Greek States Anonymous Roster Expansion (GSARE)
(AARE SARE EARE )
Description
This is a simple and straight forward modification with the goal of expanding the rosters of the Greek states, to bring them up to par with the other major factions. Unit designs and additions being based off of a somewhat historical context as well direct inspiration from EB1.
Each factions roster will be divided into its own pack, so you can pick and choose which one you would like to use. The mod is also being designed with an emphasis on having as little conflict as possible with other mods.
Known conflicts are, and should be limited to, vanilla unit appearance changes and faction color changes. I will not make any attempt to change the balancing of vanilla units as this would open a host of conflict problems, given the way modding R2 currently works.
This however should not be necessary, as all units are designed around vanilla stats. The stat balancing attempts to keep the additions relevant and useful, but not overpowered, with their own pros and cons.
Several of these units, or unit ideas, are shared amongst the greek states as they are drawn from a similar military ethos, with each city state/kingdom having its own particular flare and specialty as already designed in the base game.
This is based off of the idea that while a particular city or kingdom becomes dominate in Greece, it does so through a unification with the other Greeks, and not simply, for example, Sparta conquering Athens and therefore Athens becomes a form of mini-sparta that only produces Spartans. Each faction has its own particular core, and style, but there are shared elements in military organization.
Athens Anonymous Roster Expansion (AARE)
ON THE STEAM WORKSHOP
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfile.../?id=187738097
AARE's original focus remains, with a few new additions. Like the other Greek states, Athens has now been given access to a few vanilla units.
Specifically, Cretan Archers, Rhodian Slingers, and Thassalian cavalry. The first two are found in the level 4 aux barracks, and the last one is in the heavy line.
Spoiler Alert, click show to read:
Sparta Anonymous Roster Expansion (SARE)
SARE focuses on a few things, expanding the roster of Sparta with new units, giving access to vanilla greek units that are within reason, and reskinning the Spartan roster to fit a new style.
The new additions stick to the vanilla tiering of Spartan units, namely Spartan/Periokoi/Helot levels. They also follow the same unit cap limitations for Spartan units.
Sparta shares the granted access to Cretan Archers and Rhodian Slingers as well.
Finally the reskin effort was made to unify the style of the entire army in line with the additions, with an over arching idea in mind.
Sparta is a conservative and segregated city state, the Spartan citizens, Spartiates, are held above the Periokoi non citizen and Helot slave classes.
This applies to the styling of Spartan units in choice of equipment and the appearance of the men, the greatest change to be seen is in the Helot and Periokoi variants.
They now have the regular greek skin, the spartan skin is now restricted to, well, the Spartans.
The appearance of these Spartan "faces" in other armies due to AARE, or Os Greek for example, can be seen as a representation that these man, after being conquered, were added to the rolls.
I wanted Sparta to benefit from this additional variety too, so that every unit you see isn't just the same faces, but in a way that made sense to me for Sparta.
ON THE STEAM WORKSHOP
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=191884398
Spoiler Alert, click show to read:
Epirus Anonymous Roster Expansion (EARE)
EARE is much smaller and simpler in scope than the other unit packs, but, like the others, attempts to expand the Epirote roster with units already in the game as well as some new additions.
Epirus, being a successor state more than a greek state, already shared many of same units found in the rosters of their peers.
However quite a few units were missing, this pack addresses the holes in roster by giving Epirus access to Royal Peltasts, Thorax Swordsmen, Thessalian Cavalry and Shield Bearers.
In addition to these permissions, 4 new units have been created, inspired primarly by EB.
These are the Agrianian Assault Infantry, Illyrian Club Levies, Hypaspistai Swordsmen, Thorax Spears.
The pack also includes one minor alteration to a vanilla unit skin, the Thureos spears, in the attempt to make them more closely resemble their counterpart in EB.
ON THE STEAM WORKSHOP
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfile.../?id=193678699
Spoiler Alert, click show to read:
I hope you enjoy these roster packs, and please post any problems you encounter with balance or otherwise, as well as any suggestions you might have about the appearance of the units or any new units that might be added. I am interested in keeping the additions as authentic as possible.
Credits
Due credit goes to IGdood for his granted use of his sword/spear & shield animation fragment.
To Catamite of Syracuse for his generous gift of AARE unit cards. (They are excellent, here's hoping he makes more for the other packs. Purely at his discretion however)
To daniu for the PFM, without it none of this would have been possible.
To Os and Gavitron, I use your packs often as a source of reference and inspiration for my own unit designs.
To Hellas Resurgent, another long standing source of inspiration for me.
To Ahiga, for use of his leather muscle cuirasses, as well as scale linothoraxes (which I may work into GSARE at some point)
And to CA for making R2 of course.
Recommended Mods that go well with GSARE
The faction colors represented in these screenshots are from the Natural Dyes mod, which I highly recommend you download.
Os Greek which does an excellent job of reskinning greek units. There are a few conflicts so adjust your load order according to who you favor
Hellas Resurgent is another excellent reskin, though with my recent changes conflict has arisen. Use either his or mine depending on your taste.
Compatibility Issues
These mods make changes to, depending on the pack, vanilla unit variants, the unit variant table, and (eventually) faction colors. You will run into issues with mods that also change these things, and depending on the circumstance you can choose what mod you want favored/loaded by placing it later in your load order.
Progress Report
Athens Anonymous Roster Expansion (AARE) v1.03. 100% done (Released)
Epirus Anonymous Roster Expansion (EARE) v1.00. 100% done (Awaiting permission for use of Natural Dyes)
Spartan Anonymous Roster Expansion (SARE) v1.00. 100% done (Released)
Changelog
v101 AARE
Added Athenian Marines to the naval general bodyguard selection
Fixed Scythian Archers melee damage being too high
v102 AARE
Adjusted the balance of the units, specifically the Athenian Marines to make room for the addition of a more elite form of marine
They are now slightly above regular hoplites in skill and armor, and have a slightly reduced cost.
'Greekified' most of the unit names to unify the nomenclature, feel free to critique me on this and provide feedback.
v103 AARE
Added a marine officer variant
Fixed Corinthian helmet bug
Added unit cards
Changed the cloaks for Elite hoplites and Professional Light hoplites
Re balanced Elite Light Pikes, switched their shield to the standard pike shield
Thorax Marines no longer have a missile classed ship, it is now an Assault Hepteres as it should be
Ungreekified the names as per feedback, easier to recognize what a unit is. Will leave the EB inspired names in the post though.
Fixed localizations, short text descriptions are in.
V100 SARE
Initial release, should be bug free
V103 AARE HOTFIX
Fixed an issue that was causing a CTD when using Scythian cavalry
V100 EARE
Initial Release, No natural dyes
V101 SARE
Removed the custom unit_variants table that was obsoleted by patch 5.
External Link
AARE http://www.mediafire.com/download/6x...6/AAREv103.rar
SARE http://www.mediafire.com/download/rz...o/SAREv101.rar
EARE http://www.mediafire.com/download/0f...aturalDyes.rar