Extended Cultures (XC) mod for Rome: Total War

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Optional music addon NOT recommended for YouTube streamers as it contains third party copyright-protected music. Note that main XC installer also has custom music, but those are royalty-free tracks and safe to use.

Extended Cultures is an overhaul mod for Rome Total War which started as a submod of the Extended Greek Mod. It aims to add roleplaying depth, increase challenge for the player and improve historical accuracy.

Features

- Completely new map, adjusted accordingly to known data of ancient geography and climate
- 9 campaigns based on that map variants, with different presets and timeframes, including 275BC Imperial Ambition grand campaign, Caesar's 49BC campaign, and many provincial campaigns with minor factions. Play as Pergamon, Bosporus, Massalia, Tukhara, the Britons, Syracuse or Cyrene. Reimagine 49 BCE with more playable factions as well as Himyar, Meroe, Greko-Baktrian Kingdom, Dacia as new challengers
- 474 unit types with completely overhauled graphics and UIs compared to previous releases of Extended Cultures series (with more than 1500 skins, more than 500 models and more than 1000 UI pairs total)
- All new settlement and region development, a complex technology and economy system, with dynamical changes in building costs and inflation
- All new buildings and events UIs
- 19 playable factions: Rome, Epirus, Baktria, Armenia, Pontus, Parthia, Thrace, Numidia, Sarmatia, Ptolemaic Egypt, Seleucids, Gandhara, Tukhara, Carthage, Germans, Iberia, Gauls, Macedon and Greek Cities
- New battle formations from both Darth and Sinuhets
- Old vanilla historical battles rework with new battlefield experience
- An in-depth trait system designed for an immersive campaign experience. Ethnicity traits, supply system traits, traits that reflect attitude toward the faction leader, traits affected by the character's father, epithet traits, biographies and more!
- A vast AoR system with every region having its own local units which you can recruit by building the AoR barracks.
- A culture system: Western Civilized, Eastern Civilized and Barbarian cultures with their associated colonies. This makes the integration of regions a slower and more realistic process, sometimes it might require installing a client ruler in the region!
- A government system to help with the assimilation of new regions.
- Many new economic buildings and temples.
- A modified Mundus Magnus map stretching from Spain all the way to India (see screenshots).
- Loyalty (if enabled) for Rome, for the Greek factions and for the Gauls.

Credits

This mod was made possible thanks to a combined efforts of many modders and contributors.

The most important of them is Suppanut, who worked on this mod for almost 10 years! It is for sure the project of his life, his Magnum Opus. He tried to create his dream mod and put a great part of his kind soul to it. He is also a very polite, wise and calm guy, his charisma kept us together during all these months and who is for sure the Master Yoda of our Rome - Total War Modding Community.

The next big part of the mod was made by me (Lanjane), including lots of textures, models and UIs, this took me several months to complete and this is for sure the biggest project I was ever involved in my life. I will never forget all these countless sleepless nights, and hundreds of hours spent in Photoshop and 3dsMax.

The main concept of the mod was set by Zarax and Suppanut, with the help of various people: GeoHitmanGR, Anakarsis, BHL_20 and many others.

Provincial Campaigns would not be possible without help of Suppanut's friend and modder BHL_20, who spent a lot of time polishing the campaigns balance, adjusting factional powers and initial positions. He was also our PR manager and talented author of preview articles and pre-release article showing XC features. Kudos to him!

Beautiful environment and vegetation of Extended Cultures were made by Robbe Aerts, who also created stunning vegetation and climate for Ahowl's Vanilla Enchancement and Rome: Total Realism 8 mods, and his personal Vegetation mod.

We are very grateful to Ahowl11, who hosts a Git server for the main piece of work, and El Fuego who is the Git server admin.

Also great thanks to my friend crazyroman, who likes Greko-Baktrian world very much. The special love and care to Baktria, Iphicratean warfare and elite hellenistic units of crazyroman is the thing which was one of the most exciting and notable moments during development of the units.

Also big thanks to many other contributors and creators of original content which was used as a raw resource for XC units overhaul. There are too many of them to mention them all here, you'll find them in the mod's ReadMe file.