[Released] AAA: Punic Generals (v1.0)

[Benjin]

AAA: Punic Generals (1.0)




New Punic Generals, who change appearance based on age, rank and season.

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ABOUT
This will be the fourth release in a series of campaign agent character mods with the aim of providing players with characters that dynamically replace their appearances with alternating variants based on three attributes for all campaigns.

These three attributes are:

1. Age - As a general character's age value increases over the years, their facial appearance will gradually look older. This will provide a visual clue to the player that a character will soon be reaching a natural death. For characters belonging to other factions, you previously had no way of knowing roughly how old they were - but with this mod, now you do!
2. Advancement - As a general ranks up through battles, their gear will become more extravagant as befits their status and accumulated gravitas. They will even start wearing their armour openly in the senate, like a dictator would, when not leading an army after they have attained a high enough rank.
3. Acclimatisation - When a season changes to winter, they will swap their appearance to a version which will wear winter clothing. This will provide a bit more immersion and variation to their appearances to fit the surrounding environments.

Despite starting up this thread, I haven't actually started work on the Punic Generals just yet - I want to update the other three existing AAA mods to finish them off first (give the fixed skins/heads + more hair/beards to the Roman Generals, give more head variation to the Spartan Generals etc). These are the main reasons I've opened up this thread now:

• Ideas + Discussion: In the past I've just worked quietly on the mods, mostly doing my own research for how the characters should generally look like, working on a whole load of stuff and then surprising people with an update. This time I want to hear your ideas for what they should look like first. Feel free to share and discuss anything in relation to how these Punic characters should look (historical references - images, texts etc). Don't worry if the assets don't exist in the game, I have the ability to make them myself (helmets, torso armour, tunics, greaves, weapons, shields, cloaks, jewellery etc).
• Research: Opening this discussion early (hopefully) gives me the research + references I need faster, since I presume a lot of people on this part of TWC are history buffs and might know more than I do in regards to what Punic leaders or nobles may have worn.
• Future: Lastly, I wanted to let you all know which AAA mod will come next - a lot of people keep asking what the next mod I'm going to work on will be, so here's the answer.

This is my initial plan for the Punic characters' appearances (not just generals, but also for women + politicians). Since there isn't as much to do compared to the Romans + Greeks, the first release will hopefully be the last and final release:

• Grand Campaign + Hannibal at the Gates
  
  • Carthaginian Characters (1040 VMDs)
    
    • General Rank Variations: 10; 10 warm, 10 cold
    • Politician Rank Variations: 6; 6 warm
    • Character Head Variations: 20
    • Age Variations: 2; Young + Old
    
    
  • Libyan Characters (400 VMDs)
    
    • General Rank Variations: 10; 10 warm
    • Character Head Variations: 20
    • Age Variations: 2; Young + Old
    
    
  • Punic Female Characters (15 VMDs)
    
    • Politician Rank Variations: 1; 1 warm
    • Character Head Variations: 5
    • Age Variations: 3; Young + Middle + Old
  
  
• Historical Characters
  
  • Hannibal Barca (40 VMDs)
    
    • Uniforms: 10; 10 warm, 10 cold
    • Ages: Young + Old
    
    
  • Hasdrubal Barca (40 VMDs)
    
    • Uniforms: 10; 10 warm, 10 cold
    • Ages: Young + Old
  
  
• TOTAL VMDs: 1535

[♔Greek Strategos♔]

Can't wait for this! You're doing an excellent job mate. Please keep it up

[LegionKarta]

Yeah your mod made the so much more enjoyable to look at, every battle i always zoom in to see my general in action, it gives the old shogun 2 feels for me when you actually care about your generals. One question. When you make hannibal will he have his apperance in the DLC only or will he have it also when he spawns in the GC. I saw this for caesar that you made the model when he spawns but never understood do you need the dresden historical family for that or he spawns alone. New to rome so sorry if im boring with so many questions. Keep up the good work

[Benjin]

Can't wait for this! You're doing an excellent job mate. Please keep it up

Thanks!

Yeah your mod made the so much more enjoyable to look at, every battle i always zoom in to see my general in action, it gives the old shogun 2 feels for me when you actually care about your generals. One question. When you make hannibal will he have his apperance in the DLC only or will he have it also when he spawns in the GC. I saw this for caesar that you made the model when he spawns but never understood do you need the dresden historical family for that or he spawns alone. New to rome so sorry if im boring with so many questions. Keep up the good work

I gave a similar answer in the Roman thread regarding Caesar's appearance (it's the same for Hannibal as well), so I'll quote it here:

Regarding Caesar, short answer is yes you need Dresden's historical family submod in order to see Caesar - with his appearance from the “Caesar in Gaul” campaign - spawn in the Grand Campaign. Long answer is that, in the vanilla game, there are historical characters who spawn as recruitable candidates for your faction (and, I believe, for the AI as well). However, there’s an obscure bug with their appearances - they are assigned generic random appearances instead of the ones they are supposed to be given in the database files. They only appear correctly if they are spawned via a payload (i.e. an award from an event or dilemma), which is what Dresden’s mod does (his mod only works for your faction and party though). This is why people sometimes see a “Gaius Julius Caesar” character appear on the campaign map around 100BC for Rome, but without his unique appearance he is hard to spot.

[FOR GONDOR]

any idea when Greeks will be getting an update

[Benjin]

any idea when Greeks will be getting an update

I can't give a definite answer, sorry. It will be updated with the new Spartan stuff whenever I can dedicate time to work on it.

[Lupo]

I'm looking forward ..... Thumbs up !!!

[Lebanese Dude]

Aaah so excited!

[LegionKarta]

Had an idea for Hannibal, he lost an because of an infection. Dont know if he wore an eyepatch but could be cool if he gets one when he gets old or after some levels he gets as part of his upgrades. Just an idea

[Benjin]

Had an idea for Hannibal, he lost an because of an infection. Dont know if he wore an eyepatch but could be cool if he gets one when he gets old or after some levels he gets as part of his upgrades. Just an idea

Yeah, I was already thinking of doing this for Hannibal - would add a bit more character for him.

[♔Greek Strategos♔]

Had an idea for Hannibal, he lost an because of an infection. Dont know if he wore an eyepatch but could be cool if he gets one when he gets old or after some levels he gets as part of his upgrades. Just an idea

Sounds good to me

[Gyrosmeister]

This could be a source of inspiration for some variants. Best of luck with the series

https://phoenicia.org/carthagearmor.html

[♔Greek Strategos♔]

This could be a source of inspiration for some variants. Best of luck with the series

https://phoenicia.org/carthagearmor.html

Nice

[~Seleukos.I.Nikator~]

Hey,

Today I was approached on the discord by the guy named Tristan who asked me to post some suggestions regarding the Carthaginian generals on his behalf as he had some difficulties with creating his own account on TWC. These are following;

"

1. Just like with the addition of Egyptian Wedjat Brooch. You could add 3 different types of Brooches for Carthage. The sign of Tanit, Ram/bull head ( a symbol used to honor Baal Hammon) and the Lions head ( used to honor the Punic god Melqart)

2. Unlike your previous mods with Greece and Rome. What sets the Punics apart from them is the simple face Carthage was a very diversity society and people with the first Phoenician settlers mixing with the Iberians,Greeks,Numdians/Berbers and other people’s with some saying Hamilcar Barca’s wife was Iberian thus his 3 sons ( Hannibal,Mago and Hasdrubal) being half Iberian and with Hannibal himself have taken a Iberian wife. Or when Hamilcars the 1st took a Greek Sicilian wife. So I would basically like to see some diversity in skin color for the Punic Generals and peoples not to much but enough to make it clear these aren’t a homogeneous people. I would personally suggest ( Some light, Most a lighter to medium brown color and maybe one or 2 very dark ones)



3. Keeping up with #2 I think heavily diversifying the equipment and look of each general is key. Carthage’s military has this Un-uniformity even among it’s Generals so I think ( lion pelt,cheetah pelt,Scale armor,Linothoraxs ( maybe with the sign of Tanit or Palm trees on the shoulders) Bronze cruises,Tyrian purple cloaks and prehaps even a full lionskin/head dress could be added (which was worn by Punic officers to honor the Punic god Melqart which was equivalent to Hercules) acourse you’d still have the greaves and helmet which did vary but I think the Thracian was the most common I could be wrong but still

4.Last but not lease I think the addition of newer ( but still use the old especially from the Greek AAA) hairstyles unique to Punic Generals and Punic people. Only thing I could think of is Dreadlocks for Punic Generals of Berber-Punic decent

These are just my options, you might already be doing this or know about it but if you didn’t I wanted to throw my 2 cent in to increase the distinctive look and feel of Carthage and the people of North Africa. The pictures above are mostly from “ Darkness over Cannae” and I think represent Carthaginians well and what I think the mod should be/add. If you add anything I have suggested or just took the time to read this whole thing Thank you and keep up the great work! People like you are keeping Rome 2 alive and consistently getting better

[Benjin]

Just posting a tiny update of what I've worked on this week for AAA: Punic Generals during my free time - it's nowhere near finished yet, but a start has been made and may be out some time next month.

Heads + Hair

Like Tristan suggested above, I'd like to portray the three Punic factions (Carthage, Nova Carthago, Libya), that make up the Carthaginian Empire at the start of the game, as having a few differences from each other to further diversify them. I will also make it possible, through rare random events, to be able to adopt characters of Iberian / Libyan heritage to further diversify the characters in your playthroughs (NOTE: this will temporarily decrease loyalty / happiness. Also, since Nova Carthago + Libya are unplayable in vanilla and AI cannot receive random events, they will randomly spawn a few Phoenician generals - it makes sense since they're a part of the empire and are under Phoenician influence).

Carthage's generals will mostly look Phoenician in appearance (i.e. very slight dark complexion - like Hannibal's ingame - with various black-coloured hairstyles; long, short, bushy, beards or just shaven etc). Nova Carthago at the start of the game holds mostly Iberian territory, so most of the generals of that faction will share a few similarities to their Iberian neighbours (i.e. slightly lighter skin-tone, curly hair of different colours etc). Libyans were known for their tattoos and for being more Berber in appearance (i.e. darker complexion with black, braided / dreadlock hair etc), so will have some of those influences on their appearances.

So far I've only got the Phoenician + Iberian skins and hairs nailed down, I'll be doing the Libyans at another time. Here are some of them below (all at rank 1; no helmet. Based on their culture, they are more likely to wear certain clothing / armours - Phoenicians will have a mix of different clothing / armours (e.g. chainmails, linothoraxes, chitons and other tunic styles), while Iberians will mostly wear Iberian-styled armour + clothing (chainmail, chest discs, Iberian tunics) and Libyans will all wear rolled up sleeves to show off their tattoos).

Carthage (Phoenician)

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Nova Carthago (Punic Iberian)

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Uniforms

I've not yet started the new assets I have planned for the uniforms (e.g. Hannibal's iconic helmet for middling-ranks, retextured linothoraxes for early ranks etc), but I have the VariantMeshDefinitions and separated a few models from existing CA content.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Phoenician Character 1 - Young - Rank 3 (Warm)



Phoenician Character 1 - Young - Rank 5 (Cold)



Phoenician Character 1 - Young - Rank 6 (Warm)



Phoenician Character 1 - Young - Rank 10 (Warm)



Phoenician Character 1 - Rank 10 (Cold)

[Jake Armitage]

[Tenerife_Boy]

Great ones !

[Bucle_CT]

Great job! I can't wait to get my hands on these!

[TheShatskiy]

Benjin... any news of mod?

[Lupo]

Hi!
Does this mod still live? Would be very sad if there was nothing left ..... I've been waiting for good officers for so long, and Benjin just delivers the best!

Hope and wait ....
MfG Lupo!