Hehe - fair enough matey, but if it's all right with you I like the way our map looks the way it is.

I love this mod.

I've been a fan of RTR from the beginning, though much like your development cycles, my fandom ebs and flows as new shiny games are released. Regardless, I always get an itch to play R:TW, and I always skip right to how it SHOULD be experienced, RTR! Good job guys, your hard work is appreciated.

As far as a review goes, I love the map, unit diversity, and tactical challenge. I'm sure the AI improvements have been a slow amalgamation of solutions that the modding community has developed, but even with that in mind, it seems like you guys have a great script writer.

I am still figuring out the economy, and the manual didn't go into enough detail on government types or building types. For instance, maybe I missed it but, why are some building pictures gray, and others are in color? Intuitively I find that those are "shadowed" and should not be built yet, but I see the AI building everything it can.

I love how the pace of AI expansion, so no single group becomes a super power too quickly. I've played as rome, carthage, and celtiberians. All gave their own spin and were challenging. One thing I wish was that there were MORE non-playable factions. I understand the approximation of cultural commonalities among the barboroi, but it seems silly that there is some grand alliance stretching from Illyria to Iberia. Isn't there room for a few more factions before you hit max? Regardless, these are minor quibbles. Here I am staring at a beautiful painting, complaining about how it is being framed.

Keep rockin it!

The "non playable factions" were designed with a bigger scheme in mind, ie a grand campaign. Without wishing to make extra work for ourselves, TIC and then FOE were designed to be building blocks so that minimal work was required to produce the next step.

I love the music, is there any way somebody could put up mp3s?

Eustachie said:

I love the music, is there any way somebody could put up mp3s?

Click to expand...

Hi Eustachie, welcome to TWC.

If you want to listen to the music that is unique to FOE, as opposed to the vanilla RTW soundtrack, you will find all the individual tracks in FOE/Data/sounds/music, and they all happen to already be in mp3 format.

So far, I love it. \m/

If I had money I would so pay for this game, if you could buy it.

Nah! That would mean that you would have to give me money and I would have to pay more Income Tax, and I don't like giving the government any more money than I have to - so please continue to enjoy RTR FOE for free.

A noble and altruistic gesture!

Well done, Sir!

Just out of curiosity, I thought I'd do some cost analysis...

It took roughly 10 months from the time we went to work on FOE till its release, not counting all the work done in the past that FOE is based on. About 35 people directly contributed to the development at least 10 hours per week (a lot more for some people, actually). So 35 people x 10 months x 4.5 weeks per month x 10 hours per week = 15750 work hours.

Let's say everyone gets paid $20/hr - that's about entry level pay for IT jobs in the US. That gives us $315k for the cost of production. If we sold FOE for $50/copy, we'd have to sell 6300 copies just to break even.

FOE patch 1.2 has only been downloaded 4109 times to this date, so we're still in the red!

Hmm, I'm surprised the AI is willing to actually deal with the player. On Hard campaign, no less.

As the Celts/Gauls, I allied with Epiros really early on. I then forgot about them, and chomped on Rome. When I took ARPI (or something) I realized that I had a border with them, so I sent a diplomat to Phyrrus and began giving him 500 dn every turn.

Then I took Tarentum from the Romans, but there were too many Epirotes around. I managed to buy two minor regions from them (which means +10% Independent conversion and -10% epirote conversion via region leak) for 10K and 1K/turn for 10 turns. I managed to do this again after I destoyed the Romans, getting two settlements that were on my border.

And then to top it off I just bought a major region (GARGENTUM or something) from them for 13.8K/turn for 5 turns. Wow, I was kinda expecting to have to get a pretext to fight them, didn't know they were willing to sell such a nice bit of Italy to me. Perhaps I could get them in a war with Carthage, and offer a lot of aid to fight them, before buying up more of Italy.

So...who are these Keltoi Soldurii in multiplayer and where are they in my single-player campaigns? They look useful.

So...who are these Keltoi Soldurii in multiplayer and where are they in my single-player campaigns? They look useful.

Click to expand...

In my celtiberian campaign the slavefaction recruited them im Aquitania(southwest France). So the keltoi probably have access to them there.

I don't think so. I've built both Devotios and Confederations in southwestern France and haven't seem them.

From looking at the code you need either "keltoi aristocracy" or "keltoi confederation" to be able to use them - and only in Aquetani.

They are a AOR unit of Aquetani, just for the Gaul faction.

Hey, there they are, all hidden. Are there any other surprises like that I should keep my eye on?

----- double posts merged (Brusilov) - please use the EDIT button to update the previous post

All that discussion of the Soldurii and I'm finding them pretty terrible compared to the Keltoi Ambacti, and I'm not sure why. They just seem to lose troops much faster and break and run. I wasn't losing bridge battles at all til I made them my line troops in Spain.

I dont know if this is a stupid question, but how do you make money? I've tried playing as all the factions except Gaul, and by the second turn, I have negative income and therefore cannot make money.

1. Disband all troops you do not need.
2. Raise taxes to safe maximum
3. Build economical buildings (esp. MES)
4. Make trade agreements

1(a). Don't forget to get rid of fleets you don't need
2(b). Don't forget to tax your minor settlements
...
5. In an emergency, blow up a temple in one of your starting cities, which is good for 8,000 denarii. (esp. if you want a different type of temple there anyway)

Also, in the first turn, don't build a crapload of troops right off the bat. Use the starting funds to build as much infrastructure as you can. You should be able to survive for a few turns with the troops you're given - I haven't seen a faction yet that can't, though I haven't played them all. Chances are, you'll probably go into the red in the first couple of turns anyway. It's more a matter of getting the money going as quickly as possible within a few turns - once your buildings are completed and your troops capture that first city.

For example, if you decide to play as Gaul, immediately take your starting army and attack Genua. Do the same as the Romans, but in their case, attempt to force the initial battle to be as Pyrrhic as possible for both sides - keeping your troops alive isn't actually a good thing, especially if you can slaughter the starting Epirotes.

Like Arkaeyn said, you need to get rid of as many starting troops from you and your enemy... so if you play as Rome, Epeiros or Carthage, then don't retreat from the first battle, but kill as many men as possible. As Celtiberia and some other small factions, try to get hold of as many of the surrounding mini-regions as possible! (for Celtiberia at least the two to the West) That combined with all other suggestions made above (especially reaising taxes to the very max in mini-regions - ie don't care if their growth is negative, you can't upgrade them anyway) you should be able to go straight into the black numbers right from the start with every faction.

I wish happy winter solestice celebrations to all the RTR team and fans...

ok, thanks

jesus this mod is so beautiful

the realese is beta or 100% mod done ????

FOE 1.3 is done, however their may be another patch before all is said and done.

ok thanks

I have just been thoroughly blown away!!. oh my goodness what an awesome job!! This Mod has more depth and attention to detail that i could have imagined. To the entire RTR team, thank you very much.

Glad you are enjoying it...... Wait till you see RTR VII

First, thanks for these amazing mods, deffinately the best out there in terms of detail and realism (first one I tried, COMPLETELY changed the game for me.)

I've seen the AI do some pretty amazing things in these mods, wich would never have happened in Vanilla (or in any other mod I've tried so far,) like a single unit charging my forces to allow the rest of them to retreat, and the new economic/recruitment system is amazing, the world doesnt start from year 0 every time you start a new campaign. Graphics are BEATIFUL, if a little difficult for the computer to handle on full.

Was just wondering a few things though:

Scopions in FOE seem a bit overpowered, was having some real trouble with Phyrus till I started bringing a few of these allong, slaughtered his elephants, massive range, accurate and good damage, started using a few of them in my armies and made the rest of that campaign a little too easy (probably my fault for abusing them though.)

Between TIC and FOE there also seem to have been a number of changes: Units seem to have gotten denser (I remember "Barbarian" units where VERY sparse), missiles have gotten a lot more powerful (bit of an upgrade, units denser, and MASSIVE (rellative) bonusses from exp and weapons, from buildings) and you stopped using sheildwall for hopelite phalanxes.

Does anyone know the reasons for these changes?

Also, just general comments on Italic unit cost/"power" ratio compared to Greek ones, I read somewhere that this was probably to simulate Phyrus's problems replacing his lost veterans with troops of the same quality, but it still seems like some of the Greek units (especially the Mercenary Hopelites) where a lil week in my opinion (compared to italic equivalents.)

If any of this sounded like a complaint it was just me being petty

Keep up the good work!

This mod is great.I just got the plantinium version of RTR and when I heard there were mini-campaigns I had to get them.It's very interesting both in gameplay and time period.Keeping making them like this and you could even sell them.