Q: I see people bashing CA for not creating an historically accurate game - does EB agree with them?
A: Absolutely not. EB would not exist if it were not for the wonderful game of Rome: Total War. Creative Assembly has done a fine job in creating it. Some EB team members have been disappointed by some aspects of the game, especially the moddability (not nearly so as advertised), but we all respect CA for the work they have done. We do not participate in CA bashing. However, having said that, we do respond when they insult their fans in their FAQ...
Q: Does your mod place history over gameplay?
A: We find it very sad that people even ask this question. We try to educate people to understand that there need be no compromise between gameplay and history. One problem is that CA reinforces this misconception - consider this quote:
As you can see, not only does CA hold contempt for those of us who enjoy history (which is a shame, given that the game was advertised as historical), but they don't understand that history can create wonderful gameplay, and that describing units, factions, and other game entities historically does not require gameplay to follow a historical path.Originally Posted by The Shogun
We at EB find that given just a little in-depth research, what was once generic (or fantasy) hordes becomes a wealth of historical diversity in units, buildings, and factions. Historical events had causes - instead of trying to recreate historical events, we put in place triggers that act on historical causes. So history can be re-written, and yet the cool bits of history are not lost. CA takes a dim view of its customer base, feeling that they would rather set fire to pigs, or play a faction 1000 years out of date, than to enjoy the incredible diversity found in an accurate portrayal of the militaries of the time. Our mod will be a testament to the fact that history and gameplay go hand in hand, and its popularity perhaps an indication to CA that it errs in treating its customers as though they were all brainless zombies who look no deeper than pretty graphics and head-tossing fantasy men.
We set the table (properly). You write the history. What could be more fun?
Q: When will your mod be released?
A: An open beta will be released as soon as we have fixed certain issues with our core systems. After that, the full release is uncertain. However, we are relatively close.
Q: Is your mod all about barbarians?
A: No, our mod seeks to recreate, as accurately as possible, the classical world as depicted within R:TW at the time of campaign start. This includes all factions, and we have modders working on every area. Personally, I like Rome the best.
Q: Are you portraying the barbarians as "better" than the Greeks or Romans?
A: We try to be as accurate as possible with what we do for all factions. This means looking at all available sources, not just the Roman ones. Roman historians typically portrayed the barbarians they hated as being much less sophisticated than they actually were. This does not mean the barbarians were "better" than the Greeks and Romans, but the barbarians, and the Celts in particular, had much to offer in the advancement of the classical world. A myriad of different peoples helped shape the area, not only the Greeks and Romans.
Q: Do you know more history than anyone else?
A: No, the members of EB are not more knowledgeable than anyone else. We do have professional archaeologists and professional historians among our ranks, but that does not give us a monopoly on history by any stretch of the imagination. We simply take the time to do research well beyond taking for granted the various assumptions often made about the different people of the classical age. We search primary sources, and are very thorough. However, we are always willing to reexamine our work if someone presents us with information that contradicts what we believe to be true.
Q: I've never heard of unit/faction/name X. I can't find it online. Where did you find it?
A: Most of our sources are primary archaeological and textual evidence. We have people reading and examining this evidence in period languages. We consider secondary evidence as well. However, many of our sources are found in places that only academics will be able to access, and a few have not even been published yet. Our goal is to be as accurate as possible, not to please those who want to be able to find what we describe on Google.
Q: Do you have an axe to grind against (Rome, Greece, insert faction here)?
A: We believe that our mod can be an educational tool, teaching people about the rich and varied cultures that existed throughout our small slice of history. We do not attempt to artificially portray factions in a light other than an academically sterile one. That is, as objectively as possible.
Q: Is the work on Rome and Greece an afterthought?
A: Absolutely not. Rome and Greece are receiving just as much attention as all of our factions. Greece and the Successor states even moreso, due to the predominance of Greek scholars in our membership. We have representation for all the factions.
Q: Then why do you call yourselves "Europa Barbarorum?"
A: The project was born over a year ago, when the thought was that the team could provide as much historical information as possible to help CA portray the barbarian factions as more than just a bunch of drooling, naked neanderthals. When it seemed clear that CA wasn't accepting outside help, the team became determined to turn this research into a mod. The purpose of the mod expanded to include accuracy for all factions, but the name has become part of our identity. It may not be completely descriptive any longer, but the team has always been known as Europa Barbarorum. It is like a given name, it is a part of who we are, not what we are.
In addition, the term "barbarian" originally meant foreigner. Everyone is a "barbarian" to someone.
Q: What do you see as the principle scope and focus for EB from an organizational standpoint?
A: This is somewhat difficult to answer. As an organization, EB is dedicated to providing an entertaining, historically accurate gaming experience. Inside of EB are numerous divisions; one for each faction, for the economic system, for the naval system, for siege warfare, for music, for voices, for the map, and so on. We divide the work among our members as best as possible, to try and ensure coverage over every aspect of RTW. I suppose the most concise answer would be: Our primary focus is to research every aspect of RTW to determine if we can improve it in terms of historical accuracy, realism, and gameplay, and to implement what we have found into a complete package for your gaming pleasure.
Q: How many mods are going to be integrated into EB, like are you going to use the expanded campaign maps, will you be incorporating unti modification mods like higher attacks for certain units?
A: The short answer is - none. We incorporate things we have learned from other mods, such as TTO's Cherry Vanilla Pack, and Myrddraal's Four Seasons script, and how RTR removed the Senate, but we are incorporating no mods whole into our own. All of our work has been done in-house
Q: What do you think is the difference between EB and RTR?
A: The best answer is that we try to avoid comparison with other mods. We respect the work of all modders and try to foster an environment of cooperation, not competition.
Q: What are your plans on making the game more realistic, but not making gameplay less fun or annoying?
A: This is hard to answer without specifics. Generally, we accept certain abstractions and conventions that RTW uses to generate an environment of continuing rewards, while improving upon these systems to make them both more realistic and more fun.
Q: What are you doing with (insert favorite unit name)? Will it look different/be more powerful?
A: We have completely tossed out every single vanilla unit from the game. We are creating 500 new units from scratch, and 255 new models. Only a few vanilla units remain as placeholders for EB units not yet created. The game will be completely different.
Q: Why don't you release (favorite unit)/(favorite skin)/(piece of EB)?
A: Europa Barbarorum is a complete conversion. This means that we are not a team of modders making individual pieces, whether that be music, a map, skins, models, or any other bit that goes into our completed whole. One of our principles is to release work that has enough content to justify the term 'complete conversion,' along with being bug free. One of the reasons we will not be releasing a single skin or group of skins separate from the mod is because doing so would be direct violation of our founding principles. In other words, these pieces are part of a whole, and we intend to release the whole, not incomplete pieces.
Q: How are you planning on changing the relationship between the senate and the roman factions?
A: We have removed the Senate from the game; We will not be releasing more information at this time.
Q: Is there a way to implement senate missions/rewards/reprisals without an active SPQR faction?
A: We have added interesting gameplay elements, such as Roman Triumphs, but these are outside of the existing (limited) system.
Q: If a way is found to fundamentally change the workings of the senate, including adding new "senates", is there any thought to adding 'senates' to other factions (carthage comes to mind)?
A: There is no way to fundamentally change the Senate, so we have removed it.
Q: Will the aliens who built the pyramids make an appearance?
A: Find me primary sources detailing their existence and appearance, and they most certainly will.
Q: How are political relationships between factions that changed over the game timeframe being handled?
A: The best answer I can give you is that we're doing the best we can on an individual faction basis, within system limitations. We try to look at the causes of some events and check for those causes to exist in the game. So as the Seleucids developed Cataphracts after being exposed to them, in the game they will gain access only after being exposed to them, not at a certain date.
Q: Can protectorates be in-place at the start of a game?
A: As far as we know, no.
Q: Considering the breadth of the mod, is EB going to produce a detailed (more akin to a manual than a readme) supporting text document?
A: EB is in the process of creating a detailed manual.
Q: Are 0-turn buildtimes for certain units being considered?
A: The idea has been discussed and rejected.
Q: Have any animals been harmed in the development of EB?
A: We have wiped out an entire race of elephants (yubtseB) and dogs fear our name. We burned all the pigs, as well.
Q: Is the gallic faction being split up into several tribes like it was historically?
A: We will handle tribal divisions as best as possible. In general, the factions represent the most important tribes of the area. CA has already broken the Thracian tribes in two, for us. Gaul represents the Aedui for us. When we have the ability to add factions, the Arverni will be added. No matter how many faction slots we could add, we would never add more than these two Gallic factions, to represent that they held control over almost all of the major Celtic tribes in the area during this time period.
Q: Will there be new factions in the areas south and east of he original campaign map?
A: Yes, absolutely. However, our ability to do this is limited by the number of available factions. Currently, we can't add more.
Q: Will you be changing the campaign victory conditions?
A: Each faction will have faction-specific victory conditions.
Q: Will you be adding area X to the map?
A: We have no plans to expand the map even further, given that the map we are working on has 199 provinces, the limit.
Q: Why did you add so many provinces to area X, which was of lesser importance?
A: Our goal is to release a completely bug-free mod. Increasing the range between settlements over the limit of 50 tiles introduces bugs within the game mechanics, especially with respect to trade calculation and breaking the AI. As our principle is to not introduce fudges that circumvent some area of the mechanics, to avoid problems elsewhere, we will not be combining provinces (making some in "unimportant" areas larger) to avoid these issues. We feel that our map gives the best representation of the ancient world as possible within RTW limitations, and the best gameplay.
Q: I think you should have more provinces in densely populated areas, why didn't you do this?
A: See above. We had no choice but to depict Arabia accurately, for instance, or it would do bad things to the game mechanics. We can't make the population centers even more dense without breaking things. In addition, clustering provinces together makes for very slow, boring gameplay. We did not want to play Siege: Total War.
Q: Is the start date still 270 BC?
A: We are currently testing under a start date of 272 BC. We are not sure what our start date will end up being.
Q: Has your expanded map caused slowdowns like with mod X?
A: Testing has shown no loss of performance in any way, though our new campaign map models may cause a small slowdown for lower-end computers.
Q: Will you make the battle maps larger?
A: If we can figure out how to do this, certainly. At this time, it seems impossible.
Q: Will I be able to play mod X with EB installed?
A: EB is a complete conversion, and will not be compatible with other mods.
Q: Why does faction X have province Y? Why doesn't faction X have province Z?
A: Factions will be given starting positions that are true to history, given what that faction actually represents (certain tribes, groups of tribes, a kingdom, and so on), and the political realities of our start date.
Q: Will you be expanding the Roman armies compared to vanilla?
A: Yes. We have not yet released how, though.
Q: Will certain rebels, in places like Numidia, Illyria, India etc. be much stronger than others to represent the left out factions?
A: Well, certain areas will be more difficult to take than others. This is not to represent factions that did not make it into the game, but to represent the diversity of people and warfare found in the "rebel" areas.
Q: Will you guys be manipulating the AI to try and make them do certain things in the campaign?
A: Neither the campaign nor battle AI routines are open to us. We are making changes we feel will support the AI, both in the campaign and on the battlefield, but the lack of decent AI is a problem CA did not give us the tools to fix.
Q: Have you changed the distribution of wealth any?
A: Yes - provinces, resources, and trade have all had their values tweaked, and costs are much higher than they were. The open beta may see imbalances in this respect, as we have not been able to balance the economy the way we want to, and will not be able to until our core systems are in place. This is part of what we want your help for, to balance the economy, and other aspects of EB.
Q: I read way back that you guys were going to use original langauge speaking and spelling in the mod, will you guys still do that?
A: We are using transliteration from original languages throughout the mod, and we still plan to have original voices in the mod. Only the Latin is complete, but we have made progress on the Greek, Punic, and various Celtic languages, among others.
Q: Are you doing something to affect the problem of unrest caused by distance from the captial with your expanded map?
A: Various new ways to combat unrest will be available, though we find that unrest due to distance from the capital is not completely ahistorical.
Q: Will you be moving to/supporting BI?
A: If we determine, after its release, that there are enough benefits to modding to do so, yes.
Q: Will I be able to mod EB, such as inserting my own skins?
A: Yes, though it will be much more difficult. EB will be using up to the province, faction, unit, model, building, and every other conceivable limit. In addition, each EB model is brand new and not based on vanilla. So you cannot use your existing skins on EB models, they will have to be changed.
Q: Will EB overwrite mod X that I have installed on my RTW?
A: EB will require a clean version of the latest patch (currently 1.2) installed, and no other mods. EB will overwrite anything that currently exists in your RTW installation, and problems may arise if you do not start from a clean, patched vanilla install.
Q: How large will the EB download be?
A: The current internal version is about 200MB. We estimate 300MB for the open beta.
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