Greek mod proposal (Vanilla)

[ByzantineLover]

Title says all (well, mostly). The main idea I had in mind was a mod which had the vanilla game with Mundus Magnus map version 1.2 and units (mostly Greek) ported over from RTW Alexander.

As for units:

Infantry

ALEX Phalangists – Egypt (Replace Pharaoh’s Guard)
Greek Mercenary Infantry – Egypt (Replace Nile Spearmen)
Hypaspists – Macedon, Seleucid, Egypt
Indian Spearmen – Egypt (Replace Desert Axemen)
Kardakes – Seleucid
Phrygian Mercenaries – Seleucid, Pontus

Missile

Agrianian Javelinmen – Macedon, Seleucid, Egypt
Mardian Archers – Seleucid
Indian Javelinmen – Egypt (Replace Skirmishers)
Indian Slingers – Egypt (Replace Slingers)
Indian Longbowmen – Egypt (Replace Pharaoh’s Bowmen)
ALEX Scythian Mounted Archers – Seleucid, Macedon
Dahae Mounted Archers – Seleucid

Cavalry

Thessalian Cavalry – Macedon
Indian Medium Cavalry – Egypt (Replace Nile Cavalry)
ALEX Companion Cavalry – Egypt (Replace Egyptian Chariots)
Syrian Cavalry – Seleucid, Egypt, Eastern
Hyrcanian Cavalry – Seleucid, Parthia
Barcanian Horsemen – Seleucid, Egypt (Replace Desert Cavalry)
Heavy Bactrian Cavalry – Seleucid, Parthia

Any thoughts?

[Spike]

??? what do you mean? care to explain moar?

[ByzantineLover]

??? what do you mean? care to explain moar?

What do I mean? Oh, sorry.

What I meant to say was, I was proposing a mod which ported over units from Alexander to the Vanilla game, specifically to the Greek factions (I'm including Egypt in this). This would be in order to make their military lineups more diverse and/or accurate (in particular the Egyptians) without losing that vanilla feel.

As for which specific units:

Macedon:

Hypaspists
Agrianian Javelinmen (To replace Peltasts)
Prodromoi (To replace Greek Cavalry)
Thessalian Cavalry
Auxiliary Thracian Cavalry (To replace Militia Cavalry)

Seleucid: (Persian units meant to represent the diversity of peoples the Seleucids ruled at their peak)

Kardakes
Phrygian Mercenary Infantry
Hypaspists
Agrianian Javelinmen (To replace Peltasts)
Prodromoi (To replace Greek Cavalry)
Syrian Cavalry
Barcanian Horsemen
Heavy Bactrian Cavalry
Hyrcanian Cavalry (To replace Militia Cavalry)

Egypt: (Indian units added to give a sort of 'Egyptian' feel, a bit different from the Vanilla units)

ALEX Phalangists (To replace Pharaoh's Guard)
Greek Mercenary Infantry (To replace Nile Spearmen)
Indian Spearmen (To replace Desert Axemen)
Hypaspists
Indian Javelinmen (To replace Skirmishers)
Indian Longbowmen (To replace Pharoah's Guard)
Allied Cavalry (To replace Nile Cavalry)
Barcanian Horsemen (I read somewhere that the Barcanians that as we saw them in ALEX were Middle-Eastern people relocated to Egypt)
Syrian Cavalry (To replace Desert Cavalry)
ALEX Companion Cavalry (To replace Egyptian Chariots)

Eastern:

Syrian Cavalry (Armenia)
Heavy Bactrian Cavalry (Parthia)
Phyrigian Mercenary Infantry (Pontus)

I've been trying to do it myself, but I don't know exactly which game files to modify, where to move them to and how. I've tried asking on the forums here, but no one has told me. One answer I got involved editing "EDU and DMB files," but I can't find either of them anywhere on my computer. Are they only available via unpacking? I'm using RTW Gold Edition (Vanilla and BI) on Windows 7.

I'm very, very sorry if this isn't the proper place to talk about this.

[ByzantineLover]

What do I mean? Oh, sorry.

What I meant to say was, I was proposing a mod which ported over units from Alexander to the Vanilla game, specifically to the Greek factions (I'm including Egypt in this). This would be in order to make their military lineups more diverse and/or accurate (in particular the Egyptians) without losing that vanilla feel.

As for which specific units:

Macedon:

Hypaspists
Agrianian Javelinmen (To replace Peltasts)
Prodromoi (To replace Greek Cavalry)
Thessalian Cavalry
Auxiliary Thracian Cavalry (To replace Militia Cavalry)

Seleucid: (Persian units meant to represent the diversity of peoples the Seleucids ruled at their peak)

Kardakes
Phrygian Mercenary Infantry
Hypaspists
Agrianian Javelinmen (To replace Peltasts)
Mardian Archers
Prodromoi (To replace Greek Cavalry)
Syrian Cavalry
Barcanian Horsemen
Heavy Bactrian Cavalry
Hyrcanian Cavalry (To replace Militia Cavalry)
ALEX Scythian Mounted Archers
Dahae Mounted Archers

Egypt: (Indian units added to give a sort of 'Egyptian' feel, a bit different from the Vanilla units)

ALEX Phalangists (To replace Pharaoh's Guard)
Greek Mercenary Infantry (To replace Nile Spearmen)
Indian Spearmen (To replace Desert Axemen)
Hypaspists
Indian Javelinmen (To replace Skirmishers)
Indian Longbowmen (To replace Pharoah's Guard)
Allied Cavalry (To replace Nile Cavalry)
Barcanian Horsemen (I read somewhere that the Barcanians that as we saw them in ALEX were Middle-Eastern people relocated to Egypt)
Syrian Cavalry (To replace Desert Cavalry)
ALEX Companion Cavalry (To replace Egyptian Chariots)

Eastern:

Syrian Cavalry (Armenia)
Heavy Bactrian Cavalry (Parthia)
Phyrigian Mercenary Infantry (Pontus)

I've been trying to do it myself, but I don't know exactly which game files to modify, where to move them to and how. I've tried asking on the forums here, but no one has told me. One answer I got involved editing "EDU and DMB files," but I can't find either of them anywhere on my computer. Are they only available via unpacking? I'm using RTW Gold Edition (Vanilla and BI) on Windows 7.

I'm very, very sorry if this isn't the proper place to talk about this.

Bolded items are units I forgot to add in the previous post.

[ahowl11]

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=536962
Not exactly what you want but it's vanilla

[debux]

Are you willing to do this yourself?

If you are, this guide might help you port over the units from alex.

And while I'm at it, this guide (this one is linked to the posts that refers to units, but the guide itself is great), this one (kind of an index of various tutorials and tools) and this one (same as before) might help you as well. It might be overwhelming (well, yeah, to be honest it is still overwhelming to me ), just stick to the parts you need, for now, such as unit adding and the such. As a matter of fact, I think you'll only need the first link, but if you're interested into ever getting into the modding world, those guides might be interesting reads.

Cheers! And good luck!

[Cinuz]

I don't get why the Egyptian Kingdom should get Indian units :s

[debux]

Variety maybe? Dunno... in any case, it's his mod, and it's pretty easy he's not aiming for historical accuracy I doubt the modder in-making ( ) has 3dsmax, so I don't think he can turn the vanilla spearmen into a non-phalanx unit, so he's opting to use the alex.exe indian unit instead (as a matter of fact, I am not sure myself if to do such weapon change one has to edit the model or not )

[ahowl11]

You can simply make Nubian Spearmen, and Nile Spearmen regular infantry units by simply deleting the "phalanx" attribute in the edu

[debux]

You can simply make Nubian Spearmen, and Nile Spearmen regular infantry units by simply deleting the "phalanx" attribute in the edu

Really? I always thought one had to edit the model if one wanted to make such a change... but then i guess that the spears have the same length as they would have in the phalanx formation, which I guess would look kind of funny

[Cinuz]

No, phalanxes' pikes just turn into normal spears when you remove the "phalanx" trigger in the edu...For example, you add the phalanx formation to triarii and then remove it without any trouble to the model or the game

[tianzong]

heya thanks for tip!! pretty helpful!!! Thanks (again)

[ByzantineLover]

Thanks, everyone. On the advice of EyebrowsMulligan (sorry, debux), I took a look at Epistolary Richard's adding units tutorial, and I think I figured out what to do. I've made the necessary additions and changes (I hope) according to the flowchart, but I've yet to try it out yet. I really hope porting units from ALEX to Vanilla doesn't cause a CTD.

In regards to the Egyptian units, I was trying to give a more 'Greek' feel to the faction (Phalangists, Hypaspists, etc) while trying to represent the Egyptian & miscellaneous minorities in in the armed forces (E.g. the Egyptian soldiers who fought at Raphia, hence why I'm keeping the Nubian Spearmen & Cavalry).

As for the Indian units, I wanted Egypt to have non-phalanx soldiers that looked 'Egyptian', but not in the sense units like Nile Spearmen, Pharaoh's Guard and Pharaoh's Bowmen do.

Once again, thanks.

[ahowl11]

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=413694
This would be better suited for you regarding the egyptian units

[debux]

ahowl's link is pretty good, that will defenitively give you a truly historically accurate version of Egypt at that time, if that's your aim in this mod.

[ByzantineLover]

Thanks, I appreciate it, but I'm not sure if I will use it. I will admit the mod does look good, but I'm not looking for a completely historically accurate game experience. If I did, I'd be trying to change the appearance of the legionary knockoffs from the awesome post-Marian legionaries to the somewhat okay pre-Marian Hastati/Principes.

Right now, I'm just waiting to try out what I've already worked on. I'm not sure when I'll get the opportunity though, since there are a number of factors that prevent me from doing so at my leisure.

[ByzantineLover]

Okay, I tried it once, and the game CTD. I used the show-err option in the shortcut and I think, when adding the new units, I went over the unit limit, so I've come up with a list of unit I'm going to try to get rid of to make room for the ALEX units:

Units to replace

Infantry

Phalangists – Replace Pharaoh’s Guard
Greek Mercenary Infantry – Replace Militia Hoplites
Hypaspists – Replace Mercenary Peltasts
Phrygian Mercenaries – Replace Desert Axemen
Kardakes – Replace Nile Spearmen

Missile

Agrianian Javelinmen – Replace Greek Peltasts
Mardian Archers – Replace Pharaoh’s Bowmen
Cretan Archers – Replace Mercenary Cretan Archers
ALEX Scythian Mounted Archers – Replace Scythian Mercenaries
Auxiliary Thracian Cavalry – Replace Greek Militia Cavalry

Cavalry

Thessalian Cavalry – Replace Nile Cavalry
ALEX Companion Cavalry – Replace Egyptian Chariots
Allied Cavalry – Replace Mercenary Hoplites
Prodromoi – Replace Greek Cavalry
Syrian Cavalry – Replace Sarmatian Mercenaries
Hyrcanian Cavalry – Replace Bedouin Warriors
Barcanian Horsemen – Replace Desert Cavalry
Heavy Bactrian Cavalry – Replace Libyan Mercenaries

Not sure how this will turn out, but I'll give it a try and see how it goes.

BTW, in RTW ALEX, whenever I try to add Heavy Bactrian Cavalry to Macedon (apparently in the OTL Alexander started recruiting cavalry from Bactria before his Indian Campaign), instead of the green and black mount used by the Persians, the unit ends up using the basic cataphract mount. Just a minor point, but, any ideas why?

[tianzong]

BTW, in RTW ALEX, whenever I try to add Heavy Bactrian Cavalry to Macedon (apparently in the OTL Alexander started recruiting cavalry from Bactria before his Indian Campaign), instead of the green and black mount used by the Persians, the unit ends up using the basic cataphract mount. Just a minor point, but, any ideas why?

Did you changed the mount in export_descr_units? or did you accidentally didn't put the new models in the descr_models_battle list?

[ByzantineLover]

Did you changed the mount in export_descr_units? or did you accidentally didn't put the new models in the descr_models_battle list?

Just checked and it was the latter. Thanks for the help.