Medieval II: Total War Windows game

This is the official beta 0.9 of East of Rome (EoR) which was only ever available to developers of the mod until the developer's forum got removed over at TWC.

Back in 2017 I worked on re-enabling many of the units for custom battle - as they were not working due to faulty lines in the BMMDB-file and had to be corrected in order to work properly in battle. Expect to be able to play custom battles with more factions than in the 2014 Danube Limes Beta.

What about the campaign?

In this version of the mod you'd get a slightly more developed version of the Danube Limes Campaign that should be more stable, and there are a bunch of remade units for the Romans made in 2020 by Komatozz, so I've also been doing a bit of fixing for the mod.

The End of Antiquity Campaign is not developed enough to be playable, and the Justinian Campaign has a weird crash to desktop where whenever you select Sassanid-styled cities the mod will crash - but sometimes it won't. It's not far from being playable.

I don't seem to be able to fix the crash and will release this version as is, if anyone wants to pick it up and try their hands at fixing the bug in the Justinian campaign be my guest.

If you want units just be sure to credit the East of Rome team as that's what the developers said.

I gave up on fixing the Justinian Campaign, but the mod should still be better off than the prior upload - and I still put effort into enabling the rosters in custom battle even if the Main Campaign still isn't playable due to said bug and the fact certain factions (in the campaign) will need new units as the units have been lost. I did remove all those factions from the custom battles but they're still in the Justinian Main campaign - every faction/unit of the factions available in custom should work but not the others available in the grand campaign.

Credits to the East of Rome Development Team for most of the work on this beta, I just fixed it up a bit from its state in 2017 - which still took me some work mostly done in 2017 and in 2019.

Update:

2017 - Back in January 2017 I was given access to a Github of which allowed me to download East of Rome Beta 0.9 through it straight to my computer, this didn't work on my stational computer but worked fine on my then half a year old Windows 10 laptop.

After I had downloaded the mod I got to work re-enabling many units in the mod that werent' working and would crash when trying to start battles with them. All the intended units of the mod were properly added to the Export_Descr_Units-file and all the other files- but many of the models and skins had been lost years earlier- not all the models were lost though, but instead had messed up entries in the BMMDB-file- so I had to go through that file and fix the lines of many units connecting the game to their skins and meshes- without this the game wouldn't be able to find the files, and as a result it would crash when trying to start a battle using said models.

During the spring of 2017 I had re-enabled a bunch of factional rosters to the custom battles, enabling quite a few factions to be playable there despite most of these units lacking unit cards. My goal at this point was to at first re-enable all the existing units in the files, and later replace the older models with better ones - as some of th emodels were of great quality, others were older but decent and then there were literally Rome Total War styled models that obviously were outdated by any modern standards.

I re-enabled many rosters in the mod in addition to the five older rosters from the Danube Limes beta - in which we had the:

• Eastern Roman Empire (Maurekian Era = Era 1)
• The Sclaveni (Slavs)
• The Avari (Avars)
• The Antes

So in addition to the 4 factions of the Danube Limes stand-alone beta we now had these awesome addtions:

• Eastern Roman Empire (Justinian Era = Era 0, using Rome Total War-styled models)
• Eastern Roman Empire (Heraclian Era = Era 1 or 2, using Awesome Models)
• Eastern Roman Empire (Thematic Era = Era 2, using high quality models)
• Eranshar/Iran/Persia/The Sassanids (Awesome Models in the same style as the Heraclian Romans)

And we had the following factions/rosters with decent older models, or Rome Total War-styled models:

• Bulgars (Decent older models)
• Abbasid Caliphate (Decent older models)
• Lakhmids (Rome Total War-styled models)
• Ghassanids (Rome Total War-styled models)
• Hayatheliten (Decent older models)
• Blemmyes (Rome Total War-styled models)
• Huns (Rome Total War-styled models)
• Langobardi (Decent older models with a unique style similar to the Ayun Calut Middle-Eastern mod)

The mod included in addition to the factions above a bunch of other additional factions with maybe one or two units, probably with a RTW-style - most of these remaining factions lacked models due to a harddrive crash and loss of unit models in the past. So they're not available to play in custom battle, but are in the "Restoratio Imperii"-campaign which is the real Justinian Campaign- a campaign that can't be played due to previously mentioned crash to desktop whenever Sassanid cities are clicked on by the player or taken by the AI.

There are three campaigns - Danube Limes- wrongly named "Justinian Main Campaign" in the menu due to me forgetting to change the title back (Fully working and improved since the stand-alone beta), Justinian Main Campaign/Restoratio Imperii (this is the real campaign of East of Rome with a mugh bigger map, more factions, most things placed out etc - sadly it's not playable due to one, lacking unit models for some of the playable factions and two, the crash with the Sassanid cities - were it not for this crash it would have been easy to find placeholder models for the remaining factions, and I would say that the mod would almost be reasy if it weren't for this crash) and lastly we have the "End of Antiquity" campaign ( It has its own unique map with three factions placed out, but it's hardly worked on - it's totally unplayable and unfinished).

So the Danube Limes campaign is the one campaign that can be played and enjoyed, the other two are unplayable - but if the crash would be fixed then the Justinian Main Campaign is almost at the final stages to be played as well - if the crash would be fixed and the needed unit models added then making the EoA campaign playable wouldn't be difficult - as all three campaigns are using the same files, so it's just a matter of adding factions and units to the map at that point - and family members, traits, ancillaries etc. In any case, the Main Justinian Campaign would be almost ready if the crash were removed- and I had planned on releasing a fully playable Justinian Main Campaign but the crash with the Sassanid cities on the map ruined it and I had to stop my effort.

Alright, so I've posted videos above of all the factional rosters - most of them were outdated and most likely supposed to be replaced by more modern unit models later. As for the Roman rosters they're mostly of great quality, but the Justinian roster i Era = had outdated RTW-models. The Eranshar roster is the best looking Iran/Persia/Sassanid roster I've seen for Medieval 2- and the roster is huge as well.

The Maurekian roster is the same as in the Danube Limes beta but with possibly one or two additional units.

The Heraclian roster is the best looking roster out of the Roman roster, and it's huge as well - I do know that there are two rosters sharing one ERA - I'm not certain if it is the Maurekian and Heraclian rosters at Era 1, or if it's the Heraclian and Thematic rosters at Era 2.

The Thematic roster is the late-game Viking Age era roster and has models of great quality similar to the models of "The Great Conflicts" Roman roster, or the Romans of Bulat Steel - the fact is that many of the Roman models of "The great Conflicts are later iterations of the East of Rome models so these are older and more outdated, and the Bulat Steel Roman Roster had a few that were exactly the same - even though others were very different. How do I know? Because some unit cards in Bulat Steel fit the models perfectly in East of Rome, hence why a few of the Thematic Roman models have cards unlike those units that weren't in Bulat Steel as well.

East of Rome is a very old mod, so it's safe to say that the models were in it first- it is actually older than "The Great Conflicts" which has been in development since 2011 at least.

With the above said it's safe to say that we have some awesome looking Roman and Iranian/Sassanid models in this mod!

As for the other rosters they're mostly Rome Total War models in the same style as the Invasio Barbarorum mods, even though a few have decent older models that look like altered vanilla models, or DBM-models, and then we have the Langobardi with a roster that would fit perfectly in the mod Ayn Calut based on the style of the units, but the models are unique.

I did also post a video showing-off the stand-alone End of Antiquity Beta, but this beta was so unfinished that it hardly had anything placed out on the map - I even believe it's slightly better off in the Beta 0.9 single-package.

You can view it here:

Later in 2020 during the summer a user over at TWC who called himself Komatozz joined me int he project and decided to remake a few models of the Maurekian Roman roster- mostly improving their faces and making them more serious and less cartoony, he also added completely new models for the Justinian roster of the Romans, so at least a few models were updated there- but far from all of them -and he probably also added one or so new unit for the Heraclian or Maurekian roster unless I misremember and they're also for the Justinian roster.

This means that Komatozz did update a couple of units for the Justinian campaign, so not all the units are RTW-styled anymore.

I did upload the Beta 0.9 on December 22nd 2022, and later updated the upload on May 6th 2023 with the following notice:

"EDIT as of 2023-05-06 - Louis Lux did fix a few Roman units for this version of the mod, later sent to me by the creator of a different mod - I won't continue this mod due to the crash to desktop that happens in the Justinian Main Campaign (which has been moved in under "custom campaigns" - "restauratio_imperii" - The campaign named "Justinian Main Campaign" is the Danube Limes fully playable campaign) whenever the Sassanid settlements are taken by anyone - but I felt like updating the mod as a few units had been updated/fixed here. I didn't ask for these units to be fixed and/or updated but the guy who sent me the models are also using them in his mod."

The mod Insularis Draco is the mod that is using the same models, after its creator asked permission - he was the one who sent me the updated models after Luis Luz fixed them.

In 2024 I decided to upload pictures of the models by Komatozz, after another mod set in the same time-period as East of Rome, and heavily crediting Danube Limes, uploaded a Beta 0.9 release - East of Rome might have ended development as far as Iäm aware, but if any of its content is of interest to others the permissions are given to those who credit the "East of Rome Team" according to what the creators have stated.

I were myself made a mod developer of East of Rome in 2017, and was invited to the official Mod Development forum at TWC- sadly the thread was deleted like back in 2019 or so after inactivity.

So yes, the development has ended, but anyone is free to continue the mod and try their hands at fixing said bug with the Sassanid cities crashing- or maybe if another mod set in the same time period wants to use assets this mod might be of interest to their mod.

I thought that I'd make a new article now as it's been ages since the last one on March 21st 2017.

Here are the new models made by or edited by Komatozz:

Beware that a few only got new faces and shield textures, while others are new models,

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