3 questions from v. 3_Final

[Germanicus75]

Hi Dimebag, Zarax and others,

I'm back after a holiday. I'm coming to the end of a version 3_Final game playing as Scipii. I haven't yet tried any of the 4.xx series, but I'm looking forward to it.

I only ever took one of the Roman factions to the end of the game a few times in the old 3-family game.

Got a few questions for ya:

1) Is it inevitable in the Senate/3-family game that there must be a civil war in every game? I'm up to about AD 8 now with only the Brits and Seleucids remaining aside from the Romans, and still no civil war. No family is popular with the Senate, but neither is any popular enough with the people. For example, the Brutii have 1 Senate popularity point (out of 10), and 7 (out of 10) people popularity points, but no civil war.

2) What year does the 3-family game officially end?

3) Is there some way to have 3_Final and the latest 4.xx series version of the mod running side by side on the same install of RTW 1.6? I want to be able to play both of them :-)

I'm really enjoying my campaign. I captured Rhodes and then got a toehold in Asia Minor. But the Seleucids eventually took the whole of Africa from me, and now attack me in Asia Minor every turn with full stack or near full stack armies. Every army they send contains elephants; some armies have contained as many as *6 units* of armoured elephants! They have slowly pushed me back. I've been producing javelin throwers like the Devil!

Re. someone's comments on Hypaspists, yes those in RTR are almost invincible and will stand up to charges in the rear from cav without routing, for example. They can beat virtually any infantry unit in the game. Those in XGM I find much more realistic (as well as the Roman legionaries compared to the super-morale ones in RTR).

I'm pleased to see the continuing progress of XGM - keep up the good work guys!

Cheers, Germanicus 91

[Hippias]

Up to 8AD - respect

I recommend 4.09 and onwards - loyalty for the Romans from day 1 gives you the feeling of fighting Samnites, Marsii, Campanians etc (which i regard the early Roman "rebels" as being) to unify the italian peninsula

[Zarax]

Hi Dimebag, Zarax and others,

I'm back after a holiday. I'm coming to the end of a version 3_Final game playing as Scipii. I haven't yet tried any of the 4.xx series, but I'm looking forward to it.

I only ever took one of the Roman factions to the end of the game a few times in the old 3-family game.

Got a few questions for ya:

1) Is it inevitable in the Senate/3-family game that there must be a civil war in every game? I'm up to about AD 8 now with only the Brits and Seleucids remaining aside from the Romans, and still no civil war. No family is popular with the Senate, but neither is any popular enough with the people. For example, the Brutii have 1 Senate popularity point (out of 10), and 7 (out of 10) people popularity points, but no civil war.

2) What year does the 3-family game officially end?

3) Is there some way to have 3_Final and the latest 4.xx series version of the mod running side by side on the same install of RTW 1.6? I want to be able to play both of them :-)

I'm really enjoying my campaign. I captured Rhodes and then got a toehold in Asia Minor. But the Seleucids eventually took the whole of Africa from me, and now attack me in Asia Minor every turn with full stack or near full stack armies. Every army they send contains elephants; some armies have contained as many as *6 units* of armoured elephants! They have slowly pushed me back. I've been producing javelin throwers like the Devil!

Re. someone's comments on Hypaspists, yes those in RTR are almost invincible and will stand up to charges in the rear from cav without routing, for example. They can beat virtually any infantry unit in the game. Those in XGM I find much more realistic (as well as the Roman legionaries compared to the super-morale ones in RTR).

I'm pleased to see the continuing progress of XGM - keep up the good work guys!

Cheers, Germanicus 91

Ok, let's see what I can do to provide feeback...

1) The easiest way in this case is to play defensively, as long as you don't conquer or loose extra cities you shouldn't incur into the dreaded civil war... If you can, try swapping cities with the other roman families so that they can get some seleucid heat too, making victory easier (in theory)

2) 14AD IIRC, never played to the end though...

3) Just rename your current XGM folder to something else (XGM3 or whatever you feel like), make a copy of your current XGM shortcut and set it to point to the new folder (example: from "c:\activision\total war\rome total war\rtwbi.exe" - mod xgm to "c:\activision\total war\rome total war\rtwbi.exe" - mod xgm3), this way xgm4 will install in its usual folder and you will have the old version in the renamed folder, available at your disposal.

About the RTR comparison... XGM isn't in competition with any other MOD, we simply try to change the game in ways that we (and our users) think lead to a better gaming experience.
Although we try to be somewhat more accurate than vanilla we aren't over "stretching" historical facts just a little bit in order to ackieve a more enjoiable experience (this means that we don't have fantasy units but we might include slightly out of timeframe units or quite rare ones for the sake of gameplay variation)...

After all we are supposed to be a mini-mod more aimed at evolution than revolution and we prefer maintaining our uniqueness rather than trying to go after project with much more development and resources than us :wink:

[Germanicus75]

Ok, let's see what I can do to provide feeback...

3) Just rename your current XGM folder to something else (XGM3 or whatever you feel like), make a copy of your current XGM shortcut and set it to point to the new folder (example: from "c:\activision\total war\rome total war\rtwbi.exe" - mod xgm to "c:\activision\total war\rome total war\rtwbi.exe" - mod xgm3), this way xgm4 will install in its usual folder and you will have the old version in the renamed folder, available at your disposal.

Many thanks for your reply, Zarax. I'm afraid though the rename of XGM 3_final to xgm3 didn't work. The game seemed to run as normal, until I loaded my saved game. Then the load never got far, the Windows mouse cursor appeared and I eventually got error messages that it couldn't find CAS files etc. The crash was so bad I had to reboot. I tried several times.

Here's my current command line from the shortcut:

C:\WINDOWS\system32\cmd.exe /C "start /HIGH RomeTW.exe %1 %2 %3 %4 %5 %6 %7 %8 %9" -show_err -nm -mod:xgm

which I changed to (after I renamed the files folder to xgm3):

C:\WINDOWS\system32\cmd.exe /C "start /HIGH RomeTW.exe %1 %2 %3 %4 %5 %6 %7 %8 %9" -show_err -nm -mod:xgm3

Thanks, Germanicus91

PS - I just tried by naming it back to -mod:xgm in the command line and renaming the folder back to XGM and my saved game works fine again.

[Zarax]

Hmm, I didn't take into account the models file... I guess that in this case the easiest solution is to rename to XGM the folder with the version you want to play at the moment and rename the other one to a different name...
It takes a couple folder names editing every time you want to play but it's easier than hunting for model paths in the files...