Europa Barbarorum II FAQ

[Goreuncle]

Hi people! I don't mean to be rude but...
Why do you keep developing this mod after so many years? This mod seems already obsolete to me.
The way I see it, when EBII finally comes out few people will want to play it. Don't get me wrong, I love and admire EB and I still play it from time to time...but with Rome 2 coming I don't see the point of this mod anymore.
I bet people is starting to think about EBIII (based on Rome 2).

Take care!

[Kival]

I don't care much fore Rome 2; I'd still love to play EB 2, though.

[Ailfertes]

Hi people! I don't mean to be rude but...
Why do you keep developing this mod after so many years? This mod seems already obsolete to me.
The way I see it, when EBII finally comes out few people will want to play it. Don't get me wrong, I love and admire EB and I still play it from time to time...but with Rome 2 coming I don't see the point of this mod anymore.
I bet people is starting to think about EBIII (based on Rome 2).

Take care!

I don't agree at all. EB II will almost certainly be much more worked out in aspects of historical accuracy, difficulty, roleplaying aspects, traits, and gameplay mechanisms such as leaders and families, nomadism and settlement, building development, provincial government, ...
Rome 2 will look better, have better animations, and probably have some innovative aspects. But Rome 2 will be all about war. EB II will be all about the world you play in. Which IMHO has much more appeal. I will be bored with Rome 2 very early on. I will be able to keep playing EB II for years, as I have been playing EB for years.

[QuintusSertorius]

I don't agree at all. EB II will almost certainly be much more worked out in aspects of historical accuracy, difficulty, roleplaying aspects, traits, and gameplay mechanisms such as leaders and families, nomadism and settlement, building development, provincial government, ...
Rome 2 will look better, have better animations, and probably have some innovative aspects. But Rome 2 will be all about war. EB II will be all about the world you play in. Which IMHO has much more appeal. I will be bored with Rome 2 very early on. I will be able to keep playing EB II for years, as I have been playing EB for years.

Agreed. R2:TW will be more vanilla CA rubbish, which I have zero interest in. I bought M2:TW on budget a year or so ago in preparation for EBII, but haven't even installed it yet. I won't play it unmodded, not even worth my time, though I have occasionally looked for other total conversions of the same standard as EB to try. Fundamental issue, though, is that I don't much care for the medieval period and even less for fantasy-inspired ones.

[Arjos]

I have occasionally looked for other total conversions of the same standard as EB to try. Fundamental issue, though, is that I don't much care for the medieval period and even less for fantasy-inspired ones.

Invasio Barbarorum II isn't bad, its team is working on several scenarios, which are quite interesting...
With those completed (2 out of 3 were already released), they will mix it all up for the "world" map campaign...

Of course if you don't like the late antiquity, I can't think of any mod for M2TW, other than EBII :P

[sareth]

hi to all!

how is everything?

I have a curiosity: the performance of the mod in development and the engine itself, as they are?

[Rex Somnorum]

How detailed is the representation of local cultures and religions, like Judaism? And how can the player influence their development? From the meagre information I've gleaned, most of the important buildings will primarily determine the relation of the ruling or occupying power to the regional community. Will that correspond to a cultural exchange?

[V.T. Marvin]

hi to all!

Thank you and hello back to you!

how is everything?

Pretty busy, but fine overall. Afterall, it seems that winter has finally decided to go away from my place and the Sun is startin to show up at times, so it will only get better I guess.

I have a curiosity: the performance of the mod in development and the engine itself, as they are?

That is a good question, but a difficult one to answer. Luckily for me I have bought a "Skyrim-grade" laptop last year, so the game runs smoothly for me. Actually the loading times are much shorter than I experience while playing EB 1.2 on the same computer. But that might be not only because the M2TW engine is better and more efficient, but also because we still do not have so much text - historical descriptions mostly - crammed into our development version of the mod. In any case, I believe that given how old M2TW is and how powerful most of computers made in the last few years are, there will be no problem running the game in reasonable detail at a reasonable speed.

Related to that is of course the stability issue and here I have to admit that this is something that we have to improve before public release. Yes, there are mysterious CTDs occurring from time to time - as is to be expected in any complex software still under development - and it would be prudent to assume that even after public release there will still be some. Hopefully it will not detract from the enjoyment of the game too much. Just remember - or ask around - what performance EB 0.74 or EB 0.81b have had...

So brace yourself, but do not be afraid!

How detailed is the representation of local cultures and religions, like Judaism? And how can the player influence their development? From the meagre information I've gleaned, most of the important buildings will primarily determine the relation of the ruling or occupying power to the regional community. Will that correspond to a cultural exchange?

First of all, welcome to the .Org in general and to the EB community in particular. Please enjoy a virtual beer straight from Pilsen, cheers!

The game is necessarily running of very high level of abstraction - just consider how huge area in RL the game map is supposed to represent and how little tools we have in the game engine to make such things really matter. That said, this is an issue that is considered seriously by our historians and attention is paid to it. What we can do is provide historical information on subjects that otherwise cannot be directly represented in the game. For instance, every province - and there are 199 of them - will have it own "building" precisely as a medium to confer information about the geography, history and society of the region to the player in the building's description. Than there are traits. while there is a hard-coded limit of 30 factions at max in the game, there are ways to represent various tribes, ethnicities and such, that composed the larger game faction, as traits for the game characters. These are another medium to provide historical information, but more importantly they matter in things like how well a particular character fare in governing a particular city or commanding an army, etc.

The cultural interplay is actually even more restricted as the game engine allows at most 10 "cultures" and 7 "religions" - so there is not too much granularity we can aim for, but still some ingenious mechanisms has been devised which I am not going to spoil right now, but generally I can say with confidence that yes, local cultures and religions do matter, have fairly detailed representation and could be manipulated by the player. Within reason of course.

[JMRC]

I bet people is starting to think about EBIII (based on Rome 2).

There is no garantee that RTW2 will allow modifications on it. It will probably follow the path of its predecessors and allow only a minimal degree of visual changes and that's it. So, most probably, MTW2 will continue to be the last TW game to allow a reasonable level of modifications. As such, if you want to make a mod which better represents this period in History, you have to do it with MTW2, even if obsolete.

[Ca Putt]

Good points lads, good points.

I'd like to add one point that while it may sound a bit silly to 9out of 10 gamers I think does help the download numbers of EB2:

R2TW will have much higher requirements and many people who "do mods" are reluctant to upgrade their rig. Thus while EB2 runs on all reasonably gamey machines people have out there R2TW will force some people to get anew rig, while this does not scare hardcore fans, Modusers will reassess: cost(R2TW)=50$+1000$=1050$=a lot, cost(EB2)=0$+10(in case they do not have M2TW yet)$=10$=not much.
And frankly M2TW actually is a reasonably pretty game(well apart from those horrid vanilla skins that are replaced by EB) it has mixed units, and a ok poly count. while one could say RTW is just soo horrid(all units look the same) that one needs to upgrade the same is not true for M2TW. R2TW will surely be much prettier and have some fancy features that EB2 will sorely lack(naval warfare and realistic strat map rivers in particular) but It's not like EB would not have perks aswell. Starting from more than 8 playable factions, extensive scripts and a more reasonable Province capital choice(CA wtf!!) not to forget that it stretches east ~2 provinces further.

Another also often overlooked reason:
one should not change horses in midstream. I* have seen quite some Mods die because they changed the engine before they actually released a version. A good example here is the "EB mod" for Mount and Blade. switching engines may retain research, but you loose all the work done in code Textures and Models may be imported but are often obsolete. A new engine often also means new possibilities and thus spurs more concept work. You essencially throw away most of your work and start from scratch, just to have an "obsolete" mod by the time you're done, afterall large Mods normally take much longer than "real" games do make, afterall modders do it in their free time. and often Modding teams are much smaller than Dev teams at microsoft etc. Finaly switching engine also disgruntles a lot of fans and thus disposes of a large portion of the mod followers as most people follow mods for games that they own rather than mods from good modders.

Total conversion Mods make old games interesting again, they don't improve on new games.

*the great mod observer.

[Arjos]

Modusers will reassess: cost(R2TW)=50$+1000$=1050$=a lot, cost(EB2)=0$+10(in case they do not have M2TW yet)$=10$=not much.

Seriously, those complaining really need to engrave that part in their brains: IT'S FREE!!!
For me and most people, deciding whether to spend 1k is a choice between being able to eat and pay the bills for 2 months (even less) or not XD

And that's the materialistic take on it, R2TW will never even remotely reach the depth of EBII, Shogun 2 had like 5 gainable traits, 3 ancillaries and when you are like 1-2 traits from birth lol

Then again, if all you care about are graphics, buy the damn thing and be happy :P

[Miaow]

I'd be more worried about the AI, especially the campaign map AI. IIRC, the M2:TW AI is even worse than R:TW's is, and then there are things like the cavalry bug (making proper charging not happen all too often). Empire was pretty dire also, but S2:TW was a huge improvement in campaign AI and an incremental one in battlemap AI. Assuming R2:TW's AI is as good or better than Shogun 2's, I'm sure that's something we'd like to have for EB.

[Arjos]

Nah, the campaign AI is far far better, especially the diplomacy (I've seen this in many mods already)...
As for the cavalry charges, I think it had to do with the vanilla stats, regarding at what distance the lances were lowered. Again in mods I've had no troubles with charging, retreating and charging again :)

[Ca Putt]

The lance "bug" was more than compensated by the onipresent OP-ness of heavy cavalry in M2TW, there are few mods where Cavalry isn't THE battle winner*, no matter how small their units. While I do see the problem, It hasn't been anyway near game breaking in the past and with the EB aim(Cavalry is great but Infantry wins battles) I don't think it will be problematic at all.

*lately I mopped up a scripted dutch rebellion with 8 units of pikemen, 8 units of Spearmen and 4 units of crossbowmen, with 5 units of bodyguard sized Knights a unit of Militia crossbowmen, sergeants and mounted sergeants each. you could say I'm an inpeccible General, or you could say Cavalry is awfully powerfull in M2TW.

[QuintusSertorius]

Nah, the campaign AI is far far better, especially the diplomacy (I've seen this in many mods already)...

Admittedly I don't have a lot of faith in CA in this regard (since AI is much harder to get right than graphics), but I'd be curious to know more.
Does the AI respect alliances and such, or more specifically, are the military and diplomacy AI actually aligned now (they weren't in R:TW)?
Will the AI accept peace treaties when you've decided you've had enough of defeating them?
Does the AI put together proper, large armies, rather than fragmenting their forces and sending endless streams of useless, too-small armies to annoy but never actually threaten?
Does the AI defend its settlements when you invade, rather than fleeing?
Is the rebel/slave/unaligned faction a challenge to other AI factions? One of the things that annoys me a little about the simulation aspect in EB is that all those independents are a pushover, leading to imperial juggernaughts in far too short a time.
Lastly, is there an equivalent to the Force Diplomacy minimod in M2:TW?