Well, looks like I am following a three month trend when it comes to releases! In May I focused on some inner mechanics to the game that would make the campaign a bit more complex and harder. This time around my focus has been on two things: Adding regions to the map to make it more historically accurate and fun, as well as getting all BI and ALX units in that fit the time frame. The map is largely untested, and you will notice some cookie-cutter garrisons and settlements. This will all be updated to be more unique in time, but I really need to have testing done to see what is working well, and what isn't. The economy has not been touched, and neither has population growth, so I expect some wacky test results coming up! The good news is the campaign should not CTD hardly at all. Multiple tests have gone deep into the game without issue. Also, battle CTD's should be taken care of since I have fixed the few sprite and DMB issues that were occurring from the last version. Finally, a few small but quite significant changes have been added. First is a revolutionary formations system, crafted by Suppanut. Him and I went through every mod and combined all unique formations that were applicable to this mod. So now players will be able to play with unique formations from Darth Vader, Sinhuet, Marcus Camillus, RedFox and more! Second is Robbe's continued work on the environments and map. In this mod you will find better looking farmland on the battlefield, new noises in the battle map, as well as better coastlines and features on the campaign map.
The Roman Manipular Formation
The first order of business in this mod was the map, and it took about two months to finish as I went area by area, carefully adding in regions and garrisons. Over the 8 years of modding and reading books as well as having conversations online I have a pretty good grasp of what cities were prevalent at the time of Rome Total War. So I whipped up a list, and went from there. Mapping actually is something I have learned recently, at least the basics. It is quite fun if you know your way around the files. Anyways, the map is pretty evened out at first glance, but as I said, I really need a lot of testing and feedback to see how it really works and what adjustments need to be made.
Antigonos sits on his throne in Pella, planning on making Greece his own
A few things you will notice in the mini-map above are the fact that the Gauls and Greeks have been altered the most. Both of these factions were 'super-factions' in RTW and my intent here was to stay with that theme. The Greeks portray the Chremonidean League as well as Syracuse and Massilia in the west. The Gauls now are severely split to prevent a Gallic Kingdom from forming. They represent the Arverni, Insubres, Boii, Tylis and Galatians now. I also moved the Germans a bit east to Maetonium to represent the Bastarnae. The reasoning for some of these moves were to keep Dacia in check, which seems overpowered in early testing. The Romans still expand, but they aren't the unstoppable force we are used to seeing in vanilla. I will continue to work on balance in the next release. For now, please give me as much detailed feedback on the map as possible!
The Roman Families are poised to strike in every direction!
The second part of this release is all focusing on units. This took me about a month, and a lot of work was put in to get to the point of release today. Basically, I wanted to include every single unit from Barbarian Invasion and Alexander that made sense for the RTW timeframe. Most units were added with appropriate reskins, but a lot of the 'Steppe' units in BI I had to look elsewhere, or make to have them fit in with the other units. Many thanks goes to the Barbarians Revenge Mod, that was made by Dick and Alexander. It's a Russian mod, but it has many good looking units. Also, as you'll see, a few units from previous versions when Lanjane was helping have made it back in!
Factional Units
From Top Left to Bottom Right:
Hounds of Culann, Kardakes (Pontus), Britannic Light Chariots (stats based off Scotti Chariots), Hypaspists, Kardakes (Armenia)
Parthian Cataphracts, Thracian Cavalry, Scythian Mounted Archers, Steppe Warriors, Steppe Horse Archers
Herdsmen, Steppe Lancers, Steppe Nobles, Steppe Raiders, Steppe Spearmen
Rebel Units
From Top Left to Bottom Right:
Arab Raiders, Arab Axemen, Desert Archers, Arab Hillmen, Arab Lancers/Desert Chieftain
Desert Cavalry, Peasants, Tribal Slingers, Barbarian Spearmen, Javelin Skirmishers
Thracian Cavalry, Barbarian Archers, Barbarian Cavalry, Barbarian Horse Archers, Barbarian Sicklemen
Barbarian Swordsmen, Steppe Horse Archers, Steppe Lancers, Runaway Slave Spearmen, Steppe Raiders
Steppe Spearmen, Steppe Warlord, Herdsmen
Mercenary Units
From Top Left to Bottom Right:
Cretan Archers, Greek Cavalry, Agrianian Javelinmen, Paeonian Cavalry, Phrygian Infantry
Bosporan Infantry, Thessalian Cavalry, Thracian Cavalry, Illyrian Skirmishers, Thracian Infantry
Sarmatian Noble Cavalry, Dahae Mounted Archers, Barcanian Cavalry, Scythian Mounted Archers, Mardian Archers
Cyrtian Javelinmen, Hyrcanian Cavalry, Median Cavalry, Median Infantry, Median Skirmishers,
Mountain Men, Mountain Slingers, Persian Archer Spearmen, Persian Cavalry, Sarmatian Armoured Archers
More Senate offices to reflect the Roman Senate more accurately
As the map and units were being worked on a few miscellaneous changes were also made. Some by me, and some from the help of the community.
- Since many units were added to Scythia, they have an almost completely different roster. Most of the old units have been removed
- Robbe made a better farm look on the battlefield
- Robbe updated his veggie mod to include sounds from M2TW
- Robbe made parts of the map more geographically accurate
- crazyroman added in an Eastern Officer from Barbarian Invasion
- suppanut added in his brand new formations system which combines every formation system in existence into one large immersive one
- After reading a small article from a blogger, I increased the amount of Senate Offices to best reflect the amount of Senators.
- I also gave been toying around with the Senate as a whole, there is not much to change.
- All BI/ALX units have their stats taken from Darth's BI and ALX mods, to go in line with the Darth Stats of Vanilla
- All Roman units have more secondary HP's than other factions as it makes them more powerful on auto-resolve. The goal is to make the Romans that terrifying force that you will inevitably fight, just like in vanilla.
- Made Pirate Ships very weak
- Gave Officers to All Roman units and made them all very_hardy
What I'd like from anyone downloading this and playing is to give me as detailed as reviews as possible when it comes to the AI on the campaign map and battle map.
I need to know about how the formations are working, how much population growth is, how easy is it to make money, and how quickly does the AI expand, particularly the Romans.
DOWNLOAD AND INSTALLATION:
- If you have an old HRTW version, you can try overwriting, but to be safe, delete it as this will not work with it. This version isn't save compatible.
- One thing that I need to be clear on, is this mod runs on the Alexander.exe not the regular Rome Total War exe. Please make sure you use an Alexander Install.
- To Install, simply extract HRTW into your Rome Total War Directory, or if you use steam, your Rome Total War Alexander Directory. when making a shortcut, use the Alexander.exe or in steam go to Launch options and include this: -show_err -mod:HRTW -noalexander
IF YOU DO NOT FOLLOW THE ABOVE INSTRUCTIONS, NOTHING WILL WORK!
Want to follow this mod more closely and be more involved? Then join the Rome Total War Community server on discord here! Discord.gg
CREDITS:
- Suppanut for his formations
- AqD for Bosporan Infantry model
- Barbarians Revenge for Scythian/Steppe models and textures
- Lanjane for Hounds of Culann, Britannic Light Chariots and Barbarian Sicklmen Sica fix
- Michael333 for some recolored unit cards
- comrade_general for some reskins and recolored unit cards
- Robbe for the farms, M2TW sounds and map changes
- crazyroman for his BI officers
- The New Discord community for testing and giving feedback (crazyroman, BHL_20, foxcon, PJW6, Crysix, Lanjane, Suppanut, Robbe, Saul_Tyre, Mausolos, Kazan)
All of you - For Helping, testing and playing this mod, thank you!
