Xgm 5.0

[Hippias]

RedFox: All the cultural barracks stuff is in the current beta version.

Hippias: All settlements start out with a native culture building which usually determines their culture when you capture them. Some also start out with colonies, which may determine the culture if they are developed enough.

Here's the wikipedia entry for the Yuezhi: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuezhi

Seems about right for a mid-game horde from the east.

Yuezhi - emerging faction (i.e. non playable) starting as a horde right?

Will this mean a whole new set of "Chinesey" skins? Without much published info on Yuezhi armies you could let your imagination run wild (archers mounted on giant pandas?)

[DimeBagHo]

Maybe we could borrow some of these units.

http://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showpo...postcount=1102

[Kara Kolyo]

generaly emerging faction sounds ok, but if we had 31 slots. even now we have fewer playable factions than other mods so i would preffer to add some kingdom that we could have campaign with.... one option is eb style moving scythians to the west and having another steppe faction to the east. Other option is changing the barbarian factions positions and adding one more barbarian faction. and finaly using the senate for Zarax idea about Delphy oracle and so on

[DimeBagHo]

Adding in the Sarmatians is certainly possible. Adding the Yuezhi from the start is also possible (indeed much easier than adding an emerging faction - which would require significantly different versions for the RW and BI exes).

The Senate idea won't work. It causes too many problems.

[Cymera]

For the love of god slow down! These features are tempting me to give up a 150 year campaign with the Romans from v4.2.9! If you keep this up, i'll be fighting Pyrus (sp?) all over again

[Zarax]

I'd favour the sakae over the yuezhi, they have the advantage of being north-east on the map and historically had an interesting mix of troops as they absorbed and improved local units like hoplites in greek areas (they had a sort of kataphract classical hoplite) and other local units, basically creating heavier armoured versions of them, using heavy scale/lamellar armour.

Some more cultural mix units would be nice, for example like EB celto-hellenic hoplites (massilian hoplites, sword/spear unit) and similar stuff...

[Hippias]

Playable factions or Loyalty + Rebels? everyone likes more playable factions but i would like to give loyalty a chance, if only to see some stonking great civil wars in the late game.

My problem is that all theroman, carthage, seleucid or egyptian rebels seem to do is act like the unplayable factions in vanilla RTW. i was hoping for my family members or disloyal cities to rebel from time to timeand set off civil wars but it doesn't seem to be happening?

[DimeBagHo]

Zarax: The Sakae were just eastern Scythians. If we add the Sarmatians then they would start roughly where the Scythians are now, and the Scythians would start further east and north.

More AOR units sounds good to me.

Hippias: Triggering rebellions is tricky, but I think there is more that can be done with loyalty as well. Some time I will take another shot at getting a Roman civil war going.

Now that we have hordes working it might be worth doing some more testing with loyalty as well. In previous tests it was impossible to get rebelling family members to work unless they had a settlement. It may be that having the horde code working might solve that problem.

Cymera: Don't worry it will be a while before another faction gets added. Probably not until after RedFox is done with his stuff.

[RedFox]

I'm not so sure I have time to work on XGM anymore, something big has come up and I really don't have the time. I'd so much like to keep working on this project, it has been bloody amazing coming up with new features each day (and then failing to implement them for several hours...).
I'll try and upload most of the Max files for animations and skies, i'll also include the terrain textures etc.
I'll see how all of this developes and I do hope I can resume my work on XGM.

[DimeBagHo]

I'm sorry to hear that RedFox, but real life should take precedence. Come back when you can.

[Sir Francis]

That's a shame...

But good luck with whatever it is that will keep you away from this excellent project - here's hoping you can still find some time, though.

[Cymera]

All the best RedFox, hope everything is sorted out for the better!

[Sir Francis]

Dime, if I may ask, if Red Fox does indeed take a long break, how will this affect the XGM project?

Also, regarding the amount of battles and big armies: in my current game (as Hellenic poleis) it is 264 and I have fought 104 battles. About 15 have been sea battles and about half the the rest have been small; but I must have fought 30 or 40 big battles (1 full stack or more each side). I find myself spending troops freely (except siege weapons etc) and simply replacing them with a constant stream of fresh troops from my cities. It's fun, don't get me wrong, but feels odd.

By the way, I'm playing the same game from pre-5 with 5 and it mostly works. Afaik, the only 'problems' are I had to build baracks in all my cities (previous ones not being recognised) and all my cities have 100% barbarian pop (though Rhodes and Athens are stated as WCiv on the Stratmap city bar).

Lastly could you give me some hints on diplomacy in this mod? I've been attacked by Ptol, Seleuc and Thracs (as well as rebel poleis and rebels) and no matter what I offer or threaten, I always get the same response to ceasefire suggestion (... maybe later).
Is it worth experimenting or will these guys never make peace, no matter what?) [I'm aware of the DipForce but feel this would be cheating unless it were severely in the AI's benefit) - sorry if this is posted in the wrong place...

Thanks

[Cymera]

Much of Redfox's work was on textures of the maps, scripts, scenarios, etc. This is not necessarily vital to the continuation of the mod, but was very nice indeed.

As for diplomacy, i'm sorry to say that what you are experiencing is a weakness in the game itself. The reason that Forced Diplomacy was implemented was because the AI cannot recognize a good deal when it sees one. If you play with some "house rules" then you should feel free to use forced diplomacy whenever you need to.

[DimeBagHo]

Sir Francis: As far as development of the mod goes, it will mean we miss out on some of the nice features RedFox was working on, but I will still be continuing with my own side of things.

The AI gets large economic bonuses, so as long as they have territory they will be able to afford to keep throwing stacks at you. Capturing their capital (or whichever city contains their founding monument) will slow them down considerably.

If you play on vh then the AI will almost never make peace with you. On h they might occasionally. You can control when they attack you to some extent. Some factions will be determined to attack you no matter what, but others usually hold off until you intrude on territory that they have their eyes on (the Seleucids almost always attack the GCS if they take Halicarnassus for example). You have a much better chance of making peace if you don't share a land border.

Using force diplomacy to make peace is not unreasonable just as long as (1) You make a rule about when you can do it in advance (feels a lot less like cheating then ) and (2) You make sure the deal really is in their advantage.

Obtaining peace from one faction in a multi-front war should mean returning territory you have taken from them and reparations (unless you have almost crushed them of course).

[LucretiusTC]

Playable factions or Loyalty + Rebels? everyone likes more playable factions but i would like to give loyalty a chance, if only to see some stonking great civil wars in the late game.

I also like the idea of Generals´ loyalty and Rebel Factions because it brings more depth to those Playable Factions and at least you have to pay more attention to the happiness of our settlements. If and when Bactria is made a Playable Faction then there may be a possibility to put those Seleucid Rebels in the western Asia minor and follow the historical example of Antiochus Hierax as a renegade prince with Galatian mercenaries. On the other there may be a danger that area is getting a little bit too crowded and the Seleucids have quite a lot enemies already.

When you think how huge the map is, the idea of western and eastern Scythians (e.g. Sarmatians and Sakas) sounds quite good. I don´t know how that would affect to the balance of power in north and east, but it would be interesting to see e.g. how those hordes would work.

I have´t yet played the newest version of XGM, because I have a similar kind of "problem" with Cymera. I had a couple of long campaigns in progress with XGM 4.2.9, so I think I had to wait for a little while before the next step...

Luc.

[Sir Francis]

Sir Francis: As far as development of the mod goes, it will mean we miss out on some of the nice features RedFox was working on, but I will still be continuing with my own side of things.

Glad to hear it!

Capturing their capital (or whichever city contains their founding monument) will slow them down considerably.

Ahh.

If you play on vh then the AI will almost never make peace with you. On h they might occasionally.

I see. A pity - sound like once you're at war, that's it until you defeat them utterly (which isn't very realistic). Is there a way to change this, or is it hard-wired into the system? (I don't know if you're familiar with Europa Universalis but there is a v. good system for allowing wars of various intensity and different kinds of peace treaties).

Using force diplomacy to make peace is not unreasonable just as long as (1) You make a rule about when you can do it in advance (feels a lot less like cheating then ) and (2) You make sure the deal really is in their advantage.

Fair point. I suppose something like you have to offer at last 2 settelements plus 50% of your cash?

[Sir Francis]

I also like the idea of Generals´ loyalty and Rebel Factions

I don't think I've ever had a serious case of disloyalty in my many years of TW gaming - until last night. My only really expensive army (heavy onagers, etc) on its way to wipe out the Rebel Greeks in Anatolia suddenly went green. Quite a shock! Assassin after assassin could not achieve revenge. The traitors attacked Pergamon - outnumbered us about 6 to 1. They swarmed the walls... and then stayed there moving back and forth along the walls but never coming down, right until the time ran out!

Not sure what happened...

[Zarax]

DBH, could you please add more units to the local MICs in the future?
Ideally by keeping the local MIC you should be able to recruit all the non elite units from a territory, otherwise there is no value added in having them...

[DimeBagHo]

Zarax: I think there's a lot of scope for adding lower level units to the auxiliary barracks. The next lot I'm planning on are Nubian units in East Africa (maybe Ethiopians as well), and some Arab units in Arabia.

Sir Francis: Always a shame when the AI lets you down like that. CA still hasn't got the AI to the point where it can assault cities well, even in M2TW.