The EB/BI 1.6 project

[starXdiaMoo]

Hello fellas,

I, as most of you out there, am a huge EB fan. It is, IMHO, the mother of all mods. In my humble jurney to please my own tastes, I have always made my own little changes to EB, like playing with the BI engine, adding the BI formations and other things.

Let me get to the point; I have always wanted to play EB with as many BI features as possible, in order to enhance gameplay, as well as historical accuracy. I was wondering if anyone out there was willing to help me with this project, which will convert EB to be completely playable with the BI engine patched to 1.6, along with many extra features available to this awesome expansion.

I have already started doing some minor changes, but there are still plenty of things I'd like to implement. Here are some of the things I want to implement, as well as the basic things I have already done so far;

1) Play EB with BI.exe, obviously (done)
2) Add shield_wall, schiltrom formations for specific units (semi-done)
3) Add the can_swim, warcry and can_horde attributes for specific units (semi-done)
4) Implement the religion system for EB (not done)
5) Make specific factions become hording factions (semi-done)
6) Make specific factions re-emergent (semi-done)
7) Add night battles (not done)

I am eagerly awaiting for your thoughts and ideas about this, as I was originally planning of doing this myself. If this is worked by as many as possible, we can complete and release this project to the public. Anyone interested in helping me, please pm me!

[Caki]

Hmm I am editing EB to start in 70 AD I have implemented the night battles, religion, but can't find a way to do the shield_wall thing (by the way is it possible on ALX.exe)

[gaius valerius]

I can only give you my thumbs up

[starXdiaMoo]

Originally Posted by Caki

Hmm I am editing EB to start in 70 AD I have implemented the night battles, religion, but can't find a way to do the shield_wall thing (by the way is it possible on ALX.exe)

First of all, why 70 AD?? As for the ''shield_wall thing'', I will send you a pm with some analytical steps.

Originally Posted by gaius valerius

I can only give you my thumbs up

Thnx, I appreciate it!

I've currently managed to enable night battles and make factions perform the hording ability. What I would like of you guys, is the following;

1) Faction candidates to become hording ones
2) Unit candidates for shieldwall, schiltrom, swimming and warcry fromations/attributes
3) Faction candidates to be re-emergent
4) ''Religon'' candidates

Thank you all again for your interest!

[Caki]

Thanx

1) Nomads (Saka and Sauromatae) should be able to horde and maybe some barbarians but I am still thinking what barbarian factions
2) For shield wall Spartans and Hellenic Elite Spearmen and swimming shouldn't be allowed to all kataphraktoi horses and heavy infantry
3) I don't know maybe Britons(Casse) or Germans
4) For religion I chose the classic (Paganism, Christianity, Zoroastrianism and Buddhism and I am thinking of adding Judaism). In 70 AD Christianity is starting to rise through the Roman Empire cosing unrest and the empire has just came out of civil war and as such it's broken, bankrupt, devastated so it will take a massive effort to put it back on it's feet and do the Alexanders dream(take the Parthia's empire lands and the Kushans India and Bactria)

[starXdiaMoo]

I see, but in 70AD there are no Pontics, Ptolemies, Carthaginians, Gauls (both Aedui and Arverni), Greeks, Epirots, Macedonians and Bactrians! Did you just remove them or replaced them with other factions? Also, there would be other factions, with other units and... well I don't really see the point of doing such a thing. Too much work and too little pleasure.

Now answering to your points;

1) Looks like we're on the same lines
2) Why just Spartans and elite spearmen and not the rest of the hoplites? As for swimming, I think a more appropriate phrase would be: ''all light and medium units without big shields''?
3) I am thinking of leaving the Britons as they are. It's really not that great, they're so far away you see. Maybe I'll make them re-emergent like the romano-british in BI. As for the Germans, maybe I can do something apart from making them horde...
4) I think you are mostly saying this for your own progress.. Could you suggest something for me also? I'd appreciate that greatly

Thank you anyway for your reply!

[Caki]

Ohhh a lot of work trust me and I have some new factions but they all use the existing units but of course not the same roosters.

1)
2)Oh not just them they were only an example but those type of units should get the wall thingi as for swimming you are totally right
3)Maybe you are right but the Gauls should not have re emerge attribute
4)Well in the EB time frame Pagan would be 95% of the regions so you should try with the influence maybe like Romano-Greek, Eastern, Druid(Celtic), Indian and something from Africa and Egypt hmm if I come up with something else I'll post

[starXdiaMoo]

Answering to the 4th point, what I can say is that I won't actually use real religions. I will change religions to nations probably. Like Greek, Roman, Eastern, Indian, Celtic, Nomad, Phoenician and Arabian. And for those who don't know, yes it's possible to add more religions than those available

[Elphir]

Isn't the limit 7 though?

For religions I'd do:

-Hellenic
-Roman
-Semitic
-Celtic
-Eastern
-Germanic
-Nomadic

Yeah, that's basically the seven cultures of EB. Only eastern_greek and western_greek got one and I added germanic.

[starXdiaMoo]

Nice ideas, how about Arabic instead of Germanic? I scrape the Indian, because it will only be a drawback for the faction that conquers the Indian provinces, due to the unrest it will cause.

[beatoangelico]

max number of religions is 10, but only 3 fully work, the others don't cause religious unrest in cities.

[starXdiaMoo]

Aha, I see. Thanks for the info, beatoangelico! I will try and see what I can do about this, though right now I'm trying something else...

Say lads, someone told me something of being able to create ''mirror'' factions that can act as shadowing factions with BI.exe and be re-emergent. Has anyone heard of this or can give me any clue on how to do this, as I'm working on that field right now.

Thank you all in advance!

[Caki]

Yes you can add mirror factions in the descr_sm_factions.txt put the shadowed_by xxx(faction) and when a city revolts it will go to this mirror faction

EDIT
ex.
faction empire_east, shadowed_by empire_east_rebels

[starXdiaMoo]

How is this possible? Don't you have to alter any other files like the EDU, DMB and .txt files in the text and campaign folder in order to add the new faction? You just copy a faction from sm_factions and make them a shadowing one?

[KALI]

A very interesting and worthwhile project,
I look forward to giving it a whirl.

[Victor1234]

I'm also looking forward to it! Sounds like a fantastic idea, particularily if the loyalty feature could be added.

[Zarax]

Be careful with loyalty, it's not 100% stable and shadow factions will give CTD if the shadowed one is destroyed.

[starXdiaMoo]

Actually, I'm not going to implement the loyalty system, as there are no empty slots to add a shadowing faction.

[Emperor of Europe]

Was there really such a difference between Germanic and Celtic culture?

[Victor1234]

Originally Posted by starXdiaMoo

Actually, I'm not going to implement the loyalty system, as there are no empty slots to add a shadowing faction.

Ah, a shame, but not somewhat unexpected.