Ancient Empires: Divide et Impera - Upd. 2/13/2016

[ABH2]

Last Update: November 27th, 2015 - 6:30AM

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Introduction and New Features

The Ancient Empires mod is pleased to bring you our first officia release for Rome 2. Ancient Empires: Divide et Impera is a submod for DeI that brings with it a host of new features and options. It is meant to be run with DeI as an official submod. We would like to thank the DeI team once again for partnering with us and giving us the opportunity to build our Rome 2 work around their wonderful mod. We have done that to the best of our abilities. These new features should be fully compatible with DeI's new scripts and features. The new features you can expect:

• The Imperator Augustus map for the Grand Campaign. This brings with it 14 new regions with Syracuse and Jerusalem being walled faction capitals.
• A host of new factions for the Grand Campaign and Imperator Augustus map to include the Aetolian League, the Volcae Tectosages, the Mauryan Empire (changed slightly from DeI's equivalent), the Massylii, and several other playable factions to go along with all of those currently released by the DeI team. The IA campaign has a number of new factions added to more accurately reflect the time period.
• Fully functioning civil wars for the new factions and DeI's new playables (hopefully).
• A completely reworked 1HP combat system.
• Streamlined and simplified stats for all units. They now work on a smaller scale.
• Closer deployment zones.
• New emergent faction mechanic. This essentially means each region in the GC and IA campaigns has its own set of functioning rebels. Each region can be liberated. Rebels should be more dangerous and capable of engaging in diplomacy. This means 187 new factions can be brought into the campaign to create a more dynamic and natural experience.
• New region base effects across the board.
• New food scale to go with each region having its own base food to work with DeI's new supply system (for 1.1). You will no longer reach max growth with just 20+ food surplus.
• 80+ new religions that now represent something closer to political influence. PLEASE CLICK THIS LINK FOR FURTHER EXPLANATION.
• A slowed down campaign experience - cultural conversion will be much slower paced.
• New AI buffs.
• Increased movement range for all forces. This makes for more aggressive AI, though it is the opposite approach taken by many mods trying to slow down the campaign.
• New seasonal effects including the cancellation of recruitment during winter.
• Strategic edict governance mod, to include sell slaves.

Bugs and Issues

This is a beta. I expect their to be quite a few pugs and it currently lacks some polish. For instance, a few faction descriptions and faction selection maps need redoing. If you see a bug or have a suggestion, please report it in this thread or on the Steam download page. Please, be as detailed as possible on crashes and, if possible, even include your save game file.

Known Bugs and Issues:

• Imperator Augustus campaign still has some vanilla units.
• Short on starting armies in Grand Campaign.

Future Development

Right now, our full mod has not been ported over into DeI. That process will take time and keeping up with DeI's release schedule can cause issues. In some cases, we just have to make some decisions on whether we want or need to bring it in. In future relesaes, we still hope to do the following:

• Bring in some of our new units intermixed with DeI's and their new components.
• Add in custom Aetolian League roster.
• Readjust starting armies for Grand Campaign. Beef up a few spots, try to add in armies for certain factions, and fix a few garrisons.

Credits and Acknowledgements

A host of modders have given us permission to use their work and/or contributed to the mod as a whole. Unfortunately, we have not have been able to include all of their work just yet (units have been left out here, for instance). The people listed below are the ones whose work has made it into this release. We can't thank them enough.

Once again, the Divide et Impera team for their generosity. Various members of DeI assisted us in making our work compatible with theirs. It is great to work with a modding team that has such a great attitude and willingness to cooperate with the community.

The core members of our team who worked on this - I can't thank them enough. Petellius, Philip/Sheridan, and UMCenturion. Petellius and Philip have stuck with the development of our Rome 2 project since nearly the beginning demonstrating great loyalty and commitment while producing top notch work for the battle overhaul. They waited patiently for their work to be released to the public while I toiled away on the campaign aspects. This project would have been long dead without them. Both could have joined other projects, but they believed in this one and stuck with it.

Noif
Noif is a prolific modder who has done quite a bit of new faction icons for both Rome 2 and Attila. He granted us permission to make use of his work in our mod, and they were essential to completing our emergent faction concept. He did this at a time when our mod was still small and relatively unknown, and we can't thank him enough for the permission. His work has been featured in our emergent faction preview, and you have probably seen glimpses of it in the Youtube videos and such.

Melcor
Melcor is the creator of the Romani UI mod and worked on the Haegemonia overhaul mod. He will be working on 2D artwork for the mod to include UI features and textures. We are very glad to have him on board.

Daruwind
Daruwind is a modder who focuses primarily on DB editing. In the past he has released mods that tweaked naval mechanics and created more in-depth victory conditions. However, his primary focus is a complete overhaul of the game's resource system based on the Meaningful Resources mod. He will release his own standalone project that will add a number of changes to buildings separate from our work, but his work will be integrated into Antiqua Imperium and is vital to the project. He is a very knowledgeable modder who is also great to bounce ideas off of. We are very happy to have him on board and helping us.

Ghsi001
Ghsi is the creator of his own overhaul, The Great Revolt of 69 AD, and has been assisting us with research and creating more variety in names to include the creation of new culture groups (such as for the Mauryans, splitting up Celtic/Iberian etc.) and will hopefully assist with some DB tasks in the future.

Occhi di Davide
These two granted us permission to include their awesome better water mod. This is a small mod that improves the visuals quite a bit. We may remove this if people have issues with it. I personally don't play without it, and like to showcase it, but it's readily compatible with all mods.

Phalangitis
For granting us permission to make use of his sell your slave edict mod.

The Europa Barbourum II team for granting us permission to use their work. Some of their faction icons will be seen in here.

[ABH2]

Raw Data (For Modders)

Making Startpos Mods

This is for experienced modders only. The data and (basic) instructions below will allow people to use our raw data files to construct their own startpos's and submods (or own mods) with our startpos, if they would like to do so. If someone wanted to edit out our new religions, for instance, they could do that with the data below. For now, he tutorial will be short because this is a task best left to experienced modders who know their way around the startpos. I don't know how many or if anyone will make use of it, but it's up to them. Someone could, if they are capable, make a version of our startpos for other overhaul mods for Radius or some other overhaul. That's completely their prerogative.

DeI Startpos Compilation Pack
This pack file is all you will need in your data folder to compile a new startpos. Have no other mods in that folder when you run BOB! This means remove DeI, remove ours, and any other mod you may be running. This pack isn't meant for playing a campaign, but merely utilitarian.

Assembly Kit Raw Data - Grand Campaign and rest of DB
These files are to be pasted in the assembly_kit/raw_data directory. Replace the old files. This will set up your Assembly Kit the next time you load it up with all of the changes I made. This will include barebones creation of all of DeI's units, buildings (to include garrisons), religions, various effects related to buildings etc. Basically, most of the content from our mod, but EVERYTHING that is needed to generate a startpos is in this raw data. All of the new factions, crucially. This is for the Grand Campaign on the Imperator Augustus map only. Since we use the same map for both campaigns, we have to change out our raw data files to edit one or the other.

Assembly Kit Raw Data - Imperator Augustus Campaign
This simply contains the startpos_ raw data files for the Imperator Augustus Map. Copy and paste this over the startpos raw data files you use for the Grand Campaign above. To edit one or the other, you simply need to change out these startpos files. So, obviously, back up your changes.

Post-Compilation Editing - Download link for the decompiled startpos data done for you (includes brief tuturial on the editing of the startpos data)
Click here for the tutorial on Startpos decompilation/compilation
This part requires third-party mod tools that are little used by most modders, but not overly complex. The tutorial is very clear on how to use them. To be clear, there are two features or changes to our startpos that get implemented outside of BOB:

• Adding in the starting value of religions to the regions (don't know why, but I cannot get BOB to compile them - probably because we have so many. This needs to be done for both the Grand Campaign and Imperator Augustus maps if you want to keep our religions in both campaigns.
• Victory conditions for all the factions. This needs to be done only for the Grand Campaign.

I'm going to reiterate - this process is for experienced modders. I wouldn't tell anyone not to try it, but I also have to admit I don't want to be bombarded with basic questions. If you have no startpos experience, there are tutorials on all of this stuff, and there is some trial and error involved. Please, try to solve things yourselves before bringing them to us on this thread.

Recommended Mods

Authentic Ancient World Music Packs

Steam Version
Part I | Part II | Part III | Part IV

Non-Steam Link: Coming Soon!

From the Editor

Dear Friends What should I say? We had the permission to bring the sound of four awesome games and modifications from the legendary Total War eras to Total War: Rome II. What did we do? We did it. You are asking yourself if this is all? Not enough, we are already working on Authentic Ancient World specific tracks. I would like to thank Audiokinetic and CA for enabling us to modify audio files and to Mackles for his awesome audio tutorial and support. The entire music pack contains exactly 200 tracks which are divided and equally distributed into the four in-game culture groups barbarian, eastern, greek and roman. The majority of the tracks come from Roma Surrectum II and are supplemented with the most awesome pieces from Rome: Total War, Europa Barbarorum and Rome: Total Realism VII. Very special thanks go to all the awesome composers who granted us the permission to make use of their legendary tunes. Cheers Alec

Credits

All those awesome composers have made this massive project possible: Europa Barbarorum Ancient Music Ireland (www.ancientmusicireland.com) Morgan Casey (www.morgancasey.com) Musica Romana (www.musica-romana.de) Nick Wylie (www.soundcloud.com/nickwylie/) The Persian Cataphract Roma Surrectum II apple Arn Elendil of Númenor Garv Marios Aristopoulos (www.marios-aristopoulos.com) Roma: Total Realism VII A. Rodriguez Alex McGery hollowfaith Rome: Total War Angela van Dyck Jeff van Dyck (www.jeffvandyck.com) Saki Kaskas (www.soundcloud.com/saki-kaskas/) I think we can't thank those awesome people enough for granting us permission to use their work for Authentic Ancient World and Total War: Rome II.

Youtube Playlists

Roma Surrectum II - Sound Track (YouTube Playlist) Roma Surrectum II - Best Soundtracks Playlist (YouTube Playlist) Rome Total War Soundtracks (YouTube Playlist) Europa Barbarorum - Soundtrack (YouTube Playlist) Rome Total Realism - Best Soundtrack Playlist (YouTube Playlist)

[Ivan_Moscavich]

Oh. My. Various. Gods.

Unfortunately I won't be able to download anything for about 3 days, but this is one of the first things I'll be downloading when I get back!

[TFCAliarcy]

This certainly deserves a whirl.

[Dresden]

Congrats on the release my friend .

[Sixt]

Just played a test battle with this mod, 1500 romans against 3000 germaninc tribesmen. The feeling of the battle was great, it took about 30 minutes (very long battle), and it feelt like the ai, was ok with the new settings. Flanking and rear attack didn't feel as effective as normal though, i dont know if thats on purpose. But anyhow, i will soon be testing a campaign :-)
Can i ask what "buffs" you have given to the ai, and is the mod compatible with other ai mods, like better agressive ai, guarenteed major factions and that kind?

Thanks for this! :-)

Sixt

[ABH2]

I'll be releasing a fix that's kind of important here in a few minutes.

I'm very curious on battle feedback. We had an entire system in place, and then rebalancing all of DeI's new units for that was something we had to grapple with. I personally loved our Rome 2 battles and wish we could have released sooner.

In terms of AI mods and such - the fix I'm about to release actually fixes the AI buffs I gave. This should be fully compatible with Junaidi's CAI mod (I had it in initially, but removed it for the DeI version). Same with Mitch's Guaranteed Majors mod. That, too, was initially incorporated and then removed, but is put back in easily enough.

As for buffs the AI gets in campaign, some are similar to Junaidi's:
-Recruitment slots.
-Massive upkeep cuts for the AI - they'll basically be paying nothing
-Line of sight bonuses - +100%. I'm trying this out for the campaign. I have a theory or hope that, with increased movement points and vision on he map, the AI will be a bit more effective and aggressive. I had very positive results with increased movement ranges in my tests where the AI would throw armies at me out of no where and actually catch me off guard.

EDIT-Both Google Drive and Steam version have been updated.

[Ygraine]

Just played about 10~ turns as Massilia in GC and here's some feedback.

Love the map! Feels like more depth thanks to more settlements! The fact you can liberate any settlement and give rise to new factions is awesome & gives the campaign a more dynamic feel.
I absolutely love the region-based buffs/debuffs (for example Massilia had trade buffs and stuff, while Narbo had grazing grounds for horses/cattle which improved agricultural income slightly) - it seems to have lots of detail to it.
I liked the debuffs you gain in winter like not being able to recruit new troops and a massive penality to movement among other things.


The traits seem different, you get some minor minuses for example to tier 1 cunning or authority. Is this intended or somekind of bug? I do like that it's actually worthwile to take rank 2 of a main branching trait. In normal DeI I never did take more than tier 1.

Some bugs (I think?) I noticed were that after making a temple culture was not changing at all. Massila started with very low hellenic culture and even with temple it kept going down even more. Another bug was in the diplomatic screen - I had clicked on Liguria and then on Rome. Rome had the exact same portrait of their faction leader as the Ligurian one.

What's the difference between Hellenic culture and Hellenistic Polis culture? Saw that other cultures also had two instances of these - they don't seem to share a similar variable in increasing/decreasing the culture stat.

Wasn't a fan of the increased movement points as it makes the AI blitzkrieg too much (in my test campaign Epirus got blitzkrieged by Macedonians in the first turn and destroyed). But that's fairly easily changed in PFM to ones own liking.
It seems unit costs/upkeep/stats need to revised? Mercs for me were super duper cheap - I had hired 3 celtic merc warrior groups. They were in melee against merc hoplites and other Narbo-celts for about 5-7 minutes and I didn't lose a single warrior while the enemy lost a lot of units to them. I saw one of the merc units had 44 morale, while my AoR celtic levies had like 5-10 morale or something. Felt a bit confusing!

[Avarice1987]

Is the Mod Compatible with Cäsars historical Legions?

[ABH2]

Ygraine - you were playing with an outdated pack. The mercenary costs have been fixed along with the Roman diplomatic faction leader one (this requires the start of a new campaign, unfortunately - and I believe it can cause bigger issues the deeper into a campaign - sorry for the inconvenience).

On the character skills - yes, they've been reworked, or rather some were removed. This was more out of necessity than gameplay. Our unit stats work on a smaller scale, and boosts can throw things out of whack. In the future, we will look to improve character skills again. One of the issues with a mod like this, to be honest, is that DeI is very polished. Ours - this is our first release. We hope the new features and different experience can offer some variety still, but there are kinks.

Massila started with very low hellenic culture and even with temple it kept going down even more.

I think you had the two mixed up, and I may need to work on making this more intuitive. It could be a bug with the temples and the new religions, though, as well. Massilia should be Hellenic culture, Hellenic Polis should go down with the construction of temples. Right now, the idea is that they represent political influence. Centralization versus factionalism/tribalism.

Is the Mod Compatible with Cäsars historical Legions?

The region resources are all in there. What we need to do is simply rebalance the stats. Right now, no. Very soon I hope to have a compatible version of it up.

[Denco]

Congratulations on the release

[Caius Bingerus]

i am honest, i played the hell out of DeI in GC since first alpha, but i never played more than a few rounds on IA, don`t know why, now i have a reason for doing so, congratulations on release guys, this partnership means a very fruitful couple and your children will rise and getting strong and shiny...have some rep, btw, is the beta 17 version of DeI required?

[ABH2]

No, the beta 17 version is not required. And thanks.

I've also added a link that explains the new religious system more. I've had a few questions on it, and it's going to end up confusing to many, it seems. I will have to rename them. But right now - it's a tiered system that works with our rebel faction mechanic. Factions on the map have factional political influence. They are consolidating their power. The rebel factions have a second tier of religions that mostly correspond to these. The regions have a larger mixture of cultures. The system is more akin to political influence than straight up religion or culture now.

[Caius Bingerus]

@ABH2, thx for your fast answer, i talked to philipp recently :-), testing right now begins

[GatoVolador]

I had only time to play a custom battle, wanted to try the new combat system.
It seems the most vital stat is morale. The difference in other stats are not that impactfull, because battle is at a slow pace. I lined up different bosphoran units against early legionary cohorts. Most of the kills were after a rout. A highly offensive unit (thracian romphaias) charging from the flank and a defensive unit (skythoi hoplites) being charged from the front produced roughly the same number of casualties.
A unit of cappadocian lancers were fighting the enemy general for ages with no casualties on either site. Suddenly the enemy general routed (I moved a unit of HA close to their back without firing or engaging). At that point they dropped like flies.
Mi skythoi archers started to approach the enemy even when they were on range :S
Some javs/archers have the scare elephant trait, some don't. What is the rationale behind it?

I also had a quick glance at the factions aviable. The dacians and the getai are on the same region, and share the faction traits, except the getai's are slightly better. Is this intended?

Reading my post it sounds pretty negative, but I'm actually quite excited I wish I had more time to try a campaign.
Keep it up guys!

[Ygraine]

That's a lot of deer they're catching

[CristoTheVicious]

Some javs/archers have the scare elephant trait

They have to have really ugly mugs to scare an elephant.

That's a lot of deer they're catching

Maybe it gives them Major/Phds in economics at the same time.

On a serious note though, some of the campaign changes are great (like map or the city/towns view in the province) and some are not, like the movement range. Fights are silly, I saw hoplite unit with 170/200 men fighting frontally some spearn00bs and rout, while some tribesman could hold surrounded and out numbered. Rear charge with hetairoi vs MOB! = 18 kills

Don't get me wrong, I think You guys did great job with the map, but I simply don't like some changes (which I fixed myself in less than an hour so it isn't a big deal)

[Dresden]

Remember this is an extremely early beta addition and your feedback will be crucial to helping improve it

Also the region effects will be included in the main mod version 1.1, ABH2 helped me implement them.

[PurpleScotch]

Hey guys, congrats on the release, just gave it a shot. I noticed you removed the killing animations, so units that die basically randomly drop around the battle, any reason for that? Any chance you plan on adding them back?

Other than that I'm liking it so far, great work. The campaign changes seem very interesting, I'll fire up a campaign and try it soon.

EDIT: Killing pace should be slightly notched up a bit. The look and feel of battles can be improved on as well. Just my friendly suggestions.

[Sheridan]

Killing animations were done away with to maintain better lines in combat, to what I recall Rome II didn't have a separate modifier for killing animations than the matched combat itself, which Attila does. But there's a good chance we'll revise this.

I don't object to quicker combat myself. Haven't played this for very long but mostly been occupied with the Attila mod instead, Petellius is more familiar with the final changes to the Rome II battles before it was released. What specifically do you mean with "look and feel" of battles though?