Lanjane's Barbarian Empires mod for Rome: Total War

This mod's main focus was to expand vanilla game depth, add richer details and custom content while staying faithful to faction colors scheme and dynamic pace of good old RTW. All factions unit rosters were spiced up with new late-game units and regional troops, and battlemap balance was tuned to a degree for smooth and enjoyable gameplay.

Hellenistic Legacy (HL) and Lanjane's Barbarian Empires (LBE) differences:
LBE: Vanilla roster of factions, but 13 various provincial campaigns and 60 historical battles. Closer to vanilla in general and more like a "Vanilla Plus" experience.
HL: Even more new units, adjusted some models and skins. Only 2 campaigns, but more challenging ones. Roman families replaced with 3 new factions, added cultures system, new buildings and some new mechanics.

Summary of what the Barbarian Empires has to offer:
- 13 Custom campaigns with different setups and presets, including regional ones
- 60 fine-tuned and tested historical battles
- RSII environment for battlefields
- BI buildings for campaign and battlemap and new stratmap buildings
- more than 450 units with lots of regional and auxiliary troops
- more than 1500 new skins and more than 200 new unit models
- hundreds of handicrafted unit cards in polished vanilla style. Support thread
- new stratmap settlement models
- new custom ancillaries
- new reskinned horses based on Pinarius models
- a lot of new officers, almost all units have officers, some of them customized for special units
- working Prologue which can be played using all new features
- and more!

Official thread for the mod

Installation

Below is a short version of installation instructions. If you want to read the full one, including various tips and FAQ, there's a PDF Manual available as a separate file: Download

1. IMPORTANT TIPS

- Mod requires RTW-Alexander file RTW-ALX.exe to run!
If you don't have the file, download it from here and put inside RTW folder, where other exes are.
Before you proceed with the installation, make sure you have RTW-ALX.exe in your core Rome: Total War folder, otherwise the mod will not work. You don't need full Rome - Total War: Alexander installed, just the .exe file will be enough.

- This page contains two different mods
Original Lanjane's Barbarian Empires full mod and standalone expansion Barbarian Empires: Hellenistic Legacy. They are using separate modfolders and won't conflict with each other.

- Music mod is strongly recommended
- Download and install Rome - Total Music! It enhances the audio experience and provides around 4 hours of additional music, tailored for each culture of the game. It was originally designed as a supplement for this mod, but released as a separate universal mod, working on vanilla too!

2. INSTALLATION OF LANJANE'S BARBARIAN EMPIRES

2.1. Download Lanjane's Barbarian Empires full mod
2.2. Unpack the archive, copy folder NL to your core Rome: Total War folder
2.3. Make sure you have RTW-ALX.exe in your core Rome: Total War folder (see above)
2.4. Start the mod using NL/Start Barbarian Empires.bat
OR
Make a shortcut for RTW-ALX.exe on your desktop, right click for Properties and add the following to the end of the "Object" field, don't forget the space " " to separate these from the text already present in the field:
-nm -ne -show_err -noalexander -mod:NL
OR
if you are using Steam:
Right click Rome - Total War: Alexander in your library, Properties->Set launch options and add the same line. Avoid "-ne" if you don't like the borderless window mode, though I recommend to set the game resolution to the same as your desktop and enjoy the more convenient option of Alt-Tabbing the game which borderless window provides.

3. INSTALLATION OF BARBARIAN EMPIRES: HELLENISTIC LEGACY

3.1. Download Barbarian Empires: Hellenistic Legacy
3.2. Unpack the archive and copy NL_2 to your core Rome: Total War folder
3.3. Make sure you have RTW-ALX.exe in your core Rome: Total War folder (see above)
3.4. Start the mod using NL/Start Hellenistic Legacy.bat
OR
Make a shortcut for RTW-ALX.exe on your desktop, right click for Properties and add the following to the end of the "Object" field, don't forget the space " " to separate these from the text already present in the field:
-nm -ne -show_err -noalexander -mod:NL_2
OR
if you are using Steam:
Right click Rome - Total War: Alexander in your library, Properties->Set launch options and add the same line. Avoid "-ne" if you don't like the borderless window mode, though I recommend to set the game resolution to the same as your desktop and enjoy the more convenient option of Alt-Tabbing the game which borderless window provides.

4. INSTALLATION OF ROME: TOTAL MUSIC ADDON

4.1. Download Rome: Total Music
4.2. Unpack the archive to your Rome: Total War folder (Data over your original Data. Don't worry, it won't break your vanilla game, see more info on Rome Total Music page!)
4.3. Delete the files events.dat and events.idx in your Data\sounds folder of vanilla game (make backup)
4.3. Each time you want to play the game as another culture, select culture by running set_music.bat and pick the culture by pressing a number from 1 to 7 (you'll see the options)

5. OTHER TIPS

- Avoiding occupy/enslave/exterminate random crash
To avoid engine bug which is known as occupy/enslave/exterminate crash, use the following trick: always play with "Follow AI movements" ON in the game menu, and when you just won a big battle when AI reinforcements try to deblock siege and you killed both garrison and reinforcement army, and battle should result in you conquering a settlement, quickly press Esc just after post-battle loading screen when you return to the campaign map and save the game before occupy/enslave window appears. Usually this trick will prevent the CTD in 99% cases. To be always on safe side, try to avoid this type of battles as the game has an issue with these.

- Extending the RAM limit for the game engine
Try patching the game .exe file with NTCore's 4Gb patcher (for RTW-ALX.exe), as it is reported to help with big mods by allowing the game to use 4Gb RAM instead of 2Gb RAM. Though the engine is old and may still have problems if game uses more than 1.4Gb RAM, it may still be helpful in some cases.

- Gameplay tips
Initial building costs and construction times are high, but they can be progressively decreased by building trader buildings first, as it decreases both time to build and cost of other buildings. Use it as an advantage! Also use generals with recruitment cost discount traits as governors because unit recruitment costs are high too (not the upkeep costs though).

- White rectangles instead of unit info pictures
There's a game engine bug that will show unit info pictures in town as white rectangles sometimes. This bug is inconsistent, and may happen randomly, as the game uses wrong RAM address to read these icons. To temporary fix the issue, select any field army (not the garrison army), and press right mouse button for any unit. Info picture will be shown as usual. Now, while the info is still open, select the problem settlement and check the info for settlement units. They will be temporary fixed and shown normally. Also you can try to open building tree browser tab, click latest stable/barracks/missile building in a tree and then right mouse click on the first unit string in the unit recruitment list.

- Handling the borderless window mode and changing the game resolution
The mod is designed to use borderless window by default, and the mod resolution is set to 1920*1080. If you use a PC with FullHD monitor you shouldn't have any problems. But if you have a Windows 10 laptop, you need to change the Windows interface scaling first, because it's set to 150% by default on laptops, and it will result in game menu being screwed. Change it back to 100% and enjoy the game.
To have a max fun from borderless window, you need to have your game resolution the same as your desktop resolution. If for some reason you can't change resolution in game, go to NL(or NL_2)\preferences\preferences.txt and find the lines for STRATEGY_RESOLUTION and BATTLE_RESOLUTION and change them to the same as your desktop. If you still don't like borderless window and want fullscreen mode, just remove the "-ne" from either the shortcut, launch property or from the .bat file (you can open and edit .bat file in a simple Notepad).

- Using multiple mods when using Steam
If you are using multiple Rome - Total War mods, you can add them all to Steam with different launch options. Just use button "Add a game" at the bottom of your game list, then "Add a non-Steam game", then find and select Rome-Total War Alexander .EXE file (yes, the Steam one!). This will allow you to have a virtual clone of your Steam game as additional shortcut in your library and launch the same Steam EXE with different options for different mods, having full benefits of Steam overlay, game time count and F12 screenshots.

- Cleaning the campaign cache
If you do any edits to the recruitment or install minor patches, you need to clean the campaign cache for the changes to take effect. Just running campaign_map_reset.bat from the mod folder once is enough. You don't have to do this at every launch, only when changes are made.

If you found any bugs or have a suggestions, please find me in Discord, PM me in ModDB or send a email to lanjane@yandex.ru. I will try to offer any sort of help with the mod.
You can also post your findings in the official TWC forum thread, if you prefer forums.

Happy campaigning!