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Thread: Anno Domini 395 Mod

  1. #1
    Junker's Avatar Laetus
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    Default Anno Domini 395 Mod

    I am not a programmer, modeler or editor. However, I am a sophomore history student. Games like those from CA and the mods released here truly impress me, and give me hope for the gaming community. In contrast the farthest I have come to modding TW games has been to scriptEdit the campaign years and starting treasury for ETW and NTW.

    I have been wanting to try making a mod for a long time, one era that has really caught my interest is the fall of the (Western) Roman Empire in the 5th and 6th centuries. Not a lot of history books really go into depth on this time period and basically just gloss over it for a chapter as a scheduled stop on the way to the Medieval Ages. I have been researching it somewhat in my free time for a while now, and I think this might make a really interesting mod. I am somewhat familiar with what can and cannot be edited in NTW with the present tools and editors. PLEASE NOTE I WAS THINKING OF THIS BEFORE ROME II WAS ANNOUNCED. But I still want to devote my time to it. Anyway please tell me what you think and if I seem to overlook something.

    Ideas; (more to come)

    Start in 395 with Theodosius' reign coming to a close. (The beginning of the 5th century is great for a Dark Ages mod. Even though the Roman Empire didn't technically collapse until Odovacar deposed Little Augustus in 476, the Empire was much already a 'barbarian' kingdom. Theodosius was also the last emperor to officially rule over the East AND Western Empires as well.)

    I have considered adding 12 more turns per year to slow the momentum of the barbarian takeover of Western Europe. This would mean an early, mid, and late turn for each month totaling 36 turns per year.

    I do not know if it is editable; or if it is already accurate (maybe someone already knows) but the campaign movement range for a given army should be realistically limited to the marching speed of an army within the given time frame. Simply put, an army on the march for a week and a half should cover the ground that a real army would cover in a week and a half. (I have figured a rough estimate of Roman marching speed at around 2.6 mph. Marching about 11 hours a day, leaving time for sleep and setting up camp every day, this would mean 28.5 miles/day. 200 miles in a week and 300 miles in a week and a half. So for game reference; an army should be able to cover the distance from Rome to just past Ravenna or just short of Venice in 1 turn.)

    Factions: Rome Byzantine Visigoth Vandals Huns Ostrogoth Slavs(including Rus) Franks Britons Lombards Berbers along with others. To simulate the waning condition of the Roman forces of late 4th and early 5th centuries, Roman frontier territories would have small garrisons defending cities on the campaign map. Furthermore to simulate the bribery and recruitment common in late Roman politics with the barbarians; many of the territories in Gaul and Southern Germania should be unhappy protectorate states of Rome. Rome should start in hostile wars with all barbaric kingdoms except those in protectorate status and of course the Byzantine (Eastern Roman) Empire.

    Government types; Imperial (obvious) Kinship (some celtic tribes), War-Band or 'comitatus' (Huns, etc), Common Law, and Ethnic Kingdom (Majority). I still have to figure out what factions definitely had which governments.

    Religion; Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Arian Christian (Visigoths), Pagan, etc. I also want to look into the plausibility of reinstating the religious agents from ETW into NTW, to go around and convert cities would be fun.

    Of course I am also looking into the armor types and weapons used during this period, although it is hard to find concrete evidence of exactly what type was used (I will just dig deeper).

    I have been painstakingly trying my hand at sculpting in milkshape and the editor tool, but i think i will figure it out eventually.

    As you can probably see, I plan on this project being a big overhaul of NTW, and I don't see myself losing interest in it although it will probably take an extended amount of time to complete. Any feedback or points of interest are welcome.

  2. #2
    Junker's Avatar Laetus
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    Default Re: Anno Domini 395 Mod

    As far as units I want to get as many as possible for seriously epic battles. Roman; Mangonels, Ballistae, Scorpios, Sagittarius, Turmae and more.

    The topic of Roman infantry is troubling; I know it will be almost impossible to replicate the fighting style of Roman legionnaires in NTW, but maybe possible to make their formation hold better. Also the unit will most likely be the cohort (approximately 480 men composed of 6 centuries of 80 men), I'm not sure on this yet but it seems manageable.

    I also wanted to be sure to implement the Legionnaire's use of javelins or more commonly in our period spears as a primary weapon and would switch to the gladius once the javelin(s) had been expended. I figured this might not be as hard as it may seem; in vanilla NTW musketmen resort to clobbering their enemies with rifle butts when their ammunition is expended as do light dragoons resort to rapier when their guns run out of ammo. Why not give the Legionnaires a javelin ammunition quantity of 2? I'm gonna try playing around with it.

  3. #3
    Junker's Avatar Laetus
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    Default Re: Anno Domini 395 Mod

    There is going to be a postponement on this project as I have just recovered from a system crash and have lost all of the project related files on one of my hard drives. Still in progress though.

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