Rome Total Realism Needs You!!

Hey... you asked for ideas.

And I like yours it's just too bad most of it can't be implemented

Could I get some of those horrible abstract, mathematical unit formations Asclepciodotus wrote about?

http://www.loebclassics.com/view/asclepiodotus-tactics/1928/pb_LCL156.323.xml

We can have ourselves some stunned gameplay when some of these formations take the field and start trying to move about.

That's something that might be worth looking into.

Update on the mod:

Map is complete, and everything is set up to play. Right now we are adding features from Barbarian Invasion:

1) Religion: this will be used to simulate the three major sets of culture that were present at this time: Western Civilized, Eastern Civilized and Barbarian. Each settlement will have a native culture building to depict the native culture that dominated the region. Then factions are able to build colony buildings to help convert the local populace. Characters will also have a trait signifying their culture that will also affect conversion rates.

This will make expansion tough, especially for factions that tend to move northward into barbarian lands. Our hopes is that this feature will slow the game down while also adding some realism. If anything revolts will be a lot more common!

2) Loyalty: every faction except the Roman factions will have loyalty enabled (apparently with the senate enabled having loyalty as a roman faction would result in a crash once a revolt happens). So this feature will bring the rebels more to the surface as a main player. If your general has low loyalty and the settlement revolts he will then be a rebel general.

3) Night Battles: Your best generals will have the ability to catch enemies by surprise by fighting them at night.

4) Two new battle formations: Certain spear units will have the ability to do shieldwall or schiltrom formation.

Also right now hording cannot work on the Alexander engine. We hope to look into it and maybe change that.

You will like Asclepciodotus, he was a Stoic Philosopher, resident on Rhodes just prior to absorption by the Romans. His work was more or less designed for game mods. His formations are unreasonable in many sense, but I doubt it would stop your group from pulling it off.

To be perfectly honest, a YouTube video of a mod showing off the units and formations would be the ideal format instead of its current book form. If you read it you would understand. Be the only way people would "read" it, is to watch it. I simply couldn't imagine what a battle would look like using his guide.

I'm really hoping this happens now.

If any of you are on twcenter.net we have just released a private testing version for the team to play. I am posting this because if any of you are interested enough I'd like for you to join us in testing and development! If you don't have an account, create one and add me (ahowl11) as a friend. We will then try to get you into the dev group.

Heck I might as well just post it here

Great news everyone! Anarchon and I have finished phase one of development. Get the beta here:
http://depositfiles.com/files/tfvpktmwg

Installation:
1) Make sure you have a clean install of RTW with BI and ALX installed as well.
2) Download MM
3) Extract into the clean RTW directory (if you have an old MM from testing just delete it)
4) Make a shortcut of the ALX.exe and put it on your desktop rename it RTR MM
5) Go to properties and in the target line, add -show_err -mod:MM after quotations and one space.
6) Test

NOTE: This will be the last time I upload a beta the old school traditional way. From here on out we will be using a new svn and also use a new repo for our work. Makes development much quicker. Most of you know by now how to work the svn, but for those of you who don't we will provide extremely clear instructions! If you still don't understand it well, you are a monkey.

Features:
RTH map edited by myself and Anarchon. - This includes a brand new regions list, geographical changes, revised descr_rebels, descr_strat, descr_regions, and descr_mercenaries. We use a very organized and simple excel spreadsheet to plug in any changes. Saves loads of time. We will also be using this spreadsheet for further development. I will be uploading it as well once Anarchon adjusts some things to make it current.

The mod is set at the vanilla date, 270BC - 14AD and the starting positions are as accurate as a vanilla mod can be.

The Senate feature is still in and works fine.

Every city that historically had either stone or earth walls have stone walls, even if they are not at city level yet. Some colonies and most barbarian settlements have wooden walls.

Most regions have roads, blacksmiths and ports as its realistic.

Most cities have the closest temple associated with it historically in place.

If cities specialized in ships, academics, mining, farming, games, theater, cavalry, archers, or infantry they have been given the specific buildings to represent this.

Looks like most factions won't have any trouble with finances! Will make the game easy, but realize it has not been modded yet.

Added all BI features except for ones with hardcode issues in the ALX.exe. Added:
-Religion: which is now termed culture. There will be WesternCivilized, EasternCivilized and Barbarian cultures. The each get a building tree to help spread their culture and public unrest will be the result if you conquer a city of different culture. Each region has an indestructible native culture building, but factions can build colonies of their culture to help convert the populace. Carthage and the Seleucids will have the toughest time. Also traits were added to characters to reflect their culture.

-Seventh Culture: Nomad. This has been given to Scythia. They now have different portraits, and sound eastern. They also have eastern music and the nomad building tree from BI.

-Loyalty: This feature has been given to every faction except for the Roman factions (they have their own civil war, and giving them loyalty while the senate is enabled would cause a CTD upon revolt.) Every faction is shadowed by the slave faction, and your generals all have the loyalty feature attached to them. A disloyal general will defect to the rebels upon revolt instead of being kicked out of a settlement.

-Night Battles: Your best generals will now have the ability to fight night battles.

-BI Buildings for Barbarians: the 4th and 5th tier buildings have been added to the strat map and battle map. No bugs either.

-Naval Invasions: thought we could try this out and see how the factions respond. I assigned it to: Scipii, Brutii, Carthage, Greeks, and Britons.

-BI Barbarian Interface

-Advisor portraits for Barbarian, Nomad, Carthaginian, and Eastern Cultures.

Added most ALX features that would be relevant for this mod:

-Faction Specific Mercenaries. With ALX, factions can have mercenaries available only to them. I added a few vanilla units that made sense to some factions:
Carthage: Libyan Spearmen in Africa, Iberian Infantry and Round Shield Cavalry in Iberia. They are not located everywhere, just in historically/culturally accurate regions.
Thrace: Bastarnae in and around Dacia
Macedon: Greek Cavalry in Classical Greece
Pontus: Cappadocian Cavalry in Cappadocia
Egypt: Nubian Spearmen and Nubian Cavalry in Kush and Ethiopia.
Parthia: Persian Cavalry in Persia.

Immortal trait added - by default in ALX if the trait is not in the traits file, all characters are immortal. By adding it, characters are mortal unless its assigned to them in the descr_strat.

ai_do_not_attack_faction - this feature makes it so factions don't attack a faction. It can only be used once per faction. The factions that cannot attack each other are:
Carthage/Egypt
Pontus/Armenia
Scythia/Parthia
Germans/Britons

Custom/Historical Battles enabled - before you would get a ktm. We need these to test things in the future.

Advisor portraits for Greek factions.

That's pretty much it. The to do list is as follows:

-Rename modfolder from MM to RTR
-Integrate into a launcher
-Add the unlocked harcode stuff
-Get svn started again
-Do promotional work to generate public interest.
-Begin phase two of development. This entails: 4tpy script, small features and scripts, permanent settlements, restructure temples, new names, edit vanilla units, add bi and alx units, some other minor stuff.

For promotional work this means the following:
TAKE MANY SCREENS. Whether it be of the new map, new features, cool battles or interesting happenings, or even your kingdoms. Get screen shots flowing so we can add to our website in development and also make previews so we can revive the public forums.

Someone should make a short AAR. Please volunteer, or else I will be a nuisance to some of you

Someone should do a quick let's play making sure he previews all the goodies!

Let the REAL testing begin!

First preview

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?692505-Rome-Total-Realism-Preview-1

Anyone interested in joining?