So um, out of boredom and tired of the lame excuses by this modding team of why new content hasn't been put out for years, I figured I might as well tinker around with the mod on my own. I fixed all the problems with the Ionians being way too strong, and also with the Magadha elephant spam. They don't spam elephants anymore, but have balanced armies and it takes a while for them to expand westward. Also, elephants can only be trained in areas where there are actually elephant resources, as in real history, so there's that. I mentioned a few times years and years ago about my experience as a historian and a writer too I think, but nobody seemed to care. There have been some painfully ignorant historic flaws with this mod, especially militarily-wise. During this time period, horsemen were quite powerful yes, but chariots were still the preferred method of mobile warfare, and some chariot units, like with Bab-Ilu's heavy chariot, well, it's just ridiculously weak, not at all like what it was in reality. Same for Lydia's military, which currently is a pathetic joke, and Egypt needed a buff for their chariots as well. I also remember mentioning to the modding team about giving the Kushites the ability to make war elephants or at the very least allow the Persians to train war elephants if they conquered those lands, but they ignored me. While making my own mod additions, I was curious because I remember the Kushites having war elephants, so I researched around, and what do you know, they had archer elephants even before the time of the Persian Empire or the neo-Babylonian empire. They also had incredibly-skilled archers. Unfortunately to make new models/skins/units I would have to use a software modding engine for computer games that costs something like $4000-6000 currently so unless someone is willing to give me a copy, there's only so much I can do atm...
Also, for whatever retarded reason, the modding team took out paved roads, and this was not historical. Assyria was the first empire to build paved roads for their military purposes, and after they were defeated, the Babylonians and Persians also knew of making paved roads. As a result of this and doing some research on Assyria's war campaign routes etc. I've put in paved roads in all the areas they would have built them, and they start there at the beginning of the mod time-frame like they would have in real history. It goes from Tarsus to Ur, and from Assur to Memphis. The "highways" roads now represent the royal road and can still only be built by the Persians or the Medes.
I've tested out my version of the mod and it's been doing very well, Lydia is dominating like it should and the Ionians are having a hard time like it should, the Medes are still a fearsome force and the Persians are still hard to kill. Bab-Ilu is the technological power that it should be and heir to the Assyrian military war-machine, and Kemet is still doing fairly well against the Kushites and Kyrenians. The barbarians haven't really changed more or less, though I'll probably do something for them, and Bactria now has a better chance as they no longer face stacks of elephant spam. Magadha still has stacks of soldiers sent westward after like 20-30 years and put up a serious fight, but as before, they're defeatable, even in auto-resolve!
If anyone does know of someone who will give me a copy of the modding game software, I can easily make proper militaries for Kush, Saba, the Tarentines, Bessoi, Autariatai, Massagatae, the Skythians, Bactria, and who knows, maybe a new faction somewhere.
Anyways, that's my new and improved RoP mod, and after much testing, I can safely say it's much more entertaining than the current release, if not more historical...If anyone is interested, then maybe I will upload what I have and perhaps you can tinker around with it yourselves...it's too bad the current modding team isn't so open to sharing with...whatever they've managed to make in the past 5 years...