The Greek Wars

[Nachox]

ok
i was proposing to much for a second release
so good luck with the mod and don't allow that this mod fall in the curse of the hellenic states mods :hmmm:

[Reverend Scott]

Mod name: The Greek Wars
Version: 0.9 beta
Platform: RTW
Era: 360BC – 338BC

Brief description: The Greek Wars is a mod based on the group story of the same name in the .Com’s Fan Fiction section. The map is restricted to southern Greece and there are 11 factions – Athens, Thebes, Megara, Corinth, Argos, Sparta, Messenia, Elis, Arcadia, Achaea and Sicyon.


I would like to start right off by saying that this is not, strictly speaking, a historical mod. For, although the borders, nations, troop types, dynamics, are meant to represent reality in 360BC, to the extent that our means allowed it, The Greek Wars is still based on the homonymous work of group fiction in the .com Fan Fiction section, of which most of us were co-writers. Therefore you will find a king in Argos and another in Corinth, and Iphicrates will be missing from the Athenian family tree. But apart from that, we have strived to keep things historical. You will find no mythical units or super-Spartans (in fact, Spartans don’t even have the best hoplites in this game…). There are 11 factions on a small map, and their differences in units are, in most cases, slight. That serves two purposes. First, there were few actual differences in unit types within such a small area in such a small period of time, and second, we had hoped to somehow emulate the conditions that made, and still make, Shogun Total War so appealing. Thebans get better cavalry, but not through different units; their cavalry is the same but with experience bonuses. Megarans have better assassins (which is a feature central to the story), and are expected to function more or less like clan Imagawa in STW. There are 40 regions in total, and it is not necessary to conquer all of them to win. The goal is hegemony. There are two classes of settlements: towns and capitals. Capitals are the only places where you can recruit decent troop types, and the best units can only be trained in your own capital. There are no large or huge walls, and therefore the advantage remains with the defender. Assaulting a well-defended capital should be tough, and we won’t be able to call this mod “finished” until that has been accomplished.

Many elements of this game may seem a bit rough. There are various features that we’ve discussed but didn’t have time to implement, because either real life got in the way, or more basic things proved much more time-consuming than we had imagined – or both reasons. Many basic features, like starting armies and unit balancing, are incomplete because of similar time restrictions (due to real life obligations), and we thought it would be better to perfect them after this first (beta) release. Since most Classical Greece mods have a bad history of being stuck in eternal development, we felt that it would be best to release an early, playable version now, and include anything new gradually in the future.


We would like to thank Dimebagho and the XGM team for letting us use their wonderful models and skins, as well as various other features; also SignifierOne for his animation package. Hoplites just wouldn't be hoplites without it. And finally HouseOfHam for his scripting tutorial on how to implement more than 2 turns per year.



You can download the mod here:

http://files.filefront.com/TGW+0+9ZI.../fileinfo.html

Unzip it to your RTW folder, and run it through the TGW.bat file there.
TGW uses its own mod folder so there is no danger to the game's original files, nor is anything overwritten at any point.


Screenshots:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

The Defenestrated Assembly:
Seleukos of Olympia,
Alexios Komnenos,
Volksie,
Raja,
Sipahi,
KingLarsofMars,
Percy,
Knight of Cydonia,
SacredBandMan,
and all the rest of the DEF who helped out with their encouragements

Okay: Played a while as Sparta- A most excellent and enjoyable mod! Great looking units, nice map, great selection of factions. I also appreciated the small size/fast download & install time-I was playing less than an hour after reading the post about release. +1 rep.

[KingLarsofMars]

Yay!

I think thats what is best about the mod from my view. It's easy just to hop on. Have a quick 5 minute game and be on your way doing whatever needs to be done in your lives!

Even with a large Empire you'll pretty much be having only 1 or 2 field armies at any one time.

I find with the bigger mods like RS and EB. Even though they are awesome mods that have really raised the bar for RTW mods, they take too long to load and are not really suited for the casual gamer as you enter the middle game. I still play them when I get a decent block of time to use however

Actually I noticed something that I thought was quite good thinking by the AI. After I killed an enemy general (I lost though), the enemy forces waited for a replacement general before marching on Sparta (where they got a hiding). This was on VH/VH so it might not be true for the other levels but it made it a lot more interesting!

[kkaana]

congrat for the release. i ll enjoy playing as ancestors of my greek neighboors...

[Garrigan]

Hah. Credited and I did bugger all but annoy sel with my uselessness at modding and write a few faction descriptions that were binned. C'est la vie.

(just to clear it up Im Knight of Cydonia on the forum where we all met, hence the different name)

[Alexius 17]

Well, Raja is credited...

So that says a lot about how liberal Sel was with crediting. Unless that's just a list of important DEF who posted in the mod section at some point.

[Garrigan]

That seems more likely.

Tbh the people I'd say did most for the mod were;

Percy
Alex
Larsie

oh and sel did help a bit I suppose.

[Reverend Scott]

You guys need to make some sigs so we can help promote

[Seleucos of Olympia]

Thanks for the comments, everyone! I was away for a few days, but now I’m back and we can resume the work, taking your feedback into account. Concerning some particular points raised:

Units: I’m afraid our team has always been lacking a skinner. My official capacity was as a mapper, although I’ve had to adapt to every other job required in the making of this mod, including skinning. All the skins you see were done by me (with some help from sipahioftheporte for some shields) in Paint Shop Pro 6.0, and I don’t claim I’m good at it. Moddeling was impossible for me, since I lacked 3D Studio. There are also no sprites, because I had no way of generating them. Making UI cards for all the units (125 in total) was a particularly strenuous and boring job, but I’m not sentimentally attached to the result. If someone volunteers better skins for this mod, I would be happy to accept. That said, I’m personally content with the ones we have (although some may benefit from some improvements in the future), so don’t take this as a promise of change.

Map: This mod is based on a story that only took place in the eastern half of the present map. We decided to expand it to cover the whole of Peloponnesos, because it made for a better balance and a more “complete” environment, without going too far out in scale. If we included Aetolia, we’d then have to include Phocis. That would set the stage for the Third Sacred War, so we’d have to include Macedonia and, of course, all the resulting factions from such a shift to the north. And if the Third Sacred War got its treatment, it wouldn’t it be fair to leave the Social War out of the mod, would it? So the map would have to be expanded to the east until Byzantium. That’s a lot of land and a lot of factions.

I was, actually, considering trying such an expansion at some point in the future, but I’m afraid I can no longer find as much time as I’d like to undertake such an exploit. Keep your eyes on this upcoming mod: Rise of Hellas. It aims to have a larger map, including Macedonia, as does, in even larger scale, Hegemonia (for BI).

Greeks: Yes, I’m Greek. I’m the only one in this team.
(there's no Greek flag smiley. Pretend the yellow in that flag is white and that the cross is symmetric)

[Alexius 17]

You guys need to make some sigs so we can help promote

We made a couple but they sucked. Sorry. I'll work on making some.

[Alexius 17]

Greeks: Yes, I’m Greek. I’m the only one in this team.

Hey... If you count Raja on the team, you have to count Aeraaa on the team, making two greeks.

[Seleucos of Olympia]

Raja made some of the faction symbols, so he gets a mention by name. Aeraaa, the other Greek in the DEF, is in the "encouragement" bunch.

[amorales559]

Hello,
I just downloaded the download twice and extracted it to the RTW folder and ran it with the included executable and i get nothing,

the game loads up and i can hear the music, but there's no picture.

i can't even exit the game, i have to hit shutdown on my tower...

I don't have the actual RTW game CDs, i downloaded it off of gamestop.com.

I do not know if that makes a difference.

[KingLarsofMars]

Hello,
I just downloaded the download twice and extracted it to the RTW folder and ran it with the included executable and i get nothing,

the game loads up and i can hear the music, but there's no picture.

i can't even exit the game, i have to hit shutdown on my tower...

I don't have the actual RTW game CDs, i downloaded it off of gamestop.com.

I do not know if that makes a difference.

Make sure your version of RTW is patched up to 1.5 first of all.

Also that could be something to do with screen resolution... I've had trouble with some games before in a similar fashion because of my screen!

[amorales559]

Thank you for your reply,

Hmm, yes in the options link in the game menu at the top right corner has 1.5.

Hmm what do you mean by screen resolution and how could i lower it?

[Seleucos of Olympia]

That's the first time I've ever heard of such a problem, for RTW in general. Does vanilla run normally? Have you tried any other mods? Do you hear the menu music or the intro?

Try going to tgw\preferences and edit the file preferences.txt. There are some lines about resolution, specifically:

STRATEGY_RESOLUTION:1280x1024
STRATEGY_MAX_RESOLUTION:1280x1024
STRATEGY_32_BIT:TRUE
BATTLE_RESOLUTION:1280x1024
BATTLE_MAX_RESOLUTION:1280x1024

Change the "resolution" ones (not the "max resolution") to whatever you're using in your computer and save the file. That may help.

[amorales559]

Vanilla and BI work fine, its just the mod that does not.

I can here the menu music i believe

[KingLarsofMars]

Yep. Screen settings...

Change them from
STRATEGY_RESOLUTION:1280x1024
STRATEGY_MAX_RESOLUTION:1280x1024
STRATEGY_32_BIT:TRUE
BATTLE_RESOLUTION:1280x1024
BATTLE_MAX_RESOLUTION:1280x1024

to
STRATEGY_RESOLUTION:1024x800
STRATEGY_MAX_RESOLUTION:1024x800
STRATEGY_32_BIT:TRUE
BATTLE_RESOLUTION:1024x800
BATTLE_MAX_RESOLUTION:1024x800

or to what I run
STRATEGY_RESOLUTION:1024x800
STRATEGY_MAX_RESOLUTION:1024x800
STRATEGY_32_BIT:TRUE
BATTLE_RESOLUTION:800x600
BATTLE_MAX_RESOLUTION:800x600

[Seleucos of Olympia]

That means the mod is loading fine, but you can't see it. Try what I wrote about the screen resolution. Use your screen's resolution.

(You don't have to change the "max" values, like Lars did, just the ones the game uses)

[amorales559]

I tried changing the settings in the preference file under tgw but i still have the same problem,

game loads up, no picture..........

Could it have anything to do with the fact i have Bi installed, running windows Vista 64bit or anything?