct - XL is no longer necessary as there is a new campaign map. The XL install was only required to secure the map, so it can be left out quite safely. If you already have it in place on your "spare" copy, it shouldn't interfere, the install will be exactly the same, almost everything will be overwritten. The only thing I can think of that you may need to do is remove the original campmap/reviewpanel/units/pagan, and .../units/orthodox sub-folders - this is not a functional issue, it just means you will get the XL version of shamans and orthodox priests in the training parchment.

I hope it wasn't too much extra work - but hopefully it makes all the great work you've done available to more people.

It probably took me about half an hour to split it up into little chunks, of which 25 minutes was just watching the progress bar on InstallCreator A very small investment in time to reach a wider audience. I'm glad Rapidshare is working out okay, it opens up a lot more bandwidth, and it means I earn Rapidshare bonus points towards a premium account - only 9999 more downloads to go for my first 30 free days

Already 9 full downloads done from mydatabus in less than 24 hours, so there must have been a few folks waiting for the new release

Hope you're all enjoying the new maps.

@Western - I wonder which campaign you're on - I'm guessing you'll be in the middle east somewhere

[Xehh II]

Are these parts .exe's? 'Cos I'm useless at anything that's not, man, you should've seen me trying to get morrwind mods to work but that's not the point.

[macsen rufus]

Hi Xehh - yes, they're all .exe files, all to be installed from the same place, so it's no more difficult than doing the full install four (or five) times over Once you've prepared your MTW copy, they just load into the new Total War directory. The installer will look for a folder called "Ancient TW", so as long as you rename your copy before running installers they should find it without any more help.

[axel]

Hi mate
I love the bonus campain its great are the any elepfants in it? i hope so
its really nice mate

[macsen rufus]

Hephalumps in Carthage only, you need a colony and top horse-breeder

[western]

Hi Macsen

Strangely enough, I have barely visited the Middle East yet - too busy with the bonus campaign, which I think is great. I hadn't really thought of the Punic war period as a good scenario basis, but turns out that it is I really like those Roman skins and the map is just the right scale - and the dependence on naval movement makes the whole thing a bit less predictable, with some realistic turns of fortune.

No crashes or bugs found. I did find the AI was spamming assassins and that rebellions in former Carthaginian provinces seemed to be peopled entirely by slingers. But those were small things easily fixed.

Congrats Macsen on a really excellent piece of work - and that's before I start on those new map Assyrians!

[axel]

Hi mate
Its like western said its a really excellent piece of work i am playing the carthago faction no bugs so far the bonus campain is really excellent
good job mate

[axel]

Hi mate
Well i played the punicwar till the end AD354 , it wos really a great game
cane i ask : is it possible to make it play more years i did nt have enough time to play with the elepfants i only hade 10 years but it take me 6 years to train them the time wos to short for me
this campain wos so great that I played this campain in 1 day all day

[dimitrios the samian]

Howdy Macsen and all other players here ,, been a while since i played any thing on my PC so i decided to have a quick peek here ,, Wow !! you certainly have brought this along nicely Mac ,, Whats the new campaign map contain ? Is it the Mesopotamian region ? expanding into Pakistan & India ? .. ,, Looks like i'll be adding a new bigger harddrive real soon ,, cheers .D

[macsen rufus]

You can all blame Adrian Goldsworthy for the bonus campaign, it was largely inspired by his book "The Fall of Carthage" You know how it is, you read a history book with one eye on the text and the other on "Hmm, how could I get this to work in MTW?" The other side of the equation was that there were still animations from HTW that hadn't been used anywhere else in Ancient (like the artillery and elephants - the Roman units had already seen light as their Etruscan precursors, though ) Put those together and well, you just have to have a Punic Wars campaign

Glad you're enjoying the Punic Wars, and thanks for the feedback - I think there could well be a patch due, as I discovered in the course of my Moabite campaign that I'd missed off the sea-region borders in the Black Sea on the main campaign map (yes, I have got that far Let's hear it for the 'one-province wonders' ).

Interesting notes about the rebel mix in Iberia, Western - that definitely needs looking at in the unit prod. I think the "slinger spam" is sorted in the main campaign, so I just need to check over the Punic units "rebel mix". There should really be more caetratii, scutarii and cavalry showing up there, I think

@Axel: I'm not sure exactly how long it takes to tech up to elephants, but really they should be available by the time Hannibal Barca appears, shouldn't they? Maybe we need an "elephant trader" building. I also wonder whether Epirus should be allowed elephants as they were used by Pyrrhus (although he's dead by the time the game starts, of course, slain by a roof tile or chamber pot depending on your sources )

Hi, DTS, good to see you back! The new map for the main campaign is still the same area, but with the provinces re-allocated a bit, with more in the Middle East, and fewer in NW Europe. So Egypt now has Kemet + Thebes, there's a new province of "Tehenu" between Egypt and Libya, Moab and Ammon are included*, Asia Minor has been redrawn to make Arzawa more true to life, with Lycia and Ilios included as well. And Greece has been split into Hellas + Makedon, there's also a couple of small changes in Iberia so Castile no longer has a coastline, and Navarre butts on to Leon. Finally, the Black Sea has been split into three parts, and there's a new sea region for the "Phoenician Coast" which makes the eastern Med more interesting for naval ops and trade routes. And the background map has had a few changes, like old province names and land-bridges removed.

* Ammon and Moab are also available as factions as well as provinces - Moab only in Late, Ammon in high & late.

I'm not making any promises yet, but I have a new base map I'm looking at which extends from Greece through to Iran, but it looks a bit too big. But time will tell

Already 44 downloads

[axel]

Hi mate
elephant trader" building. would be great

(I'm not making any promises yet, but I have a new base map I'm looking at which extends from Greece through to Iran, but it looks a bit too big. But time will tell)this would be great campain

[macsen rufus]

OK, elephant trader it is

Anyone tried the smaller factions yet? Must say I was very happy to discover how many Greek cities had a role in the general era, lots of excuses to plaster various parts of the map with hoplites of various types. In testing I particularly enjoyed Syracuse and the Masiliotes, though the AI tends to struggle with Syracuse, to such an extent that I've never seen their one and only hero emerge under AI control (no prizes for guessing who ).

Also now I'm able to sit down and play out a campaign on the new main map, I'm finding Western Europe is developing quite differently. Whereas originally it tended to be pretty stable, I find all the empires ebbing and flowing. The big surprise is that the Ligurians have a good grip across France and northern Spain, and after getting beaten back to their island once, the Prytani are resurgent. The Phrygians wiped out Assyria quite early, and I had to let them have a princess just to keep from getting gobbled up myself (I still only had a couple of provinces then, and they were getting BIG). Now I've managed to push them back into the steppe provinces, where there's a huge war going on between Phrygians, Cimmerians, Balts, Slavs and Thracians. The Illyrians and Italics seem to be having bit of a long-drawn out match as well, with the border moving up and down Italy like a yo-yo. The poor Etruscans have been pushed westwards into old Ligurian lands where they can't raise their top-notch heavy infantry. The Iberians are clinging on the southern Spain, but the Iberocelts have been displaced and now have Aquitaine! The map changes seem to have livened things up a bit

Still, they will all fall before the might of Moab

[ULC]

Not to get to far into this, but after actually looking at the stats for the units in ATW, I have to say I am confused. Negative charge? In fact, LOTS of negative stats. It may be presumptious to ask, but why?

[Xehh II]

Well, I finally got some time on my hands so i'm going to try downloading it now. I'll let you know how it goes. I founs ouyt so9mething disturbing, I have to wait an hour between downloading each part, that kind of sucks.

[dimitrios the samian]

Hey Mac ,, Well done !! Flesh out that map from Greece and all the way to Pakistan&India and don't pull it up at just Iran & the glory that was Assyria & Babylon + Persia & The Diadochi is all open for adventure !!!
* Im clearing space on my HD as i speak *
cheers
D

[macsen rufus]

@YLC - The negative values are an HTW legacy - except my own new ones, most of the units keep the exact same stats as were used in HTW, which were all worked out a lot more ... systematically than I have done. The balance on HTW was finely honed, whereas I've tended to interpolate and extrapolate in the absence of a certain legendary tool I can't locate (a spreadsheet snuck out of the CA labs one dark and dreadful night ). Effectively, you have a range on all stats from -20 to +20 - so I guess once you set a baseline unit, and then start introducing weaker ones, you have to go into the negative to portray them. In short, if you just work up from zero you instantly lose half of the available range.

Or look at it another way - some units are so crap all they achieve by charging is tripping over each other and skewering themselves on the enemy's weapons more effectively

(I prefer the second explanation, it makes me feel less nerdy )

Hi Xehh - I guess that's to stop abuse, or to persuade you to purchase a premium account. Back in the days when I still depended on dial up I had about five different accounts I could use (a personal one, a family one, my partner's personal one, one associated with the organisation we worked for, and one associated with a publication we edited - any nonsense like waiting between downloads was quickly circumvented ) Ah, the joys of dynamic IP addresses ....

and DTS - well, I was thinking about a possible Alexander campaign/Persian Empire sort of scenario, plus Diadochi - another excuse to use the elephants And most of the other units needed will be covered by the HTW roster - Indian troops would be more difficult, though. If I can face the long hard slog of a pixel-by-pixel alteration of 12 frames of 16 figures each, I might be able to edit a bif animation to make a new model, but I'm sure you can see why I'm hesitant on that for now

Another thought is a close-in Mesopotamian camaign - Ur, Uruk, Babylon, Susa et al, maybe going back further - however research is going to be difficult for say 2500BC....

In between I'll take a break from MTW and give Europa Barbarorum a go, I've got the downloads ready and waiting to be installed, but I'll need to change video drivers to run it, so it won't happen til Ancient is in a stable form awaiting the next big upgade to V3.0

[Xehh II]

Well, I've just played a little bit a of it and I must say I think I like this mod better than XL, there's one thing that bugs me though, is the lack of Unit Descriptions, in the next version(if you make a next version) would you add the descriptions for units that don't have them yet? Because I always used UD to figure out what the units are good for but without them I get confused.
I haven't got the Extra campaign yet, i'll probably get it in the morning, could you tell me what's in it though?

[macsen rufus]

Hi Xehh, glad you finally managed to get it

Ah, yes, the unit descriptions.... okay, I'll admit it - they all (well most) need an overhaul for various reasons. Some are HTW hangovers which just need a bit of grammatical correction (don't think any of the HTW team were native English speakers, so I forgive them And some of them are too long for the parchment, so will need cutting down a bit), others are just placeholders I've been too lazy to go back to (ie nothing more than the unit's name), and some need a bit more 'colour'.

The extra campaign is the Punic Wars, opens in 270BC (ie five years before Rome and Carthage first went to war historically) and ends in 146BC, the year Carthage was sacked. Factions include the obvious: Rome and Carthage, Celts (I should rename them as Gauls, I guess...), Iberians, Celt-Iberians, Numidians plus a few lesser / more remote ones: Illyrians, Epirotes, Antigonid Macedonia, Syracuse, Masilia, Achaean league. That should give a good mix of army styles, everything from the pike phalanx to legions to the hordes of screaming barbarians

Recruitment is very geographical - ie most factions can raise mercenary hoplites in Greek cities, Iberians in Iberia, Numidians in North Africa etc. To give some idea of the scale of the map, Mauretania is to the southwest, the northern border just shows the south coast of Britain (not playable) and the eastern border just shows the western tip of Crete (also not playable, but do not fear - Cretan archers are for hire with ports for the right factions in the right places). The provinces are largely redrawn, one benefit of "zooming" into one corner of the usual MTW map.

* Sicily is now Lilybaeum, Messana and Syracuse
* Italy has Latium, Campania, Apulia, Samnium, Picenum, Etruria, Bruttium, Gallia Cispadana, Gallia Transpadana and Gallia Cisalpina
* Greece is Achaea, Aetolia, Macedonia and Epirus
* Spain has Baetica, Lusitania, Oretania, Saguntum, Carthago Nova, Ilergetia, Vasconia, Cantabria, Numantia, Asturia, Galicia, Emporion and Vacceia - plus the Balearic Islands (for those all important slingers )

The sea regions have also been seriously overhauled - you now need at least four ships to protect all of Sicily from invasion, for instance.

Plus there's a range of historical heroes, including the obvious two - Hannibal Barca and Publius Cornelius Scipio.

Needless to say there are new units - Numidian cavalry, Iberian cavalry, and Equites amongst the cavalry, and for infantry there are mercenary hoplites, falxmen, scutarii, caetratii, gaesatae, Celtic nobles and Samnite auxilia.

And from HTW: Xistophoroi hippeis, Companions, Thessalian cavalry, Macedonian pike phalanx, Yficratian phalanx, Thracian romfeoforoi and peltasts, and numerous other hoplite types, plus the artillery and elephants.

That should convince you that you can face another DL session