Fall of Rome mod?

**Hengest** · November 03, 2006, 12:24 PM

This is a classic era with so much to offer, it has been a mod favourite since MTW. I am currently working on the ArthurianTW mod for RTW and I am keen to get people interested in a mod for this era but now for M2TW with a view to historical accuracy and depth. The factions' social and cultural backgrounds would be very exciting to depict in a mod with a base-game providing so much room for detail.

I think a good starting point might be anywhere around 350 or 450 onwards. I want to focus on often neglected areas of the campaign map such as Scandinavia and Ireland, not least Britain and western Europe which was in such turmoil here.

The possibilities really are endless and the potential for gameplay and for setting a new standard in reflecting an historical period is very tantalising.

Given the 21 faction availablity (if this is not possible to increase) still gives a decent chance to reflect some interesting factions:

Romans
Byzantines
AngloSaxons (plus Jutes, Frisians)
AlanVandals
Visigoths
Ostrogoths (plus Gepids)
Huns (Plus old Sarmatians, Alans and Bosporans)
RomanoBritons
Picts
Irish
Swaef-Allemanne (plus Thuringians, Hermundurians, Rugians)
Burgunds
Franks
Arabs
Sassanids (plus armenians)
Moors
Geats
Svea
Danes
Slavs

As you can see there will be large superpowers in the central area of the map yet with room for minor factions to cause trouble and even eke out a potential threat in the western isles, the Baltic, the middle east and northern Africa as well as the vast Steppe areas.

There is room for one or two more factions, but other factions such as Frisians or Armenians I would argue to be included as vassal units or a subfaction within a larger faction, such as within Franks and AngloSaxons or within the Sassanids and Byzantines. This is because I think it would be so good to have these in the game and yet pointless if they are minority 'rebels' with no real chance of surviving the first few rounds.

The papacy and the papal elections gives us some interesting possibilities too, maybe this can be modded to allow an mannequin emperor or something similar.

I will be looking at making Britain and Ireland a real compact area with an enriched 15-20 settlements and similar so in the Germanic homelands so that warfare is truely rife in the barbaric hinterlands and yet the superpowers have their constant share of invaders and challengers, which due to the promise of trade, alliance and religion/politics in the game we can easily take advantage of to deepen the reality-factor for this age of turmoil. The settlement limit for M2TW is unknown so far, but since Russia will be generally underdeveloped in the Dark Ages era we can delete several of those settlements and make new ones in the areas I stated.

The unfortunate need for generalising certain factions actually allows the chance to make them more interesting, E.G. in the case of the AngloSaxons we have for instance, the Jutes and Frisians NOT just Angles and Saxons. This will need to be looked at, but with mods like Europa Barbarorum that managed to completely revitalise RTWs tech tree and culture systems it should be possible to represent the variety of a faction's tribal family and it's nobility's diversity. This creates tensions within the faction as regards loyalty and shaping the very character of the domains and people you rule. These are the kind of interests and focus that I personally find so fascinating with both the potential in the game as well as the facts of the historical context the mod will be based on.

Finally as regards buildings and architecture, I think we are going to ahve a much easier time adapting and selecting already existing ingame models than completely redesigning. It will be much more like the modding concepts of the orginal MTW us veterans might recall...

**Stalins Ghost** · November 04, 2006, 06:50 AM

There's already one in development mate!

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=224

Gathering Storm is essentially the remaining team from the now defunct Imperia Romana. Alot of research has already been done, and a good deal of preliminary work too. Having worked with the co-leaders myself while I headed up IR, I'm confident the team can deliver a stunning product, they just need some more, and equally committed members.

I think you'll find that Britain is exactly how you want it to be infact- with many provinces. Infact people were complaining that we had too many in the IR previews!

Scandinavia is a very well researched area with the mod, and there's some really great researchers on the job for the Northern European factions.
We've got some interesting factions in the East too - Armenia for example (admittedly I like to point these out since I did a large chunk of their research...) will provide an interesting game throughout the map, not just in one or two areas.

Like I say, they just need some more developers now. Prof and Lesten (the two leaders) are capable of some great work, they just need a team made up of equally committed members.

Once I'm more settled into Uni, I do hope to get back into it myself...

EDIT: BTW the time period is 376 - 565

**edmont** · November 04, 2006, 07:08 AM

Excellent,but fighting Hunnes oh-oh again!Would you have a period from 453AC and preferably Britain and Norse?And there was talk of having more(infinite) factions by using feature in BI with rebels smth

**Stalins Ghost** · November 04, 2006, 08:53 AM

The original plan with IR was to have multiple start dates- however, I've not been in touch with the team for a while, and I don't know what the teams plan for GS is. Myself, I'd like to see start dates of 453 and 530ish too, but like I say! I don't know the teams plan anymore!