Q&A

[Zhuge_Liang]

We have stated the version many times and it is on the front page of the progress thread.

[Drummerman]

Will we be able to recruit heroes for the factions in custom battles?

[Zhuge_Liang]

Will we be able to recruit heroes for the factions in custom battles?

Not in version 1 no

[scottish legend]

what are you doing with the religions in this mod?

[Zhuge_Liang]

what are you doing with the religions in this mod?

The relgions will be changed to cultures, ie. greek, northern and eastern. The temples will give bonuses to the cultures.

[Dominus Latronis of Troy]

i remember you saying that the heroes will be a single unit with no bodyguards is that the case for all the other generals or just heroes

[Zenith Darksea]

So far we've found this impossible, I'm afraid. We wanted to just have heroes on their own in battles, but CA's friendly hard coding prevented us.

[justme]

So far we've found this impossible, I'm afraid. We wanted to just have heroes on their own in battles, but CA's friendly hard coding prevented us.

I thought I had seen somewhere that someone had been able to do this... but I dont remember when/where, so I might be wrong...

On the other hand, as per Zhuge's suggestion I post my question on in-game siegecraft in the Q&A section. Here goes:

How will you be able to avoid the city from falling if the defenders lose a "sally forth" battle (that "fight to the death" skull icon on the battle screen)?

in vanilla and mods the AI tends to attack a besieging army asap and if the defenders sally to fight alongside their allies and lose badly (i.e. 99% of cases even on VH setting), that's the end of the siege too: city falls, game over in 1-2 turns... hardly the makings of an epic 10year siege of Troy like in the Iliad...


Also, are you going to create portraits to go w/ the family trees, or will we be stuck w/ the gothic/vandal faces for achilles, hector and company?


EDIT: having seen the T minus 7 days preview two questions more arise: the Thracians are of greek culture? (they shouldnt be I think). Also the Aleshyans what culture are they?

[Zhuge_Liang]

I thought I had seen somewhere that someone had been able to do this... but I dont remember when/where, so I might be wrong...

On the other hand, as per Zhuge's suggestion I post my question on in-game siegecraft in the Q&A section. Here goes:

How will you be able to avoid the city from falling if the defenders lose a "sally forth" battle (that "fight to the death" skull icon on the battle screen)?

in vanilla and mods the AI tends to attack a besieging army asap and if the defenders sally to fight alongside their allies and lose badly (i.e. 99% of cases even on VH setting), that's the end of the siege too: city falls, game over in 1-2 turns... hardly the makings of an epic 10year siege of Troy like in the Iliad...


Also, are you going to create portraits to go w/ the family trees, or will we be stuck w/ the gothic/vandal faces for achilles, hector and company?

We already mentioned about the portraits. In the end they will all be a mixture between our own, greek and eastern portraits.

I have never come across the feature where an enemy sallies forth every seige and losses the battle all of the time. It seems to happen quite rarely and i didn't think it was always a fight to the death (i thought that so long as the enemy had a certain number of survivors they would just retreat into the settlement). The main problem in RTW was that there were too many seige assaults, not to many failed sallies.

We are currently working on seiges and still haven't decided finally on what we will do. It may be possible that we will take out the ladders too and make rams the only seige weapon. We didn't origionally want this to happen, but it may reflect the poor quality seige assaults better. It would also drag them on longer and make a higher chance of wars being decided by battles in the field.

[justme]

I have never come across the feature where an enemy sallies forth every seige and losses the battle all of the time. It seems to happen quite rarely and i didn't think it was always a fight to the death (i thought that so long as the enemy had a certain number of survivors they would just retreat into the settlement). The main problem in RTW was that there were too many seige assaults, not to many failed sallies.

We are currently working on seiges and still haven't decided finally on what we will do. It may be possible that we will take out the ladders too and make rams the only seige weapon. We didn't origionally want this to happen, but it may reflect the poor quality seige assaults better. It would also drag them on longer and make a higher chance of wars being decided by battles in the field.

You underestimate the individual player's generalship and the "continue battle" feature

I am referring to a case where the defenders sally together w/ their allies to repel our "invading" army and end up being destroyed and w/ like 5-10 survivors all in all (i.e. you get the message telling you that the enemy force has melted away) after that, the siege is finished (whether there is a fight-to-death condition or not for the defenders)...

PS: this is practically the standard way I use to capture a city... I very seldom assault walls, seeking to conserve my troops for pitched battles...

One way to avoid that would be to disable the "continue battle" after you have broken the enemy, so that you
dont get the chance to run them all down... Not sure though if it is doable...

[Zenith Darksea]

As for the Thracians, I hope that people will bear this in mind:

Troy: Total War is a mythological mod. It is not historically accurate.

[justme]

As for the Thracians, I hope that people will bear this in mind:

Troy: Total War is a mythological mod. It is not historically accurate.

No sweat I'm not going to bite anybody's head off or anything for making thracians a-historical

Just wanted to know, since I saw greek names used for their units, yet they were trojan allies in the myth...

I take it then that Thracians are greek-culture, but what of the Aleshyans? are they the same culture as the Hittites/etc?

[Zhuge_Liang]

You underestimate the individual player's generalship and the "continue battle" feature

I am referring to a case where the defenders sally together w/ their allies to repel our "invading" army and end up being destroyed and w/ like 5-10 survivors all in all (i.e. you get the message telling you that the enemy force has melted away) after that, the siege is finished (whether there is a fight-to-death condition or not for the defenders)...

PS: this is practically the standard way I use to capture a city... I very seldom assault walls, seeking to conserve my troops for pitched battles...

One way to avoid that would be to disable the "continue battle" after you have broken the enemy, so that you
dont get the chance to run them all down... Not sure though if it is doable...

Well you seem to be the only one to fight battles this way. Why would we want to disable this feature? It is completely realistic. How would 5 men defend troy? Battles like this happened! If you are fighting against apollonians then i doubt very much that you will enjoy a whitewash victory like you suggest, so stop worrying about a pernickety detail which will probably affect 1 in 50 battles.

Edit:
The thracians are of 'northern' culture, if you don't want greek names what else would you suggest considering they had greek influences and could speak greek.

Aleshya are eastern culture.

Please consider that we have been making this mod for a year and a half and therefore have considered all of these details and are happy with our choices. Please also note that all pictures are from an alpha version and we are currently making a beta version now where we have corrected many of the glitches which (believe me) we noticed before everybody else.

[Zenith Darksea]

Well if we're talking Iliadic myth, then the Thracians and the Trojans as well also spoke Greek. And quite frankly, I do not intend to go and learn ancient Wilushan or Bessan. I don't even think it would be possible to give them their own native unit names.

[justme]

I think you misunderstood the meaning of my question...

Firstly, I am not here to impose anything on anyone, nor to challenge choices and decisions, nor to enforce "historicity" or whatnot in a mod I have no part in its making (even if I were to do such a thing, you'd just ignore me and I'd be none the wiser )

I just asked about the thracians if they'd be greek culture because I saw an earlier post saying that if a greek faction conquers another greek factions it would be able to recruit its elite troops - in this case I'm after thracian cavalry, mentioned as one of the better cavalries in the mod... On the other hand, if they're not of greek culture, I'd have to look for good cavalry somewhere else (Thessaly is conveniently in the way :wink: )

So, in fact I wasn't suggesting that anyone should learn luwian or ancient thracian or whatever...

On the siege issue, the only thing I can say is that I thought such short sieges happened a lot more often... esp in VH campaign settings, the AI is only too happy to oblige even if you aren't willing to play along (e.g. with the ROP mod at VH/VH I could hardly lay siege on a city before I found myself surrounded by a couple of enemy armies + the defenders in the city, so after a couple of "retreating/returning to besiege" turns, I had to fight it out - too bad the attackers were decimated and the city fell in my hands ).

If you don't feel this is an important issue, I for my part consider this point closed...

[Zhuge_Liang]

On the siege issue, the only thing I can say is that I thought such short sieges happened a lot more often... esp in VH campaign settings, the AI is only too happy to oblige even if you aren't willing to play along (e.g. with the ROP mod at VH/VH I could hardly lay siege on a city before I found myself surrounded by a couple of enemy armies + the defenders in the city, so after a couple of "retreating/returning to besiege" turns, I had to fight it out - too bad the attackers were decimated and the city fell in my hands

I just don't think there is much point in bringing things like this up, as it isn't really very important information that people will benefit from, and people can't truely know anything about the mod until the beta is released. If it turns out that there is a problem along those lines then after the beta has been released and you have decided it has detracted from the enjoyment will be the time to mention it.

[[HOJ]Honorius]

Here is a breakdown of the factions and how they relate to each other:

Aleshya - eastern - franks
Amazons -eastern - sassanids
Argos - greek - vandals
Athens - greek - eastern roman rebels
Dorians - barbarian - saxons
Hittites - eastern - huns
Ithaca - greek - alemanni
Lycia - eastern - goths
Lydia - eastern - ostrogoths
Sparta - greek - empire_east
Minoans - greek - western roman rebels
Thessaly - greek - celts
Mycenae - greek - empire_west
Pylos - greek - burgundii
Pythia - greek - lombardi
Thebes - greek - roxolani
Thrace - barbarian - sarmatians
Troy - eastern - berbers
The Sea People - greek - romano british

[Claudius the God]

great idea to make greek factions be able to recruit soldiers from the capitals of other greek factions. it will really give a sense of a confederation of greek armies attacking troy!

it's good that it's just the capital as otherwise it would be too easy for greek factions!

[Dominus Latronis of Troy]

Here is a breakdown of the factions and how they relate to each other:

Aleshya - eastern - franks
Amazons -eastern - sassanids
Argos - greek - vandals
Athens - greek - eastern roman rebels
Dorians - barbarian - saxons
Hittites - eastern - huns
Ithaca - greek - alemanni
Lycia - eastern - goths
Lydia - eastern - ostrogoths
Sparta - greek - empire_east
Minoans - greek - western roman rebels
Thessaly - greek - celts
Mycenae - greek - empire_west
Pylos - greek - burgundii
Pythia - greek - lombardi
Thebes - greek - roxolani
Thrace - barbarian - sarmatians
Troy - eastern - berbers
The Sea People - greek - romano british

===not sure if this was asked----will all those factions be playable.....

[Zhuge_Liang]

All factions except the sea people will be playable.