Military colonial and cultural assimilation mod take2

[Pharnakes]

Today I finnaly confirmed the order of my new computer, so I will soon be playing eb again.

Therefore I have decided to once again try and produce a mod capable of showing the effects of time. Dunno if anybody remembers my attempts to produce something like this in the spring, but it makes very little difference as the version is goinng to be built of a completly different principal.

Before we go any further, can I please make it quite clear that I in no way disaprove of the pressent eb system, it is very good as it is, simply put it I belive it could be even better, or at least different, so I intend to try. Wether or not I will be more sucesful than last time remains to be seen.


Ok, my only problem with eb short of a few bugs is this: for all but 2 factions, there is no representation of time, and the changes it will bring. The Romani have reforms that sucsefuly represnts military change, and the other faction is the Hai whose system represents cultural and economic change, but not really military change (although I'm not sure about that as I have never played 1.0).

So, taking the greeks as my example, as they are the factions I am most fammiliar with, these are the questions I have been asking myself the last few days, and my attempts at answeing them.


Q. Pezhetairoi can only be recruited in a very few important cities, most of which are not even in traditonal Makedonian homelands. Why is this?

A. Because these cities were the only ones that had sufficent population of wealthy greeks to make up the phalanx.


Q. In that case how come it is possible to recruit pezhetairoi in eastern cities?

A. Because the Dadachoi resetteled vast numbers of greeks in these important cities.


Q. But surely that is all ready in eb, in the form of the kleruchoi phalagnitai?

A. No that represents kleruchoi phalagnitai who are differnet from pezhetairoi.


Q. So what do I intend to do about it?

A. Well, in a nut-shell, rewrite the edb . (I know at this point I must sound absolutley crazy to most of you, but bear with me)


This is my idea , agian I have only though it through in detail for the greeks, but here it is:



All factional recruitment is to be abolished. Regional recruitment will be kept in the following form:

There will now be just the one chain of mics, of barracks, or what have you. Through these barracks each faction will be able to recruit from a region whatever troops they historicaly did. EG if your Makedonia, in Makedonia, you will get the full flavour of pikes and cav, build the same barracks in say, Persia, and you will get persian infantry and cavalry, prehaps even the kinsmen, (does Makedonai get them? IDK) anyway, you get the point.

Also, if you are Seleukidai you will get more or less the exact same recruitment as Makedonia does, in the exact same provinces. In that case you ask, how do the Seleukidai recruit their greek troops?

Before I answer this, let us reconsider this question:

Q. In that case how come it is possible to recruit pezhetairoi in eastern cities?

A. Because the Dadachoi resetteled vast numbers of greeks in these important cities.

Therefore, I intend to intoduce a whole new series of buildings: military colonies. These will replace factional mics, and come in a variety of differnet base cultures, but will be buildable by everyone, in order to save slots.

Example the Seleukidai:

Historicaly the Seleukidai used all sorts of resetteled troops, but for the moment we will consider that they only used 2: Thrakians and Makedonains.

Therefore, the Seleukidai will have two types of military colonies avalible: Thrakian colony, through which thrakians (suprise suprise) can be recruited, and Makedonians, through which traditonal pike and cavalry can be recruited.

N.B. These colonies will take aloooonnnnnggg time to build, before which you must be content with regionals and troops marched in from other areas with colonies already established.

Again taking the Seleukidai as an example, a complete list of their avalible colonies will be something along the lines of this:

Makedonian
Southern greek
Thrakian
Galatain
Skythian
Indian (maybe, IDK)


Well, that should be enough for people to get the general idea of what I propose, my aplogies for the somewhat confused and rambling explanations> Anway, coments please?

[Basileus Seleukeia]

Ah, good ol' Pharnakes's assimilation mod, I do surely remember it! The system you have planed looks good. Are these Thrakian colonies going to produce only Prodromoi, or also soem other Thrakian units?
I'm definately looking forward to this

[Tellos Athenaios]

There are already military settler buildings in-game. All you need to do would be to make the military settler structure recruit troops (and erase aforementioned troops from the MICs), I think.

[Foot]

You'll be running out of building complexes quite quickly if you attempt to do this for all factions.

Foot

[Tellos Athenaios]

Which reminds me... it will be even more quickly with EB 1.1.

[Maksimus]

Which reminds me!
Do we even bother use EB 1 for modding if you guys are gonig out with EB 1.1 soon? Or until 2008?!

[Pharnakes]

You'll be running out of building complexes quite quickly if you attempt to do this for all factions.

Foot

No, you see the idea is this: all factions that resettled thrakoi will be able to build the same building complex to represnt this.

As I said, I intened to scrap the current factional mics for all factions (except maybe romans, I can't quite decide about them).


ATM the system is rather like this: Each faction that can recruit thrakoi troops has a different MIC building tree asigned it, but the same mics can also recruit say, italians for the Eprirotes, and say persians for the seleukidai.

I intened to try switching it around, so that rather than lots of smiliar barracks, one for ecah nation, that recruits lots of troops from different cultures, I want to try doing it so that each culture of troops has it's own colony assigned to it, but many different nations can build it (all the nations that historicaly used resetteled troops of that culture). I don't know if that explains things more, I'm not good at explaining things in pure text. However, I do have it all worked out in my mind, I just can't explain it properly in this form.


Also, I intened to try tying the polybians to the vannila marians, to do this I would give dumantha (is that what its called? sahara, anyway) the italy hidden resource, but no other city. Then, when the reform conditions are met, a huge palace would be spawned there, triggering the reforms. Also, I think this would be better than the current system, as all of the troops currently tied to the V.M.s occur much to early, mainly due to the high growth cause by 4tpy, I suppose. Anyway, if the Mak reformed phalanx and the Hetaroi Kataphraktoi were delayed a bit more, probably to 204 bc unless Romani is taken by the player, IIRC that would be more historicaly accurate would it not? (correct me if I am wrong here). ATM they can sometimes occur as early as 260bc. Anyway, the main point of that is it would free another building tree to play with, and if I get really desperate, I can always axe the imperials.

Ok ok, so I don't like Romans

Get over it.


Anyway, hope that is slightly understandable.

Ah, good ol' Pharnakes's assimilation mod, I do surely remember it! The system you have planed looks good. Are these Thrakian colonies going to produce only Prodromoi, or also soem other Thrakian units?
I'm definately looking forward to this

Thank you

I am not really intending to change which faction recruits what, thuseach faction will be able to recruit whatever thrakinas they can ATM through regionals, its just they'll be able to setup colonies to do it anywhere.

What the AI will make of this I really dont know, tbh, I hope that the very high costs and building times won't put them off too badly, it remains to be seen.


EDIT: anway, I thought the edb was already ful?

My main concern with space is this: the limit of buildings that can be built in one settlement, as I will be taking what is one building for each faction, and making it into half a dozen or even more for the more liberal factions like the Seleukidai.

[Thaatu]

Just don't typo as much in the EDs as you do posting. The forum is much more forgiving.

[Pharnakes]

Futher ideas:

List of colonies, and factions that can build the colonies:

Thrakian: Makedonia, Epiros, Seleukidai, Ptolemaioi, Baktria, KH. Also Pontus? Romanoi?
Makedonian: Makedonia, Epiros, Seleukidai, Ptolemaioi, Baktria, Pontus. KH? Parthia?
Hellenic(southern greek): KH, obviously, not sure to what extent if atall the sucesor states differnetiated them from Makedonians. Comments appricated.
Ethiopian: Sab'yn, Ptolemaioi. Seleukidai? Romanoi?
Galatain: Ptolemaioi, Seleukidai, Pontus. What about other Daidachoi? Romanoi?
Libyian: Qarthadastim.



Others that I am not sure about/would apreciate opinions on:

Indians, did anyone move signifigant quantities of Indians around?
Romanoi: Did they ever do this osrt of thing pre marian? Or were all polybian troops recruited inside Italia?
Should the Romanoi have acces to these buildings at all? Did they ever transport populations? I know they had a policy of serving away from homelands, but?
Sythians: Did anyone transport whole populations, as opposed to armies?
Non Galatain Gauls: The galatian ended up just about everwhere, due to their own actions or others, but were the northen Gauls similarly willing globe trotters?
Punic: Were the elite Punic troops (sacred bands, ect) ever recruited outside of Qarth Hadsht itself?


Just incase any of you are wondering how I intend to balance things for the Barbarians, I intend to do a series of buildings that I will call "tribal migrations". These will be avalible for the vairous more important tribes, eg Belgae, Chatti, ect.

One last point, as I have now decided to undertake this, if any mod wants to put it in its proper place in the unofical mods section, please do.

[mrtwisties]

Very interesting/ambitious.

For added realism, you could limit the regions to which certain groups were able to migrate. For example, horsey people should only be able to migrate into regions that have the nomad or mixed resource, because they just couldn't have lived their lifestyle anywhere else.

Perhaps the Greeks should be limited to temperate zones? It's hard to imagine growing olives in Scandinavia. And, without olives, are they really Greeks? :)

[Spoofa]

Very interesting/ambitious.

For added realism, you could limit the regions to which certain groups were able to migrate. For example, horsey people should only be able to migrate into regions that have the nomad or mixed resource, because they just couldn't have lived their lifestyle anywhere else.

Perhaps the Greeks should be limited to temperate zones? It's hard to imagine growing olives in Scandinavia. And, without olives, are they really Greeks? :)

greeks were everywhere, they were the explorers of the classical era.

The main thing i would like would be adding Kleuroch Phalangitai to the sucessor states when they make the colony building, if you know how then can u tell me? If its as simple as i think then I may jump for joy!


(btw, the ppl at TWcenter dont know very much about history, i was looking at the EB forum on there and most of their criticism is about 300 stuff. )

[Constantine the Great]

That looks pretty cool, if you can get it to work.

[Pharnakes]

(btw, the ppl at TWcenter dont know very much about history, i was looking at the EB forum on there and most of their criticism is about 300 stuff. )

Yeah, well, the twc has the numbers, the .org has the manners and the knowledge

and EB

Very interesting/ambitious.

For added realism, you could limit the regions to which certain groups were able to migrate. For example, horsey people should only be able to migrate into regions that have the nomad or mixed resource, because they just couldn't have lived their lifestyle anywhere else.

Perhaps the Greeks should be limited to temperate zones? It's hard to imagine growing olives in Scandinavia. And, without olives, are they really Greeks? :)

I do intend to limit things to a certian extent, but not mcuh, Afterall, even if you wouldn't want to live somewhere on your own, you might well out up with it for the 10 years of military service, if you get paid enough

As for the olives, well, thats true of course, but I doubt olives grow very well in northern soghidiana.

That looks pretty cool, if you can get it to work.

Thanks, I know I can get it to work, there's nothing paticuarly new or clever about this, its just a matter of finding the time to do it all without any help. *hint, hint*

The main thing i would like would be adding Kleuroch Phalangitai to the sucessor states when they make the colony building, if you know how then can u tell me? If its as simple as i think then I may jump for joy!

Sorry, can't be bothered explaining what others already have said, just look in the scriptorium for the complete edb guide, that'll explain everything.