CATW 08 Beta mod for Rome: Total War

CATW 0.8 is in short the reunion of some elements from catw05 (set in 300 BC), and catw 06 (The Illyrian wars, 220 BC, never released). It is the attempt of a final, most exotic and diverse mod based on the massive Mundus Magnus map and its 200 regions, on Alex engine (RTW 1.9), tested on steam. Mod-foldered it is 100% compatibls with other mods in your Alex installation. There are one way to install it and two ways to play it, from the Alexander exe.

Why Alexander and not BI for example ?
Although BI has mechanisms that works wonders, notably for nomads, Alex generally offers a better basic IA and hardcoded units limits that are way above, notably with the numbers of models possible, basically crossing 500 by 500 references. That's the only way to do justice to brand new rosters for exotic peoples such as the Saka, Yuezhe, Media Atropatene, Kush, Nabata, the Indo-Greeks, etc, while bringing even Indians and Chinese Han troops to the mix !

--------The Times: The Mithridatic Wars-------------------------
The time set is 88 BC, at the start of the Mithridatic wars. The Social Wars in Italy just came to an end, while Marius and Sulla, which represents the two rival factions of Rome, are going to keep a fragile peace as new threats are looming in the horizon: Mithridates IV, showing hatred for everything Roman, seeing himself as a champion of the Eastern and Hellenistic reistance to the Empire is going to invade western Asia minor while Armenia and Parthia have new rulers with grand ambitions.

To the north of the Balkans, a powerful confederation around the Dacians are poised for invasion. Rome is still a Republic, but unable to reform itself, divided politically and socii (allies) long denied citizenship, just earned it after ta long civil war which started in 91 BC and ended when this story begins. Troubled times indeed.

Thetefore that's the promise of a game which is not boring, despite the very advantageous position and apparent strenght of some factions, so we are about to study them from :

Rome: An ageing Republic with a territory which already encompass a large portion of the Mediterranean, from North Africa to Asia Minor, Spain and Greece. A large and rich territory which is nonetheless difficult to defend.

What's in it then ?
-5 New factions (compared to older mods): Yuezhe, Saka, Indo-Greeks, Kush, Media Atropatene, or the Hasmoneans.
-New icons
-About 200 new, some from other catw mods but other from various origins (see the acknowledgements and thanks in the end)
-New music
-About 300 new historical names
-Reworked map
-New historical battles related to the Mithridatic wars.
-New additional settlements (coloniae (former watchtowers) and garrison towns (former camps). Unfortunately for the latter, i found no way to "fix" them.
-Some unique features from Catw 05: New buildings like auxiliary and mercenary barracks to recruit through large AOR. Some troops (like the Han) can be recruited as mercenaries in just one location on the map, the most eastern one.

-Also work in progress: The Socii wars in Italy 91-88 BC used as a mini-introduction prologue campaign