[RS 2.1a] RS II Enhanced Campaign Map v1.5

[Spartan 666]

Hi guys! I have put together some tweaks I made for my personal taste for the RS II campaign map. There were some things I didn't like and surely I'm not the only one.

The idea at the base of this mod is to encourage certain AI behaviours with land bridges while preventing or making others more difficult with land barriers. A human player is smart enough (at least, he is supposed to be) to get past them one way or another.


MAIN DEFAULT FEATURES:

-some cities have been slightly moved for better gameplay (Bononia, Patavium, Rhegion,..).
-land bridge between Britain and Hibernia (Ireland).
-land bridge between Corsica and Sardinia. Sardinia ground types redesigned.
-land bridge between Sicily and Italy.
-land bridge between central Greece and Euboia.
-land bridge between Denmark and Sweden.
-cities in Palestine area are now more spaced (Raphia, Rhinocolura and Ierosolyma were too close to each other)
-better accessibility in South Italy. Roads between Capua, Croton, Rhegion and Tarentum are now present.
-added Red Sea channel. Now fleets won't be trapped inside the Red Sea and the Ptolemies will unleash all their naval power in the Mediterranean. The channel is inaccessible if you don't control its both sides. 3 land bridges are present.
-Carthage and the Ptolemies are now divided by a land barrier which will prevent useless bloodsheds between those factions, who historically have always had friendly relationships. *
-alpine passes have been blocked to prevent premature Roman expansion into Gaul and Germany *
-added some blockades in the area between Macedon and Thrace. This should at least slow down Macedonian expansion towards (and ultimately, beyond) the Danube. *
-added blockades in the Caucasus to prevent useless wars between Armenia and Sarmatia. *

* These features don't apply in the particular 0-turn campaigns for factions interested by these changes. For example, Romans and Arverni players will have open alpine passes to counter foreign invasions; likewise, Sarmatia and Armenia players will have open passages through the Caucasus.


INSTALL, BACKUP AND OPTIONAL FILES ARE CONTAINED INTO A SINGLE .7z ARCHIVE.
If your archive manager can't handle .7z files, download this.


SCREENSHOTS

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

FURTHER INFORMATION:

-this mod is, as far as I know, compatible with other Roma Surrectum II submods, since they mostly focus on units and building balancing. As long as they don't touch map files, they will be compatible.

-this mod is fully compatible with my Four Turns per Year mod.

-this mod, of course, is NOT savegame compatible. For the changes to take effect, you have to start a new campaign and deleting .rwm files; if you continue a previous campaign, there won't be any changes to the map and you might experience some issues.

-if you experience the no-save\load-game bug, it is NOT this mod's fault; rather, it seems to be a RS II related issue. To fix it, just delete everything inside your delete "RSfolder\Play_xxx\preferences" folder. It will be automatically regenerated the next time you launch the game. I suggest to backup your options by putting them into "RSfolder\preferences" folder, so you won't have to set them again.


If you have any suggestion to further improve this submod, just make your proposition here and post feedback on what you like or dislike.

Screenshots of your current campaign progression are very welcome to understand how the AI is working!

Report any errors in this thread. If you get an error message, post its exact text or take a screenshot, don't simply say "I get an error".

---Download v1.5---

[Grouchio]

Great mod! +rep

[dhaalque]

Fantastic mod, I will never play without it, but it made disorder in my saved game, so I started new campaign with your map, Siegfriedfr's tweaks and Ulfhednin's UREE and I enjoy very good.

[Spartan 666]

Thanks guys!

@ Dhaalque: unfortunately this isn't savegame compatible. But it should be compatible with all other sub mods, because as far as I know they focus on units cost and unpeek or buildings. Personally, I use Siegfriedfr's mod as well, 1-turn campaigns are much better and make you think twice before throwing a stack into battle.

[Fridericus Rex]

I DL an earlier version of your sub-mod, but hesitate to get your latest version which includes a land bridge from Italy to the Islands. For me that is not necessary and advantages the Rome player while not adding anything for the AI ( this is a questionable game play addition).
If there is a bridge? How can I remove the connection?

Great mod. Please advise.

Edit: Reread your post - there is none. Correct?

[Spartan 666]

The land bridge between Italy and Sicily has always been present, the latest version adds only the last two features mentioned.

Anyway, I think RTW works the opposite way of what you said. A human player has no benefit from a land bridge because he's smart enough to build a bireme and use it to carry stacks between Italy and Sicily. The AI isn't that smart, therefore it needs the bridge. It's the AI that benefits from land bridges, because in all mods I have played that didn't have a bridge between Rhegion and Messana the romans expanded up to Germany and never touched Sicily.

If you want to remove that particular land bridge, you have to edit the map_heights.tga file. Do you have any skill with that?

[Solex]

I'm not entirely sure but I do not believe there was water access between the Mediterranean Sea and the Red Sea back then. Only recently was it made accessible by Egypt in about 1869 A.D. But great work anyways =)

[Spartan 666]

Thanks dude!

Actually, a Red Sea channel was built during the Persian occupation over Egypt, during Darius the Great's reign. It remained in function at least until the 3rd century BC, then it was left there in ruin.

But you're right about one thing: there was no DIRECT access between the Red sea and the Mediterranean. Rather, there was a channel that connected the easternmost part of the Nile river to the Red Sea, and the Nile was and still is a navigable river up to the Mediterrenean. Therefore, there was an indirect connection between the two seas. Representing something like that in RTW would be quite...bad looking in my opinion, although possible.

Here are some references: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suez_Ca..._of_Suez_Canal

[Spartan198]

Will definitely use this.

[Fridericus Rex]

Sorry for not being more precise; You are correct, there should be a land bridge between Rhegium and Messana.
My problem is with a land bridge between Sardinia, Corsica and Italy or Africa.
You may not have this in your mod - can you confirm?

[Spartan 666]

All landbridges that I have added are shown in the screenshots. Sicily-Italy, Sardinia-Corsica, Denmark-Sweden, Egypt-Sinai. There is NO landbridge between Sardinia\Corsica and Italy, or between Sicily and Africa.

Original RS II map already had landbridges between Attica and Euboia, on the Azov Sea, on the Bosphorus, on the Dardanelles, and on the Gibraltar Street. I have not touched them.

[badapple]

Could anyone please tell me how I can open a RTW map and tinker with it. Do I need a special program to open the map? Anyone know?

[Spike]

Nice submod! I'll try after I finish my ongoing Pontos World-Exterminatin campaign :skull:

[Spartan 666]

@ Badapple: use Paint .Net. It's a great freeware software, perfect for basic RTW map editing. I recommend to read some mapping tutorials before doing anything though...mapping might seem an easy thing, but it is sufficient to mess up a couple of tiny things to make the game CTD.

@ Strategos Lykos: thanks dude! Good luck with your extermination campaign!

[terzer]

There was no bridge between Sicily and the Italian peninsula. This strait was called Fretensis, from which the 10th legion name come from.
Yes, its very comfortable, but its not historical.
Otherwise, nice mod and thanks!

[Spartan 666]

Of course there was no bridge between Sicily and Italy. They are trying to build it now, but in my opinion they are only wasting my money!

And no, of course a landbridge is not historical, and not even realistic. But also a stupid AI that can't use a fleet to transport troops is not historical or realistic either. The AI has great hardcoded limits, and the purpose of this mod is to influence it making it act more rationally. Rationally, not necessarily historically.

[SirGejor]

Great mod mate!!

[I3enjaIvIin]

Hello Spartan 666!

I have a question about the installation of this map tweak ~

"If map changes do not take effect or cause problems, try to delete all map_heights.hgt files."

I found the map_heights.hgt files with the windows search function and I get the following results:
- 3 Original rtw map heights.hgt (RTW\BI\data\world\maps, RTW\data\world\maps & sons of mars RTW\data\world\maps\campaign
- Whole bunch of map heights from your mod's unzipped folders.

In the manual is says delete all, but I just wanted to be sure on this one. So i delete the original and the unzipped folder map heights?

Thnx in advance ~

[I3enjaIvIin]

The first time without deleting the map_heights I get the following error

Script error in play_rome/data/world/maps/base/descr_regions.txt, at line 1013, column 5

Couldn't find settlement name 'Thebas' in stringtable

This is when I played as Rome, the map would not launch after selecting the difficulty settings.

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After I deleted the map_heights from the unzipped folders (leaving the 3 original as they were) it worked when I tried to play as Dacia, but again not as I chose Rome.

Do I still have to delete the other 3 orginal .hgt files? Ps I also tried it while deleting the 3 original but still the map wouldn't load.

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I play this along with the [RS 2.0] Fewer stacks, slightly shorter battles - BETA mod and installed that one before i tried to install yours.

[Spartan 666]

Hi I3enjaIvIin! Well, was strange that no one reported issues..

First question: there are no map_height.hgt files in my archive, but there are a lot of map_heights.tga files, one for each campaign. The .hgt files into RSfolder\data\...are not important, you might have to delete the .hgt files contained into RSfolder\Play_xxx\data\... instead.

Second question: that might be caused by incompatibility between that mod and this one. I'm checking files right now, if there are errors I will fix them ASAP.

EDIT: I think I found out what causes the issue. In all imperial_region_and_settlement_names.txt files. Both the Thebes in Boiotia and the one in Egypt have the same internal name, and the problems might be caused by this. It's very strange, since some campaigns start and others don't. I will fix this, and ask for more info to the developers.