EB July Map and Features Preview
Greetings Europa Barbarorum fans.
Work is as always being done on EB and it's time to show a few of the things we've been getting ready for the mod.
Thanks goes out to Uranos, Stefan25, Tellos Athenaios, O'TAIPOS, Anallein, tk-421, and many others for helping out with these various elements of the mod. Thanks for sticking it out too guys!
And a great thanks to Teleklos Archelaou for putting together this preview.
The Map: Uranos has been working on putting the finishing touches on our map. These last changes will be the final ones for EB on RTW (outside of possible tweaks with roads or such). This map highlights the new changes (which includes two entire province changes, new rivers, some cities moved, some province and city name changes, etc.):
Here is the map without the changes highlighted, in the basic "Antique" Map format:
EB Disasters: Thanks to renewed work on disasters in RTW in general, both on TWC and ORG modding fora, we have been able to get more of them working in our current build. We had a number of discussions on how to maximize them while still keeping them realistic, and locations were researched and discussed for many of the disasters we are implementing now. Unfortunately Storms are still totally broken in RTW and will not be included, but we have Epidemic Diseases, Earthquakes, Volcanoes, and optional Floods. Even better than just having them, most of the work done on them has been in restricting them to the areas they had the most effect. Here are maps describing those areas:
Map showing Increased EB Chances for Epidemic Disease (Outbreaks) Arriving via Trade/Grain Shipments (one somewhere on the map roughly every two years, intensity ranges from 2-7)
Map showing Possible EB Earthquake Epicenters (one somewhere on the map roughly every three years, intensity ranges from 2-10)
Map showing EB Volcanoes (black cores indicate dormant/extinct, but still major/massive stratovolcanoes; red active volcanoes include those stratovolcanoes or large lava fields that have caused destruction/death in historical times)
Map showing EB Flood Prone Locations (*if* activated - they do not come activated in regular build, but are commented out - and also a backup file with them will be included - one somewhere on the map roughly every two years, intensity ranges from 5-8; problems with flooded territories may be resolved by deleting map.rwm and restarting a campaign)
Strat Map Textures: Stefan25 took a few days off from his unit-creation tasks to work on tweaking our strategy/campaign map textures. As you'll see from these screenshots, he made changes in the water, shorelines, sky, and ground textures. It makes a big impact when you load up your first game with them, and we are very pleased with the way they turned out. The grasses are much more vivid, the clouds feel more real, and the water is a lot deeper.
(Thanks Tellos Athenaios for the screenshots!)
Pahlava Changes: One of the biggest changes we have implemented for the next release involves the Pahlava (Parthian) faction. They are still in the Eastern culture group, but they begin as much more of a nomadic faction now, reflecting more accurately their situation in 272 BC. As the expand into the lands formerly occupied by the Persian and Hellenic empires across the Iranian Plateau and into Mesopotamia, they will have the ability, if pastoralism is chosen as their lifestyle in those provinces, to build a "reformed pastoralism" that will lead to advanced herds and settlements and then to individual provinces "reforms" that allow many additional buildings to be constructed and stop unit recruitment from the camps and herds and transfers it to the regular MIC's (which by that point will be cheaper and faster to build than they regularly are). The new parts of the nomad system, that only work for the Pahlava, are shown with dark grey backgrounds here:
The Locations where it is possible to build "Parthian Reformed Governments":
And to refresh your memory, here are the Nomad and Mixed Hidden Resource Locations (Nomad=Red, Mixed=Green)
(Nomad or Mixed allows "Nomadism")
(Mixed or None allows "Pastoralism")
(None allows "Nomad Allied Government")
And by the way, anyone recognize this pretty face? No cheating or asking O'ETAIPOS!
New Pahlava Buildings: Not only do they get a new and unique system, but the Pahlava also have a number of new building levels for their reformed cities.
Once you have built your nomadic villages into cities, you can then upgrade your simple sewers into Cisterns:
And if your city grows even larger, you can upgrade the regular Cisterns into a Cistern System that is cooled by Badghirs, or wind towers:
And you can even upgrade your simple Game Field into a proper Zurkaneh, or a type of traditional Persian wrestling and exercising school:
There are even more, but the proper graphics are only in the newest internal build, so they aren't shown here. Hope this glimpse gives you enough reason to upgrade those Parthian cities!
Fog of War Revealed: While we have been working on using spies and scripts to reveal the location of important cities (depending upon which faction the human player starts the game playing) that would have been known to each faction, we have had trouble because all spies were placed in the descr_strat.txt file and therefor many spaces were occupied to start each game. But Anallein realized we could use movement scripts to take one spy for each faction around the world, so to speak, before the game even starts. Then he can be killed off by scripts (sorry!). This way, if you are the Epeirotes, you start the campaign knowing of these places/cities:
Or if you are the Aedui, you start the campaign knowing of these places/cities:
Or if you are the Saka Rauka, you start the campaign knowing of these places/cities:
You get the drift now, hopefully.Thanks to tk-421 for helping out with this and fixing some of the last problems we have had with it, but now they work so much more easily and we have them for almost all factions.
Border Trade Resources: Did you ever get irritated because your provinces on the edge of the map were not helping you financially enough? The map only goes so far and even if there was light, moderate, or heavy trade going on off the edge of the map there is not much you can do about it, right? Well, we now have indestructible buildings in certain provinces on the map's edge that will help those provinces when it comes to trade. Provinces in India are most affected, but also those on the northeast corner of the map and on the east and west coasts of Africa.
Here is an example of one in the Saka Rauka lands - note the region specific description and "level" of bonuses as well:
Here is one on the Red Sea at a Ptolemaic port, with its own description and level of bonuses also:
There are more, but the rest look similar to these. We hope it will provide a more realistic trade system.
=======================================================
We hope you have enjoyed this preview of some of the EB content.
Please note that unless stated otherwise, ALL pictures, names, and descriptions shown in our previews are works in progress. We continue to improve on all parts of EB, and we will continue to do so long after our initial release.
Since some areas where these news items are posted cannot handle wide images, we appreciate your restraint from quoting full-size images.
As always, if you have questions or comments, the best place to post them is here, where the EB team is most active:
Europa Barbarorum ORG forum
Europa Barbarorum TWC forum
We give special thanks to Imageshack that provides us with a simple, foolproof, and free way to show you all these pictures each week.
Have a great day!
Sincerely,
The Europa Barbarorum team.
Reply With Quote
Originally Posted by Krusader
Re: Eb July Preview :: Map
7x
3x
All textures need to be loaded once, that's about it. All "animated" elements were there to begin with, some of them have been redone (clouds). But that shouldn't make to much of a difference - AFAIK: it's the scripting that causes most lag...
Bookmarks