Extended Cultures wiki page.

[Hesus de bodemloze]

Dear Extended Cultures community,

We of the wiki team are in the search for some information to create a wiki page for this mod. If you fans/creators could answer some simple questions we could get the page up and running in due time.

Form is below:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

= Description =

= Features =

= The Team =

= Included Mods =

=History= (of the mod how it all come to it, how was the development, any info related to the process of the development

=visual material= (you can include any screenshots, fan made vids, factions previews, feature previews)

Many thanks in Advance,
The TWC Wiki Team

[Zarax]

Err, isn't there a (quite outdated) TWC wiki page already?

I'll try to put some more info this weekend to give a better outlook of the mod.

[Suppanut]

Our map based on Magnus Mundus with some provinces redraw and no Locus, Tribus, Vicus, and most of Campus have been replaced by proper historical names. Our mod also reworked on economic concept with new system of trade resources and placement that represent economy of local-regional point of view rather than from greco-roman point of view.

Screenshot on map's features.

[SonOfOdin]

Since I took the job of updating the XC wiki page, I have a small question
Will the game have more updates? Or is the 4th Version the last?

[Suppanut]

XC4 is almost finished Beta phase and there will be XC5 in the future, our team still not yet short of ideas for develop XC yet.

[SonOfOdin]

XC4 is almost finished Beta phase and there will be XC5 in the future, our team still not yet short of ideas for develop XC yet.

Ok, thanks

ok. Here is more data on Advance Order Control System.

Advanced Order Control is the internal name for XC's unique government system.
Working along with the culture system it allows each region to be shaped towards a full factional control, a protectorate-like system or in some cases a mixed administration.

What makes it unique is its capability to self-destruct upon conquest by a foreign culture.
This means that for example a gallic horde conquers Rome they won't be able to build up straight away but instead will have to rebuild the government and possibily migrate some of their own population in order to "celticize" the region.
You will only be able to retain the original government infrastructure if a friendly culture is already present in the settlement, in which case the government will not self-destruct.



As shown by the tree, the government level influences the type of military (and infrastructure) development available in the settlement.

-Choosing an allied governemnt will turn it into a de-facto protectorate that will allow you to build high-level auxiliary barracks at the expense of some economic impact (the native ruling class will keep part of the income) and the ability to train factional troops.

- Going towards regional pacification will instead open up colonization and lead the road to fully developed factional control, unless you choose to allow a mixed-style governmnt (supervised native administration) which will bar the more advanced troops but allow a relatively balanced mix of factional and local troops.

If you want to control fully the place you will need to move some of your loyal subjects through building a colony level, which will both give an anchor to your factional government to develop and allow progressively higher factional barracks.
Failing to do so will result in your control attempt collapsing and you will need to rebuild your government from scratch.

These will be really helpful for the features section, thanks

[Suppanut]

ok. Here is more data on Advance Order Control System.

[Zarax]

Advanced Order Control is the internal name for XC's unique government system.
Working along with the culture system it allows each region to be shaped towards a full factional control, a protectorate-like system or in some cases a mixed administration.

What makes it unique is its capability to self-destruct upon conquest by a foreign culture.
This means that for example a gallic horde conquers Rome they won't be able to build up straight away but instead will have to rebuild the government and possibily migrate some of their own population in order to "celticize" the region.
You will only be able to retain the original government infrastructure if a friendly culture is already present in the settlement, in which case the government will not self-destruct.



As shown by the tree, the government level influences the type of military (and infrastructure) development available in the settlement.

-Choosing an allied governemnt will turn it into a de-facto protectorate that will allow you to build high-level auxiliary barracks at the expense of some economic impact (the native ruling class will keep part of the income) and the ability to train factional troops.

- Going towards regional pacification will instead open up colonization and lead the road to fully developed factional control, unless you choose to allow a mixed-style governmnt (supervised native administration) which will bar the more advanced troops but allow a relatively balanced mix of factional and local troops.

If you want to control fully the place you will need to move some of your loyal subjects through building a colony level, which will both give an anchor to your factional government to develop and allow progressively higher factional barracks.
Failing to do so will result in your control attempt collapsing and you will need to rebuild your government from scratch.

[Suppanut]

Traits and Retinues Features

Extended Cultures is using the Ethnic Traits System which was originally developed by Suppanut as sub-mod of the Extended Greek Mod (XGM). Ethnic Traits System (ET) is mainly to develop ethnic feature to represent among characters and to de-emphasize the romanocentric view of the vanilla trait system by adding many cultural features and traits of non-roman culture from the local point of view.

Ethnic Traits was the sister project of the Temple Description Project of Extended Greek Mod. When the Temple Description Team, which consisted of Archbaker, LucretiusTC, and Suppanut, worked on creating temple descriptions for all 20 factions, which later expand to new more accurated religion and culture features and later to new idea about ethnic system with inspiration from vanilla's "PlainRomansVirtue" trait, thus birth of Ethnic Traits Projects. Later on, it expanded to other mods which spinned-off from Extended Greek Mod like Diadochi-Total War and Extended Cultures. Currently, from Ethnic Traits version 3 onward, Ethnic Traits is exclusive to Extended Cultures only.

Ethnic Traits system that now implemented in Extended Cultures 4 is Version 3.
A great overhaul is expected into Ethnic Traits 4 when Extended Cultures develops its own version for Extended Cultures 5.


Features of Ethnic Traits
- Ethnic traits and their sub-categories, now all characters will have their ethnic background as well as features attached to them.
- Many new traits and ancillaries, now all other factions and cultures will be enhanced to have the same depth as roman is in vanilla
- Historical figures retinues, now there are more than 200 historical figures which appear only once each game.
- Educations and education abroad, now characters could send their sons to one of many famous center of learning in antiquity to earn better education than just hire tutor to teach at home.
- Family Matters, now you player will have to handle and headache with your characters' family matters, their wife and their children.
- Philosophy school and eastern religion, Ethnic Traits features important schools of thought and important religions of hellenistic era.
- Mentor System, ancillaries will also help characters to develop skills and personality as well.
- Dynamic trait system, now some traits will be more fluid and give bonus based on conditions that character fulfill.
- Health and aging system, characters have their own health status and being older means more chance to get ill and not working at their full potential.
- Influence of Faction Leader over other members of your Faction, now choice of your faction leader will effect on fate of factions in the future.
Command: affects generals' troops’ morale faction-wide (barbarian culture only)
Management: affects corruption of all governors faction-wide
Influence: affects all generals' loyalty and bribe cost as well as bribe chance.
Some traits of faction leader will also give effects faction-wide as well and they have both good and bad traits that affect it. A bad faction leader will ruin the empire, so choose heirs wisely.
- Loyalty and hidden ambition, even when no visible loyalty, character still have ambition and this unlawful ambition will lead to many bad things.
- Pretender, Beware of incredible characters! he may be just a mere pretender who fakes his own publicity for a chance to gain power and his ascending will ruin your empire as whole.
- Imperial titles and "Doomed of Empire", Every faction will claim imperial rights and start a new era of the empire once your empire is glorious enough. However decay of empire also follows its natural process as well.
- Faction economic policy, Governors of each faction has their own way to develop socially and economically in history.
- Many cognomens and epithets, there are many cognomens and epithets those characters could earn. Some of them are cultural bloc based.
- Doomed of Man, As absolute power corrupted absolutely, characters with too high attributes or too great in recognition will end up corrupted and downfall by their own hybris.
- Strategic exploitation, Strategic decisions have become a part of Ethnic Traits included logistic, supply, and some strategic movement, its effect could became positive or negative.


Apart from Suppanut, who is main concept contributor and coder, many people have supported him in order to put Ethnic Traits into being:
Anakarsis
Aradan
Archbaker
Athenogoras
Balikedes
CaesarVincens
Calvin
Chernish
Cherryfunk
DimeBagHo
dvk901
Ferrus
Hippias
htismaqe
Kara Kolyo
LucretiusTC
Lycurgus the Lawgiver
Magister Equitum
Mulattothrasher
Pnutmaster
Quirinal
RedFox
Scutarii
Sebulba
Shadow_LT
The Sloth
tone
visarion
Warmaster
Zarax

[Zarax]

= Description =

Extended Cultures (XC) is a RTW modification that aims to bring historical accuracy but also show how different factions could have evolved had history taken a different path, with an eye to fun and challenging gameplay. The mod is similar to vanilla in look and feeling but expands the original by bringing new factions, several reworked units and new buildings. In addition to this, a culture system that makes an unique use of RTW:BI features and a large set of new character traits that extensively helps in role-playing will ensure an unique feeling of diversity for many factions.

A bit of history:
Extended Cultures began as an offshoot of the Post-Marian Project, a project that aims to bring new units to XGM along with further use of the Marian Reforms. One idea that was kicked around was upgrading Barbarian building trees post-reforms to allow new buildings, including huge cities. CaesarVincens made some simple changes and released the first version of what would later be named Extended Barbarians, in homage of DimeBagHo's mod's name. Around the same time, Zarax suggested expanding the culture system present in XGM.
CaesarVincens liked the idea, and made a mock up of it. Combining Extended Barbarians with this new cultural extension, CaesarVincens released the first edition of Extended Cultures on May 4, 2008. Since then, the mod has grown greatly and on January 9, 2009, the Extended Greek Mod-Extended Cultures was released as a full, self-installing mod.
Following the release of Extended Cultures 3, Zarax joined full-time providing support, developing the Carthaginian Senate and emerging factions while Suppanut expanded his work on ethnic traits to better suit the new faction and culture system. XC4 is under development at the moment, providing the base for future improvements.

Extended Cultures philosophy:
Extended Cultures aims to provide greater depth to the major cultures and factions present in the 275BC-14AD time frame, portraying their military rosters in a more accurate way than vanilla RTW and giving overall the same or better level of detail previously restricted to the roman faction. Unlike other mods, our aim is not to reshape the game completely but rather to take full advantage of the features provided by CA and evolve the basic game into a richer, more refined experience. We do not believe that to make a challenging game AI needs unlimited money or unrealistically strong units, instead we try to compensate for AI weakness by giving them an easier time in developing economy and military plus an anti-snowball system that prevents both player and AI to become indiscriminately rich after reaching a certain size.

We also think that a mod’s aim is not to recreate a perfect depiction of history but rather depict how history could have evolved that each faction deserves its own chance of greatness and so how success could have shaped them. This mean that as time passes by Rome won’t be the only faction to benefit from military reforms but others will also attempt to find new means to change the tide of history.

= Features =

(government and ethnic traits have been covered in previous posts)

Enhanched accuracy:

While there is still a lot of work to do on this side, XC is vastly more accurate than vanilla and it improves upon XGM, it's "parent" mod.
XC map is an highly optimized and accurized version of Mundus Magnus, thanks to Suppanut work we now have historically accurate names for cities and regions as well as a well researched trade resources model, based on descriptions from primary sources.
Many units have been added and are available at their own historical location, reflecting the military make up of the various regions.

Temples have also been extensively reviewed to give each faction a mix of local deities and a more historical focus on what they can build.
Foreign temples can be upgraded into factional equivalents with their description changing to reflect the equivalent deity.

Extended colony system:

Every area now has one or more buildings representing the ethnic composition of the region and each of them giving a cultural effect which influence the difficulty of holding the territory for a certain faction.
Every faction has the possibility of building colonies to extend its own area of cultural influence and recruit its factional units outside their homeland.

Improved Economy:

XC economic model has been balanced to downgrade the so-called "snowball effect" that makes money an irrelevant factor in late game by making income progression as linear as possible as well as making unit upkeep tied to city level, thus discouraging the recruitment of elite units in large numbers.
This also results in a greater focus on infrastructure building as any major campaign will require a substantial "war chest" to maintain and enlarge the army.

Trade is now also more important as in order to fully exploit it a lot more infrastructure development is needed.
Building a market will still provide an additionan income but only controlling or trading with important trade hubs will make the real difference, meaning that controlling silk, frankincense, amber and similar trades is now vital to properly expand.

Revised battle system:

Unit roles in the battlefield are now much more specialized, far beyond what visible stats would show.
Unit class and ethnicity both have an impact on how they perform on the battlefield against different units, making for example celtic units perform worse than african ones against elephants and levies easier to rout when facing cavalry.
Battle speed is now also reduced allowing for a greater use of tactics.

Use of advanced BI features:

XC uses almost every hardcoded feature provided by all RTW exes, providing an improved experience to players using any expansion, including but not limited to hordes, loyalty, emegent factions and religion.

= The Team =
Caesar Vincens - Mod Founder Leader (currently inactive)
Anakarsis - Unit Artist and Steppe historian
Suppanut - Traits&Ancillaries master, historian, modeler, mapper and coder
Zarax - Balance, Carthaginian historian, BI specialist and experimental features coder

Special Mentions:
DimeBagHo: Without XGM and all his help XC would never have started
Ferres: gave us permission to use many of his models and textures
Maraxus: Former unit artist
Redfox: Gave us permission the hellenistic units as well as his map extras
The EB team: gave us permission to use several of their units
Webba: created several unit models for XC

Full Credit list is included in the readme

= Included Mods =
XGM - the base mod from which XC evolved, many units are still shared with it
ATG Spartans
Ferres Legions
Ethnic traits 3