Discussion and Announcements

[Epirote]

Fight like the Triari and not like the phalangites.
Same level body armor as Armored Hoplites.
More flexible = speedy.
No javellins.

You didn`t comment about the skins.

How do I add to XGM_2_1_2 Spartans to Syracusse?
I forgot the procedure.

[DimeBagHo]

Epirote - Change the recruit lines in export_descr_buildings.txt to:

recruit "greek hoplite spartan xgm" 0 requires factions { greek_cities, } and hidden_resource sparta or hidden_resource syracuse

I like your suggested look for hypaspists. The new hoplite skins from AnastasioTheGreat and meh_cd might turn out to provide a good basis for new hypaspist skins as well, so I will wait until those skins are ready before deciding on the new look for hypaspists.

[DimeBagHo]

Here are a few more changes I am thinking about for the next version of XGM:

- Remove incendiary pigs from all factions.
- Make Triarii recruitable with a city barracks.
- Move the minimum date for Marian reforms forward to 240 BC.

[Rosacrux redux]

Please remove the dogs also. In my last XGM campaing, I fought the Romans and 1/3 of their armies consisted of dogz... ridiculous, dammit.

[DimeBagHo]

Removing dogs is also a possibility, although dogs are at least moderately effective in combat.

Here is one way that the hypaspists might look if I don't use one of the new hoplite skins as a base.

[Leonidas123]

Epirote-the hypaspists already fight like triarii (hence no phalanx ability) and they cant be faster and more flexible than armoured hoplites if they wear the same heavyass armour (unless you want the mod to make no sense).

DimebagHo-another idea you might consider is making all peasant and militia-level units have zero build time so it can be like levying troops. I did this to my game and it makes for some huge ai garrisons and therefore harder-to-capture cities. I also took away the phalanx ability for militia hoplites and gave them only a spear so they fight in a more amateur-like way. Also for militia hoplites and levy pikemen i gave them each 2 armour since they have a helmet. I like the new breastplate on the hypaspists as well.

[Leonidas123]

About removing wardogs i agree entirely. i hate fighting a roman army when half of it is those pissant wardogs. they dont even seem that effective they are just bothersome and annoying. i dont think i have ever read any book about the roman army that said half of each legion was made up of dogs. its entirely unrealistic to keep them in the game since the ai loves to build them, not to mention that the dog handlers wear post marian armour before the marian reforms. please take them out and spare us all the headache.

[DimeBagHo]

I don't want to fool around with the recruitment times for the default version of XGM. That would be too big a departure from the vanilla mechanics, and it would require a lot of rebalancing. But one idea I was thinking about as an add-on was to make the highest level infantry unit at each barracks level recruitable in zero turns for the AI factions only.

The idea would be to let the AI factions turn out as much good quality infantry as they can afford. Obviously something similar could also be done for missile and cavalry units.

[Epirote]

One more pic of how an Macedonian Hypaspist should look like.
Of curse there has to be added greaves and sandals.
The helmet better have the Thracean version wich make him look more fearsome in the face.
The letter A is cool and accurate.


The Greek Cities hypaspist 's shield pattern ( bull`s head) is a bit too much. Too extravagant.

[Seleucos of Olympia]

Epirote – That last picture is from a mid 4th century Athenian hoplite (hence the ‘A’ insignia). Or at least that’s what it says on the caption of the military history magazine for which this representation was created. I’ve always wondered (well, not always, just since the first screenshots of RTW came out) why the letter ‘A’ is associated by people with Macedonia. Do you know anything historical about it? (I’m curious, not sarcastic.)

DimeBagHo – I’ve seen a lot of interesting ideas in the past posts. The one about giving zero recruitment time for the AI’s best units is especially intriguing, as it alters the balance of the game in unforeseen ways (e.g. will the moderately rich faction that upgrades its one city faster than its rivals then bring them to their knees with its horde of elite units?). Have you found a way to commence a provincial campaign with post-Marian legions? Because I’ve had an idea for a very interesting historical campaign that would require that feature (not that I’ll have the necessary free time to make it for another month or so...). I noticed that in the new MGM deceres and corvus quinquiremes for Greek factions have the Scipii colors. If you’d prefer it I can draw a brown corvus within minutes (in fact, you can easily do it yourself – just copy paste the corvus onto the normal quinquireme UI cards, its place is already colored so you can’t miss it).

[DimeBagHo]

I have uploaded a version of MGM with the correct Corvus and Decere cards. It still has the same version number (2.1).

Changing the recruit times will almost certainly make a big difference to which factions propser. I noticed before that reducing recruitment and upkeep costs also made a big difference - the Germans were much more successful for example. That is one reason why I don't want to add these changes to the default install of XGM.

[DimeBagHo]

The best I have managed with the Marian reforms so far is moving up the earliest possible date - there is still a random delay before the reforms kick in.

[Epirote]

This picture was saying it is an Athenian hoplite.
But there is no way Athenian hoplite looked like that.
Someone messed it up.
The letter A of the Athenian was like in the picture below.

The reason the letter A on the Macedonian shield I don`t know.
I better have a look.

[Seleucos of Olympia]

I recently got this link form Rider, concerning draksen.com:
http://www.draksen.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2

I hope it's up and running soon.

The following file contains a proposed translation for levy pikemen.

[DimeBagHo]

Thanks for the translations Seleucos.

The next version of XGM will have a splash screen that looks something like this:

[Epirote]

Waitng for something new. Anything. Any mod with radical ideas.

[DimeBagHo]

The problem with radical ideas is that it takes a long time to do them right. There are a lot of mods that I am looking forward to - EB, TS-TW, AoH, all look like they will be great mods. But it takes a while to get that sort of work done.

[meh_cd]

You've gotta realize that EGM is a small mod compared to EB or RTR. Those are huge and have many members on the dev teams. We, however, have what... 4-5 people? I haven't seen ATG recently (although I assume he's perfecting his Spartans) and I'm still busy with finals. Thursday and Friday I'm busy as well, HOPEFULLY this weekend I can try and get some work done.

[bt1283]

For some reason, in the campaign map, everytime I finish building an Imperial Palace the game tells me that my faction has been wiped out. Has anyone else had this problem and know how to fix it?

[DimeBagHo]

Yes, this is a common problem that arises when people try to use the Mundus Magnus map (or some other map) and either don't run the XGM-MM installer, or encounter a problem when they run the XGM-MM installer. The problem that sometimes occurs is that, for some unknown reason, descr_strat.txt is marked as read only when Mundus Magnus is installed, and so the XGM-MM installer skips over it.

The solution is to run the XGM-MM installer again, but install to desktop (or some other convenient location) and then manually copy the files into the right locations. Unfortunately this will not allow you to continue with your campaign - but it will prevent the same problem from arising with a new campaign.

I have never been able to reproduce this problem myself, so I have not been able to put together a fix that will allow you to continue with your campaign. However, I have an idea about how it might be done. In about half an hour or so I will post a fix that you can try out.