CATW 03.4: 10 Years Anniversary Release

CATW 0.3 ready to play after ten years !!!

http://www.ancient-battles.com/images/splash-catw03.jpg

It's 2018, so the 10th anniversary of catw 0.3 the first fully-fledged, working mod version of Classical Age: Total war. So for this special occasion, i worked for two months on a complete overhaul of the mod.

The old historic Classical Age: Total War (CATW) overhauled and made modfoldered properly.

Sooooo... What about that ?
If you want to play the very, very first CATW here you go. Try catw 03!
What's in this for you ?
The first fully working catw version back in 2008, completely revamped for the tenth anniversary, 2018.

This includes:
-All traditional vanilla models reskinned (at original size so light)
-Tons of new historical accurate units
-Using only vanilla models from BI and Alex in complement, so still light.
-Custom and campaign fully working for all factions playable (including senate and slave)
-Tested on RTW/BI/Alex.
-Vanilla music, buildings, vegetation.
-Working Historical battles

How to install
1-Unzip the catw03 folder, by using 7zip: http://www.7-zip.org/download.html
2-Move you catw03 folder in your current destination: Alexander or RTW-BI
Ex: C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Rome Total War Alexander
Or: C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Rome Total War Gold
3-Then just use directly the shortcuts inside catw03, make a copies to the desktop, drop them on the desktop.
They are all tailored for Vista/Seven/Win 10 types of installations and works with steam.
4-Enjoy. They are all tailored for Vista/Seven/Win 10 types of installations and works with steam.

How to Swap Unified Rome/Roman families
By default, the game featured the Roman Families for the late civil war struggle, at least on 3.4
To change it to Unified Rome you have to go to C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Rome Total War Alexander\catw03\data\world\maps\campaign\imperial_campaign
folder or your own path depending on your installation, then change "descr_strat.txt" to zzzdescr_strat.txt" or whatever you wish and rename "descr_strat - Unified Rome.txt" to "descr_strat.txt" and delete map.rwm to regenerate the campaign at next launch

Notes: Due to the game using new revamped banners and symbols from catw 04 and catw 05, strat banners for the roman families can look a bit odd.
Sorry for the inconvenience but i'm unable to edit .dds files anymore. RTW seems too old now for Win 10. heck, Rome II is already five years old.

Featuring the traditional Roman split into three families, set on Vanilla map in 270 BC.

About this version
Classical-Age: Total War (CATW) is a mod designed on the basis of <a href="http://store.steampowered.com/app/4760/Rome_Total_War__Collection/" target="_blank">Rome: Total War</a>. It goes back to a simple reskin project dating back from 2006. Since the release of the demo beta2a in French in September 2008, the official English version beta2 has been postponed to find a valid map. Catw 03 is in fact a solution for a fully playable campaign, as the former beta 2 (catw02) was only custom-battle playable, catw 03 revert back to the original setting to be fully playable in campaign and stable, on all three bases (RTW, BI and Alex). It's very light, due to the use of normal size skins and vanilla, low-poly models, most from RTW, but some from BI and others from Alex.

---Next: catw 03.5-3.9 evolution-------------------------------------------
Next steps:

-Mundus Magnus map elite 1.2 (if possible, it's only for BI now)
-Darth IA
-Add minor settlements (former towers)
-Unified Rome and Galatians, Illyrians, Pergamum.

This sounds interesting? Where's the download link, though?

EDIT: Found it! http://www.ancient-battles.com/catw.php

EDIT2: Mod doesn't start : (

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Kirila the Kitten

This sounds interesting? Where's the download link, though?

EDIT: Found it! http://www.ancient-battles.com/catw.php

EDIT2: Mod doesn't start : (

---

Sorry guys, but the new version of the forum seems completely broken for me, i can't even see the editor both in IE and Mozilla. Can't tell for chrom but its seems to work properly on opera That's explains the mess of this post and the code.
Now sorry Kirila, but what happened exactly ? I know i had a lot of problems trying to upload it, it failed several times (had to change servers). I just re-uploaded it two days ago (catw page has been updated also), now on the right server. Hope it's not corrupted. Try again to upload it just in case. Here is the link to copy-paste just in case: http://www.ancient-battles.com/catw/download/catw03.7z
Downloaded and tested (279 mo), it works for me.
The dedicated page: http://www.ancient-battles.com/catw03.php

All available links crash at start up after installing.

Hi cocobongoclub-DJ, i have downloaded the mod from the link in the catw page but it crashes after start. Splash screen is displayed, then CTD to desktop without error. I have tried running it first with RTW then with BI (CD versions) but the result is the same:(.

Maybe the mod works only with trhe steam version of the game?

I've noticed that there is a 'November' version on the ancient-battle website. Has the newest version of CATW 03 come out? 03.5? 03.9?

Yes, it is working only with STEAM. No CD version (can't test it, my disc is long broken). Test also the November version, it saw many fixes.

http://www.ancient-battles.com/images/splash-catw01.jpg

EVEN OLDER ! - CATW 01.

Before there was even "catw"
Before catw 03 there has been in 2007 two earlier version of the mod, catw01 and catw02.

In short, catw 01 is the mod nobody played but a very small bunch of guys, modding RTW on limited objectives (improving units graphics) on custom battle only back in... 2007. When the name "classical age" did not even existed. Now retreived, the mod has been completely reworked and completed, using as much elements of catw 05 as possible, including a playable campaign ! It is starting in 264 BC, at the start of the first Punic War. Roster are completely new to all players of CATW mods since they had never publicly released and therefore are totally fresh. There are in addition two new factions, the Galatians and Pergamon. Its 01.3, meaning it's still a beta, but totally playable on Alex, BI and regular RTW, however there will be an update.

At that time a bunch of graphic designers on a French forum (now long gone) discussed about video games, and discovered a common interest for RTW. This was the start of a friendship and work on a little mod which was only aimed at improving graphic aspects, including the look of the units, all of them. One provided photos of realistic leathers, metal textures, armor and fabrics, another made a bit of historical research, and my good self, then known as Arminius (cocobongoclub-DJ at TWC), photoshopped the vast majority of the new skins, adding lots of new units in the process.

It looked good as it was, and we tested it by just adding the new files to our current data folder, and playing vanilla with these units. That worked fine for us, even "polluting" our vanilla game. However to modern RTW modding standards, unmodded stuff is not cool. So apart the few guys who played this early catw (the name did not even existed at that time!), interest soon run out. I dragged on adding more units just for the fun to see them fighting, but the team ultimately separated. My next move was catw02 in 2008, a never-published basis (like catw01 by the way), and catw03 which saw overhaul at all steps, using vanilla Alex and BI 3d models plus many from other mods. This was the first modfoldered too, although the campaign did not worked. It had been recently overhauled and published this summer.

Meanwhile, catw01 slept deeply, forgotten by all, in a corner of an USB key i found laying on the ground under tons of dust and spiders, when moving furnitures around, before departing to a new home. True story ! So the old, prehistoric mod nobody knew about was recovered intact in October 2018, so almost 12 years after since it was first drafted in 2006 and the definitive version was completed in 2007. It was a big one, including all vanilla files too as it was designed to be placed alongside "data", the latter and the second renamed to be swapped. But the campaign crashed. It was even before BI 1.6 or Alex were out. And the texts were all in French.

I played it, and enjoyed as it was, rediscovering all these long forgotten units, with a few skins and ideas that were recycled into modern mods like catw04 and catw05, or catw1.0 for that matter. Of course strict historical accuracy was not the order of the day. All the 3d models were the ones already existing in vanilla TW, reskinned and reused in many different ways. Overall it's colorful, fun, but it's still more accurate that Vanilla. And very light. There were however three points missing, and that's what i worked on, with the knowledge i accumulated over the years on RTW modding:

-Modfoldered. The old mod called "beta2a" was designed to be pasted over a clean "data". Now it its called restrospectively "catw01" and is properly modfoldered.
-Texts in English. The old French texts were scrapped, however it's still a work in progress as there as a few missing.
-Working campaigns. This reboot is playable on RTW, BI and Alex so far as i can tell with my own configuration -Windows 7 64 bits sp1. (about to test on Win 10).
In addition to standard factions, catw01 is replacing the three non-Julii Romans by the Illyrians, Galatians and Pergamon and the starting date is 264 BC. The first Punic war.

Downloads:
http://www.ancient-battles.com/catw01.php
https://www.moddb.com/mods/catw-013