Amazon: Total War 6.0 Release

[parthian shot]

Thank You! Spartan

The "..chosen a unknow tile for Aryleia..." has been there for awhile.

What happened is, we decided to put the crown princess (by the name of Aryleia) of Geothe Amazon, on the boat at the start of the game, along with the bulk of the Geothe Amazon army.

The RTW/BI engine does not like it at all, interpreting it as an error that an army is located in the water at the start of the game, although there is nothing wrong with it.

Regarding the Red Romans, your 2 cents, is worth a lot more than you put it. So I will definitely heed the advice.

I booted up 6.0C to see what's been done since I last played and I got an error on closing of the mod. Pic is attached.

Also, regarding changing of the Romans to red, I'd like to say I disagree with that since just about every mod does Romans in red and ATW using SPQR purple for them makes it unique in that respect. But that's just my $.02, so take it as you will, Pathian.

[parthian shot]

Release 6.0D is still on schedule, hopefully it will be available in the middle of next week.

[sapped]

awesome!! can't wait!!!

[parthian shot]

We have gone through some pretty out of ordinary testing cycles.

And just want to share with everyone some interesting findings.

The much taunted advanced tech units are not that unbeatable.

One case for example, we are playing the low tech army with two horse archers units and 4 heavy cavalry units, one Armenian legion plus two units of the new armored Armenian spearmen.

The Advanced Tech Geothe units has two elephant units with manu-ballista firing thermite jars, plus a caro-ballista unit, plus supporting infantry units.

The lone Armenian horse archer unit was facing the Geothe army alone, with the rest of the units as reinforecement.

At the start of the battle, the horse archer fall back to join the the reinforecement. The force balance bar was showing the Geothe force has 5:1 advantage over the combined Armenian force. I saw my tester formed an oblique formation with now combined Armenian army deploying the horse archer units in loose formation at the spearhead of the formation, followed by all the heavy cavalry behind them. the horse archers in loose formations were ordered to charge the two elephant units which were grouped right next to each others. When the two horse archer units reaching closer to the elephants, the Geothe's caro-ballista opened up on the horse archers, and consequently shot up their own elephants. And this promptly made the two elephant units to go amok. What remained of the two horse archer units then gave chase after the caro-ballista, who is running away while doing the Parthian Shots at the pursuers. But because the light horse archers are faster, they caught up with the caro-ballista units to allow the Armenian heavy cavalry to get engaged with the caro-ballista and ended up routing the caro-ballsta.

The remaining Armenia force then attempted simultaneous front and rear assault on the Geothe infantry formations and routed these units too.

This, and many other test results tell only one thing, that the Advancted Tech units are powerful against AI untis in battle, because AI tend to form line and double envelope its opponent. It gave plenty of time for Advanced Tech units like the Geothe to shoot up any units getting too busy forming line, but not attacking.

If you try one of the Epaminondas or Frederick The Great's maneuver. And attempt at breaching the "line" to get to the opponent's thermite or long range artillery unit(s). The maneuver, if successful, will equalize the fight, becaue the Amazons aren't that great at close quarter combat units.

[parthian shot]

On 6.0D

This is to let everyone know that we are still integrating text and working on some fine point of UI.

[Mark Centurion]

Nice to see this mod now is beeing continued. Guess I'll give it a closer look. Thanks for your work.

[Mark Centurion]

Just some quick feedback upon rev6_0c. While closing the game I get this error message:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

As you said parthian shot you and the team are working on the UI I skip posting my findings since you probably know all about those.

Balance - gameplay

• Shrine of camilla gives no bonus to happines or law until the final tier. Guess that will make it hard to keep the city from revolting in one pick this temple... how about a small bonus? While in the final tier it provides the best bonus compared to all others temples, should be a little more balanced if I may throw my 2ct.
• I understand your point of deploying the superior missile attack but it's a bit much for my tase. And the General unit has plenty of ammo and will wreck havoc upon the ranks of the enemy.
• I would highly suggest lower the bastarnae (don't have the exact name at the ready) from thrace to 1 hit point (actually it's 2 hp) since those guys alone can kill half an amazon army, well in ATW 3.0c it was that way for me.

FPS
At the campaign map while scrolling I get only 15 FPS I know it's the same with the previous version of the amazon mod I played (ATW 3.0c) some other mods as well give that result. I started a vanilla campaign just to compare and the frames don't drop below 30 so I thought if might be the texture size used on the campaign map since the vanilla game offers rather blur images while many mods offer better textures here.

I reduced the resolution and filesize as a test, but still 15 FPS. Just out of curiosity is that for everyone on the camp. map = low fps while in battle I always have 30-60 FPS with many units involved and pretty high graphic setting. Would be nice to know what is causing this heavy lag.

Very good work on the details of the new units haven't checked them all yet.

[parthian shot]

Hi, Mark,

That is the oldest reported bug for 6.0. WHat really happened is that we put the army of the most lethal Amazon faction (along with its crown-princess Aryleia) on board of a fleet in the high sea in the beginning of the game.

The AI interprets the coordinate and thinking the army is misplaced on water, but it never checked that the army and the fleet are co-located. Hence the warning.

The bug is really harmless, and if you play more than one or two seasons and then save the game, the fleet would probably land the Crown-Princess somewhere, and the warning message will go away.

By the way, in 6.0D, the Amazon general units will have less lethal power as well as reduced unit size.

The game would play better if you have 4GB of memory.

[parthian shot]

Hi, Mark,

That is the oldest reported bug for 6.0. What really happened is that we put the army of the most lethal Amazon faction (along with its crown-princess Aryleia) on board of a fleet in the high sea in the beginning of the game.

The AI interprets the coordinate and thinking the army is misplaced on water, but it never checked that the army and the fleet are co-located. Hence the warning.

The bug is really harmless, and if you play more than one or two seasons and then save the game, the fleet would probably land the Crown-Princess somewhere, and the warning message will go away.

By the way, in 6.0D, the Amazon general units will have less lethal power as well as reduced unit size.

The game would play better if you have 4GB of memory.

[Mark Centurion]

Hi, Mark,

That is the oldest reported bug for 6.0. What really happened is that we put the army of the most lethal Amazon faction (along with its crown-princess Aryleia) on board of a fleet in the high sea in the beginning of the game.

The AI interprets the coordinate and thinking the army is misplaced on water, but it never checked that the army and the fleet are co-located. Hence the warning.

The bug is really harmless, and if you play more than one or two seasons and then save the game, the fleet would probably land the Crown-Princess somewhere, and the warning message will go away.

By the way, in 6.0D, the Amazon general units will have less lethal power as well as reduced unit size.

The game would play better if you have 4GB of memory.

Hello parthian,

Thanks for the clearance about the error message. All okay then. Good that the general will have less killing power and reduce the number sound good for me too infact I was about to suggest that *smiles*.

Well I'm on WINXP and that only supports ~3 GB of RAM I do have 4 GB installed though. On the other hand it's kind of silly that the much more hardware heavy battles are no issue looking at the FPS while the more easy campaign map is heavy stuttering around so I still wonder what makes this happen as mentioned the vanilla RTW runs smooth on the camp. map.

[parthian shot]

We have tested the Video Cards with 1GB video memory, and there is no stutter or skipping frames.

Can you publish your video card specificaiton, so others can get a reference ?

Thanks and Happy New Year Everyone!

[Mark Centurion]

Happy new year everyone.

In the preferences I've set CAMPAIGN_MAP_MAX_SCROLL_SPEED_MIN_ZOOM to 15 thus FPS while moving very low, was using that preference file for years now without noticing that this setting causes the stuttering on the campaign map... changing that to 60 fixes the issue for me its worth a laugh.

CAMPAIGN_MAP_MAX_SCROLL_SPEED_MIN_ZOOM:60
CAMPAIGN_MAP_MAX_SCROLL_SPEED_MAX_ZOOM:60

The campaign map textures
simply change for for the camp. map I think it does some improvement. What have I done?

• reduced the textures to 256*256 and sharpened them.
• also we've got a smaller package before ~35MB now ~9MB.
• And it looks more nifty in my humble opinion.

File attached and if liked please add to the mod. Click the sample image to have a look and compare.

Sample image 1
Original and resized sharpened

Sample image 2
Original and resized sharpened

I haven't checked every part of the map yet to see if there are issues but a quick scan showed no problems yet.

[parthian shot]

Great Job! Will put it through the test cycle.

[Mark Centurion]

Can the starting generals unit image pictures (portrait) be changed? I saw for instance the Thermodon Amazonia always have the same images for two generals at start.

Is there an index somewhere that can be changed i know the game picks them at random later on for new levy gernerals, but how about the beginning? Or is that hardcoded?

[parthian shot]

The generals are picked in the same order the same way everytime, the starting portrait can be altered if you add or delete the number of generals in the portrait repository.

Hope this helps.

[Mark Centurion]

I thought so, thanks for the reply.

As I worked a little on the generals portraits and tested a change for the banner I saw this strange sky. Was on the campaign as I attacked a smal town that I sieged.

Tried some cusom battles later out of the campaign, the sky was okay on all other tries.

I have to say I haven't messed around with the sky texture or an descr. file involved with the sky. Strange thing, thus I thought I post this screenie.

[parthian shot]

I would like to make the 6.0D release announcement, but it is not to be because of last minute discovered issues.

On the bug sightings, it would be helpful to include description of units, point in the sequence, settings, and as many parameter you can note.

Will keep everyone posted, and please do keep those bug reports coming in.

[Mark Centurion]

Sorry don't have more info about the odd sky hopefully it's only a one time oddity, I'll keep you posted.

Found another bug. Swordswomen with no sword in combat also if just standing, only shown when they are about to throw their missile or if they taunt the enemy before the battle.

No sword image and the with sword while throwing

My guess is the skeleton is missing the animation/sword for that model since removing the throw weapon brings back the sword.

[Medusa0]

No sword image and the with sword while throwing

Actually, it looks like the sword is assigned to be the primary weapon (which should be a javelin) while nothing is assigned for the secondary weapon in the model. Should be a quick fix to import a javelin from another model in 3dsmax.

[parthian shot]

Can we post the actual unit name ? thanks.