A few months after I first started playing RTW, I heard mention of an Amazon: Total War from a good friend who is now also involved in the Content Writing industry: Selifator. I was most intrigued and interested with the screenshots he showed me and the links he led me to at Total War Heaven, and resolved myself to getting the mod. However, unfortunately, I never got around to it. Hence, imagine my surprise and joy when I noticed an Amazon: Total War subforum had appeared. in the RTW Modifications area! I immediately decided to have it featured in the Eagle Standard - may I introduce
Subrosa Florens:
1. Tell me a little about yourself.
I am an elderly spinster who never leaves the house and plays computer games all day surrounded by my herd of cats! Okay, maybe not yet, but I do have one cat and I have liked computer games since I first bought a Packard Bell 486, rebuilt it up into a gaming rig from scratch, and discovered Doom (the first one - I still have fun playing that game).
I have been an avid computer gamer since. Now I am a network technician, and spend my days surrounded by servers, switches, routers, and all kinds of fun technology (except of course when it breaks at 3am and I have to fix it!).
I have also always been an avid fan of reading, especially history and science fiction/fantasy. It took me a long time to realize this, but I have always been drawn to anything that would transport me from this world to another, albeit only vicariously. I have always been an outsider, even from childhood, and while other girls were at playing jump rope or later going to the mall I was reading about Alexander the Great and Frodo Baggins and dreaming of other times and places where the current rules did not apply.
Finally, I am both a lesbian and a Witch. The first is one of many reasons why I have always felt different from other girls (but far from the only one). The second is something I discovered a little over five years ago, and has really helped make things in my life make sense. Mainly by giving me a different perspective on the world and a sense of internal grace I had lacked before.
Most of these things came together when I first saw Shogun: TW. I remember eagerly installing the demo from a PC Gamer cd, trying it out, and being most awfully thrashed by the AI every time I played it. I have never been any good at RTW games, ever since I tried the first Warcraft game. This led me to soon give up, until Medieval: TW came out. I tried the demo for that, and was just as abysmal as before. Then later came Rome, and you guessed it, I was awful at that too. Then a few years later I saw it was on sale at Meijer for an insanely cheap price and on a whim I bought it. This time I found I could handle the RTS style of play through judicious use of the pause button. It has been a whirlwind romance ever since.
2. When and how did the idea of making Amazon: Total War first begin?
When I first started playing RTW I came across a little unit mod by Wierdshady that added an Amazon Archer to the Greek factions. I liked the idea of a female unit, and like archers in any case, so I quickly starting using it in all my campaigns. But it used to cause CTDs something awful, so I stopped and decided to create my own Amazon archer using the Rebel Amazon Chariots as a base.
By that time I was looking beyond the vanilla game and was spending a lot of time both playing and looking at mods. One thing I quickly noticed was that where the vanilla game had a scarcity of female units, most mods had even less, usually none at all, in spite of both the historical and archeological evidence of women fighting in the ranks of many societies. Nature abhors a vacuum, so I gradually began thinking that since no one else would do it, maybe I should?
By then I was used to tinkering with the game to make it how I liked it, so I decided to give it a go. A mod that just added some more female units did not inspire me. Since I was going to do it, I resolved to really do it big. There was of course a legendary society of warriour women out there - the Amazons. They were close enough to the right time frame, had the right look and weapons, and are quite well known by all. So I threw history to the wind and focused my mod on the Amazons from myth and legend.
3. What has been the process of the creation of Amazon: Total War?
I started in May of 2007 laying the ground work of ATW by doing research before that, both in terms of modding to see what I could and could not do with the game, and of course on the Amazons themselves. Essentially I created a mission statement that laid out my goals and the plan to execute them.
By June I had created the mod folder and started the actual coding on an entirely new culture for the Amazons. Given the way the game is created under the premise that all generals are male and all females are non-combatants, there was no other option. It was a lot of work, but it did teach me a great deal about the inner workings of the game. That laid the foundation for me to create my first Amazon faction, that of Amazonia, which at the time was all I had intended to do.
By then I had put out an alpha release, which had a decent reception in spite of being very, very incomplete. The units especially were rough, as most of their models and skins were just temporary placeholders. But that and following alpha releases and the feedback I received from them enabled me to get the bugs out and create a stable version.
By then my skills at modelling and skinning were improving, and I was able to create new, permanent units for Amazonia, and I created a mirror faction of New Amazonia with the intention of it eventually being a rebel faction shadowing Amazonia. According to legend the Sarmatians were born from a fusion of Scythians and Amazons. So I created a new Sarmatian faction on the steppe alongside Scythia as well.
Around that time I was talking to a forumer about Amazons and pointed out to them that the original Amazons were in fact from Libya. Someone else - I believe it was Andalus - suggested I create them. The idea took root in my brain, and eventually I created the Gorgons from it, an Amazon faction returning from the depths of the Sahara to take revenge upon the society that had nearly destroyed it a thousand years before.
Until then I had been using the RTW executable. After this I created a separate version using the BI executable, allowing me to make the Gorgons a horde as I had originally envisioned them, and give many of the barbarian factions that ability as well. Of course I was able to implement other features from BI as well, such as night battles and shield wall. Since then I have been releasing separate RTW and BI versions. That has created a lot of extra work for me, so I have only now decided to stop work on the RTW version and concentrate solely on using BI for future versions of the mod.
My last major change was to discard the idea of a rebel faction shadowing Amazonia as by nature it was a carbon copy of its parent faction. Something different would be more interesting, so I changed New Amazonia into the Valkyrja, an Amazon faction with a very strong barbarian influence. This left me with three very distinct Amazon factions in different parts of the map requiring different skills to succeed with. The Gorgons are a desert faction, with the strongest cavalry base of all thanks to their elephants. The Valkyrja are practically barbarians and possess entry level horse archers and berserkers. Finally Amazonia are your classic Amazons, a balance of strong hoplites and axewomen, excellent cavalry, and the most devastating archers in the game.
4. Is there a chief aim of the mod?
My primary goal is to put women in Total War by focusing the mod on three fictional Amazon factions. I also have worked on putting women in the rosters of some of the other factions where there would be a historical precedent for it, or where it would make sense given the nature of the ATW universe. That and I just want to make a mod that is fun to play of course!
5. What are some of the major new features of Amazon: Total War?
ATW adds a new culture, that of the Amazons, and four new factions. Three are Amazon factions - Amazonia, The Valkyrja, and The Gorgons. The last is the Sarmatians. Naturally there are new temples, traits, and ancillaries to go with this new culture and the factions. While not new, Thrace has received a major makeover as well, receiving many new units and a completely new temple line-up. I even released Thrace in a separate mini-mod called Thrace: The Serpent Reborn, which puts my new Thrace into vanilla RTW as something of a teaser for ATW.
While it is based on the vanilla map, ATW adds 33 new territories. The goal of this is to change the way the vanilla game funnels activity toward the center of the map and instead make the outlying areas more interesting. So now North Africa, the Steppe, and hopefully soon Great Britain are fun places to play due to the new regions and larger number of factions there.
I have also tweaking numerous other things, such as giving Barbarian factions a 4th tier of buildings, giving all factions onagers to make sieges a bit easier, many factions have new units, etc... I have also created a unique Legendary Artifact for each faction. These are items from history and myth such as Hippolyta's Belt, Penthesilea's Spear, the Gorgoneion of Alexander, etc... Each can only be possessed by its parent faction, and will respawn later in the game if its user dies.
6. How historical is this mod on a scale of 1 - 10, 1 being hardly at all, and 10 being very? Is it more gameplay based?
I would probably put it about a 4 or 5. In spite of the fact that ATW is myth-based, I try to stick to history wherever it does not get in my way. For example, when creating new territories I have always tried to do the research to find cities and cultures were there and use them. This is why Gelonos (which was supposed to have been founded by Greek colonists) has militia hoplites even though it is on the steppe. But when I have to make a choice between gameplay and historical fact, history loses. I want ATW to be balanced and fun to play more than anything else.
7. What aspects of Amazon: Total War do you think players will like best, and why?
I think what people seem to like best is that ATW is a mod that takes women seriously. I have had numerous emails and private messages from people telling me how not only how much they like seeing female units and factions, but especially ones that are portrayed realistically rather than as pin-ups our out-and-out porn. It is also just plain enjoyable to play.
8. What was the greatest challenge for you in creating this mod?
I think the unit creation has been the most difficult. 3ds Max is not an easy application to learn, I have been using it for well over a year and still can only do the basics. When it comes to 2d artwork I am even less gifted. I have zero artistic talent. So all of my skins are simply cutting and pasting things from other units, recolouring them, adding textures I find on the web, things like that.
9. What is your favourite aspect of the mod?
Playing with the girls!
10. Are you planning any other projects or mods after Amazon: Total War?
If I ever get ATW to the point where I consider it completely done and stop working on it, I do have some ideas kicking around in my head. One is to create Amazon Invasion, a sequel set in the Barbarian Invasion timeframe that adds several Amazon factions to the mix and would changes the vanilla game as dramatically as I did with the original ATW.
One other idea is to create the fantasy setting I used to write some fiction a while back, which was loosely based on Classical Greece, with Celto-Germanic barbarians, steppe tribes, and desert nomads thrown in the mix as well.
The final idea is to take Harry Turtledove's Misplaced Legion books and make a mod of it.
11. Any last words for the ES readers?
If you have an idea for a mod that you are passionate about, and no one else has already done it, create it yourself. Do not let a lack of knowledge in modding stop you. I did not know anything about modding when I started ATW. The same is true of every other modder. There are plenty of articles out there to learn from, and the modding community is always willing to answer questions when you cannot figure something out. All you need is hard work and your vision will become reality.
Important Links:
Amazon: Total War Forum
Amazon: Total War Download
ATW Announcements
General Info
ATW Screenshots
The Daughters of the Dragon: A Valkryja AAR
The Eye Candy.