New scenario sugestion

[Peregrinus]

I've allways wanted to play a scenario that starts really in the beggining of the Roman expantion, before they conquer the Etruscans to the north and other Italic tribes to the east, where the Romans only have Rome and maybe Capua. Dont know what faction changes will be necessary, maybe most will be the same as the wars of the Diadochi, I can help investigate if work on such a scenario starts.

Instead of having Epirus in your doorstep, you would have the Etruscans! The other Italic tribes like Samnites could be just neutral cities (rebels). The map would be the same as the Imperial one, giving you the change to start sooner in Roman history, for a truely epic scenario!

As I said, I could help with the design, but I have no experience in RTW modding and no time to learn currently, so someone willing would have to make the changes to the code, mostly map and faction changes I guess.

[Spartan 666]

The new Sons of Mars campaign is for this purpose. Unfortunately there is no time to finish it properly, we prefer focusing in other campaigns which are already at an advanced development state. Maybe there will be time for it, but not in the immediate future.

[Peregrinus]

But isnt Sons of Mars restricted to Italy and Greece?

[RedFox]

The idea of Sons of Mars was to have a small focused campaign map like that and have the player battle it out against Samnites and Etruscans. The downside of course, is that the map is too small.

Unfortunately, making the map bigger is impossible, because of Alexander the Great rampaging in the East at that time. That is the reason for cutting the map.

Of course, we could always use the Pyrrhic Wars campaign map, but still, the Diadochi factions are in those boundaries and thus, we won't be able to realistically control their expansion and emergence of new factions. We are already at the limit of 21 factions, with no available faction slots remaining, so there's nothing to do about that.

What can be done, however, is slightly expand the Sons of Mars map to Illyria, Sicily, Corsica/Sardinia and a bit more into greece. That would provide a quite fun campaign to play, if the amount of settlements was increased.

Finally, Various rebel, barbarian and Independent Greek factions can be used to represent Etruscans/Samnites with the use of AoR units.

[Peregrinus]

That sounds cool for a Sons of Mars II
I'll look into the history books one of these days and try to come up with some ideas

[Spartan 666]

We could simply use the Pyrrhic Wars map and cut it, instead that enlarging the Sons of Mars and adding settlemets...this would save a lot of time and work..

[Peregrinus]

Agreed! I think this campaign could start at 509bc with the overthrow of the last Roman King by Lucius Brutus, if so then the player should start with just Rome, with harbor at Ostia. Capua and other south-eastern towns should be independant, representing Latin and Samnite states, and still think it would be cool to have Epirus replaced with Etruria. Capua should have a week garrison so they become Rome's first target.
Question, what were the Greeks and Macedonians doing in that time frame? I can research but not until later

[jakobh94]

They were just being small city states ... And Macedon possibly Vassal to the Persian Empire.

[Peregrinus]

Right, its too early for a Macedonian faction. What happenend close to that time frame was the battle of Thermopylae, 300 anyone? It would make a cool scenario, you get to choose early Romans or Spartans lol I guess it would require quite a bit of research to come up with the faction list for that time frame using the Imperial map