Playable factions in RTR VII: GC?

[Aule_the_creator]

Hi, I've been playing RTR for a couple of years now, absolutely the best mod for RTW that I've seen, I wish someone would do something like this for M2TW as well, but I digress. I have, with great enthusiasm followed the development since TIC came out (although not a big fan of that, no celts, no romans, no germans), FOE was very exciting for me (although sadly, still no germans, but the celts are a fine substitute), and I'm looking forward to the GC. I just joined the forum in order to post up the following question:

I saw the first preview for the Grand Campaign, and it looks excellent. One thing surprised me, however: The list of playable factions. I saw a lot of greeks, a lot of celts, thracians, romans, iberians, carthaginians, and africans... I didn't see a germanian faction though.

Is there a specific reason why we won't be able to play as the hairy forrest-dwelling devils of Germania? I want to send painted raiding parties into celtic and thracian lands, and then retreat back to Germania and fade into the woods. (which reminds me, I have a suggestion, the ability to raid and pillage settlements without taking possession of them)

As a scandinavian, germanic factions are THE most exciting factions for me, and considering the large amount of celtic, greek and iberian factions that are playable, the choice to leave out the germanic culture was a bit puzzling (In fact, I wish someone would make a Total Realism mod for Scandinavia for M2TW, the petty kingdoms of Scandinavia, and the rise of the three kingdoms between the fall of the roman empire and 1300, would be absolutely perfect for the Total War Engine, except M2, or perhaps Empire, would be a better choice due to the time-period in question, that's how much I dig germanic culture).

Btw, I noticed that the playable factions were a "WIP", but that just underlined the need to shout out to the devs the fact that we need a playable germanic faction, before they are set in stone.

Aule_the_creator

[MasterOfThessus]

Kan du va svensk möjligtvis?

Welcome to the forum Aule, I hope you stick around and have a good time. Regarding the factions, we had to make a hard decisions when moving on to GC from FOE. Due to the restraints in the RTW game engine, you can only have a set number of regions, (199 I think) so we had to choose from making a traditional GC like 6.0, or continue the detail from FOE. The mini-regions we used in FOE ment that we couldn't have a map spanning from germania to parthia, and so we choose to keep the mini-regions and instead cut down on the extent of the map.

This decison was taken to ensure that we could have the level of detail we wanted to thoose factions that acctually were playable, and this forced us to leave the germans out, together with factions as the Seleucid empire and Parthia.

I'm feeling sorry for you, since you have such love for the german tribes, and they were indeed fun to play in 6.0. Have you tried the ExRM? They still have the germans, but pushing the gameplay of 6.0/PE to the very edge. I'd recommend you to try it out if you haven't

[Aule_the_creator]

Well, I see Germania on the map, it's blue ;-) You don't need the giant expansive steppes of the east in order to play the germanians, just a single settlement in the middle of the woods (correct me if I'm wrong, but most of the celtic factions also start out with one settlement, do they not?), and the ability to expand into the La Tene sphere of influence, or into Thracia. If I recall correctly, when the romans entered germania for the first time, they built a bridge across a river, looked around, concluded that the people there were too agressive to bother subjugating, considering the slim pickings of the land they inhabited, and went back to gaul, dismantling the bridge behind them. Are you gonna have a "terra incognita" region on the other side of a river?
4 gallic factions is a bit overkill isn't it?

Inte svensk, isländsk, men uppvuxen i Sverige faktisk, så lite svensk är jag nog. Har dock bodd i norge i 7 år (precis flyttat till stockholm), och kan danska flytande också. Så kan kanske beskrivas som Pan-skandinavisk ;-)

[Arkaeyn]

As I recall, the main reason we decided against a Germanic faction was that for the time period our mod covers, the Germans weren't terribly influential. However, we do have some Germanic troops and mercenaries to recruit in their regions.

[Caligula Caesar]

There is of course much debate over whether or not there was any difference between the Germans and the Gauls. The Rhine river was taken as a border mainly because the Romans made it theirs. Many tribes said to be German or partly German had chiefs with Celtic names. Archaeologically speaking, there is a difference in material culture in the northern part of Germany (the bit not on the map), as in they did not develop fortified oppida.

Notwithstanding that, we decided that for a border faction which would have to be represented as a horde (as the area covered by the map was certainly Celtic at the time) and would need new models, textures, and 1000 other things, it wasn't really worth the effort. Not that people can't mod it in if they want to.

[MasterOfThessus]

Yes, and "wasting" () one faction slot for a far away faction, that won't influence the rest of the factions until late, was deemed as unnecissary. That said, there is nothing stopping you from making a mini-mod with them later on

Edit: CC did a ninja on me

[Aule_the_creator]

Disappointing, but I guess I'll have to pick a celtic faction, pretend that they are germanic, and go kick ass with it (unfortunately, the celts are a strong cavalry faction, not as strong infantry, the opposite of forrest dwelling germanians, but oh well).

In the meantime I'll check out the extended realism mod, and see if they've done anything interesting with the þjóðverjar.

[Iguanaonastick]

Are all the celts going to be strong cavalry factions?

I recall from Caesar's commentaries that some tribes were great horsemen, (the Remi?) but that others much preferred to fight on foot. The Helvetians certainly were described as fighting in a dense infantry phalanx, which the Romans despite a height advantage had to struggle hard to overcome. If the Kingdom of Noricum is a Helvetian faction I imagine it will be infantry-based.

[Arkaeyn]

We have two Celtic factions in Fate of Empires, and while there are some changes in their rosters, we're not changing them too much. I'd say they definitely lean towards infantry, but they do have better cavalry than, say, the Romans.

[Aule_the_creator]

I'm just assuming from the position of the FOE campaign, where the light infantry of the celts are inferior to the light infantry of the other factions which are their immediate neighbours, and the heavy infantry is just a little bit weaker than their Roman and Celtiberian counterparts (even the Keltoi ambacti are weaker than Celtiberian ambacti, and the soldurii too).

[Iguanaonastick]

I see your point, Aule. I was rather surprised to find that in FoE Celtoi Ambacti even lost to Roman Principes. Picked, professional warriors against high-quality militia... similar equipment... high quality or no, I'd expect Celtic warrior-elite to win against part-time Roman soldiers, not the other way around.

Edit: You can always look at some other mods that do include Germans. I never got the old version of RTR to work on my PC and anyway it's the mini-regions that are the main draw to me, they make the campaign feel much more like a real world. Of course other mods don't have mini-regions either, but that's the way it is. Roma Surrectum II is new and shiny and has a Cimbri faction. Europa Barbarorum has a realism focus like RTR but with a lot more development of the barbarian factions and it has a Sweboz/Suebi faction.

[MasterOfThessus]

We'll be looking thru the units and factions before release, and making the barbarians more of a threat is on the to do list If you have suggestions on how to do this, please post here and I'll forward it to the coders.

[Aule_the_creator]

It's the whole general feel of RTR which I love, I don't know if I could adjust to anything else, RTR is like my vanilla game now. The only time I open up my vanilla is to play Barbarian Invasion, because I haven't seen a decent mod for the migration period of the germanic peoples (or, which is what I really want, a Frankish Carolingian era, but that's more of a M2 type thing). I also particularly love the way RTR has gone since Platinum, with the mini-regions and rebalancing (although there is something up with that economy, either you have way too much cash, and you can't spend it fast enough, or you have none at all, and you can't maintain armies or retrain reinforcements for fear of your whole economy collapsing), so I was really looking forward to getting a revamped germanic faction for the GC Been waiting since FOE.

[justme]

It's the whole general feel of RTR which I love, I don't know if I could adjust to anything else, RTR is like my vanilla game now. The only time I open up my vanilla is to play Barbarian Invasion, because I haven't seen a decent mod for the migration period of the germanic peoples (or, which is what I really want, a Frankish Carolingian era, but that's more of a M2 type thing). I also particularly love the way RTR has gone since Platinum, with the mini-regions and rebalancing (although there is something up with that economy, either you have way too much cash, and you can't spend it fast enough, or you have none at all, and you can't maintain armies or retrain reinforcements for fear of your whole economy collapsing), so I was really looking forward to getting a revamped germanic faction for the GC Been waiting since FOE.

Hey Aule, why don't you try the Arthurian:TW mod - if it's germanic warriors you're looking for (and indeed of the heroic germanic sagas), ATW is chock-full of them...

Ok, it may not be Scandinavian-themed, but it's got the Saxons, the Jutes and the Angles newly arrived from Denmark or thereabouts (with the warrior ethos, paganism and heroes - see Beowulf - intact) and ready to turn Britannia into Engla-land. It's quite an interesting germanic-warrior-fest if you ask me. Oh, and their warriors are still quite hairy

PS: their forum is further down in the RTW hosted mods board, under the "post roman era mods" title

[MasterOfThessus]

There was indeed a problem with the economical code, but that has been identified and adressed, so VII will be a huge improvement in that way.

I really feel for you mate, and I promise we would love to have 10 extra factions, but RTW is an old game with much hardcoded limits

That said, the RTR-team would welcome anyone wanting to create a mini-mod with a new faction and the team would surely help with its knowledge and any material that didn't make it into the final version.

[Iguanaonastick]

I associate barbarian armies with small units of individually highly skilled elite warriors, much better than Romans and a match for Hellenistic elites, backed up by large numbers of decent but poorly equipped tribal warriors with shakier morale. On an army level it seems logical that a Celtic force will be a bit less powerful than a Greek of Roman army, but historically they did win their fair share of engagements so I don't think the difference should be huge.

Upping stats and lowering numbers and giving morale boosting effects to the elites would I think be fitting, to show how in barbarian armies it was the nobles and their picked warriors who led from the front and inspired the rest to fight bravely. Then again, the Ambacti already have higher stats than Principes and they still lose. Perhaps it is their unit cohesion or lower stamina that is the problem too.

For the lesser units, it seems to me that troops coming from the warrior-class would have at least as good attack and defence skills as principes if not better. Principes are still militia-level soldier/farmers, after all. Better equipped and better drilled as units, but not individually better warriors. Right now Celtic Swordsmen seem rather mediocre.

Game-balance wise the armour-piercing attribute in Rome Total War is rather over-powered... so giving barbarians some units with such weapons would help a lot against the civilised factions. Of course, axemen or macemen don't really fit the image of the Celts. The Dacians with their falxes will give the Mediterranean factions something to think about though.

Another suggestion would be to give the Celts some more varied units. Say, an intermediate class of spearmen with helmets and better training and a pair of javelins. I'm sure those existed. Not all better Celt warriors used swords.

My overall impression is that Romans are a bit too powerful, only pike-phalanxes can actually challenge Roman line infantry and then only in the hands of a player who can keep the flanks secure. That may be part of the problem. Principes in my tests beat everything 1 on 1, except Sacred Band infantry or Epirote elite hoplites.

[Arvenides]

RTR VII: GC?? What's that? Weren't RTR VII: FoE the last of the RTR mods?

[Pat89]

RTR VII: GC?? What's that? Weren't RTR VII: FoE the last of the RTR mods?

Before RTR VII: FoE, we had RTR VII: TIC (The Iberian Conflict) and our last instalment will be RTR VII. Together they form the "RTR VII series" (or RTR VII trilogy if you like ). So to answer your question: there will indeed be another RTR release

[Iguanaonastick]

"GC" means "Grand Campaign.

So it's the "generic" RTR version that includes most of the Mediterranean.

[Aule_the_creator]

although Grand Campaign is perhaps a mis-nomer since it implies the usual gigantic map. This is RTR The Celtic Expansion xD