Version 1.03, New Faction & Updates on the Project!

[Sheridan]

Salve! As many of you have patiently been expecting, the full changelog for work done over the course of the past three(!) weeks on the mod. While this attempts to capture every relevant change, it is beyond my capacity to map out the countless details that were brought about in this long period of time. Without further ado, enjoy;

HOTFIX: Upcoming patch for v 1.03

• Over 30 new and updated building icons across all cultures
• Dozens of new large building images (above the effect summary)
• Completely redone cultral effects from all Hellenistic and most Punic buildings
• Some other updated Hellenistic building effects
• Streamlined names for several Hellenistic building chains, e.g. Hydrogogion --> Sanitation, Dodona ---> Oracle for more clarity
• Changed Hellenistic sanitation buildings into a new set. Sewers, Hydrogogion, Baths. Purely cosmetic
• Siege artillery units no longer recruitable from Colossus of Rhodes, War Memorials and some other odd buildings (Hellenic factions)
• Slightly raised population cost to expand large cities (does not affect small settlements)
• Adjusted corruption effect from Imperium
• Slightly increased native discontent from 1.03 launch (+10%)
• Slightly reduced positive PO effects from technologies
• Updated effects and corrected images for Achaean technologies
• Added in technology requirements for Achaean League buildings
• Some new effects and updated visuals for Hellenistic army traditions; 1 new icon
• Bug fix: corrected unit sizes for Ptolemaic, Kushite and Pontic units
• Bug fix: naval recruitment available for Media, Parthia and Armenia
• Bug fix: garrisons for Hellenistic "Allies" building chains now working

FEATURES VERSION 1.03:

• New faction: the Achaean League
• All new Polybian Roman General variants for starting generals. Thanks to Benjin and use of most of his assets for his A.A.A. mod for Rome 2. You can find his mod here: http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...ing&p=15573395 - Highly recommended!
• New late polybian roman unit variants - Thank you DEI team.
• New campaign map lighting!
• New campaign map textures.
• New campaign map buildings
• Integrated all patch 1.02e changes
• Various UI updates including: Nabatea, Armenia receives objective event screens.
• Fixed some unit cards for new generals
• Correcting missing spears in battle for new faction leader
• Small update to integrity values
• Public Order scale reduced; this allows the player to prepare in good time for rebellions, making them slightly less frequent
• Updated Lead requirement for Roman aqueducts
• Updated campaign fertility and starting cultures
• NEW icons for the Roman Colony buildings
• 12 new ancillary portraits
• Increased the build points of siege armies slightly and reduced cost of siege equipment, especially towers
• Reduced AI public order "cheat"
• Updated edicts - now influence province growth
• Fix to a settlement main chains bug where some would reduce income and upkeep more than intended
• Fix to dismounted Greek cavalry bug

Spoiler for V. 1.02e: 

Startpos

• The Seleucid Kingdom: Starts in a better position, with lower projected losses than before. Reduced the number of starting units and assigned many additional resources to native Seleucid lands
• Nabatea, Media: Starting political power now corrected
• Cultures: The entirety of the map where playable factions exist has new starting culture values. Regions where conquerors would have had low cultural influence are now predominantly native (e.g. Persian regions with 70-95% Persian culture)
• Corrected missing buildings for many factions (Seleucids, Ptolemies, Gorynthia)
• Updated starting treasury for all playable factions, lower than previously to make the initial turns more interesting strategically

Campaign Balance

• Cultural balance: Cultural assimilation is now much slower and more difficult to accomplish. Regions have significantly increased local traditions (representing the native populace), whereas buildings contribute less to cultural conversion. This makes it difficult to convert and gain a majority culture in a foreign land, maintaining native discontent as a viable game mechanic in all territory throughout the campaign, to simulate native uprisings long after conquest. The rate of conversion is slower as well
• Diseases: Chance of spreading between regions and between armies lowered. Previously rare diseases are now more common
• Sanitation: Increased across the board by all aqueducts and wells from 1-4 points per level to combat squalor more efficiently and reduce the unnecessary need to build additional sanitation buildings
• Rebalanced effects for ~300 traits and improved trait triggers. Example: a governor who is unable to keep a riot in check will now have a chance to gain "Authoritarian" trait or "Unpopular Governor"
• Fixed some traits that should be mutually exclusive
• Reworked effects for all Roman political offices
• Reworked effects for some offices available to other factions
• Reduced number of offices in some instances (Boule reduced from 3 -> 2, Honourary Chief reduced from 3 -> 2)
• Rebalanced effects for several Faction/Culture traits
• Food Edict: increased base food import capacity
• Fortify Stance: improved effects and added deployables (stakes + sudes for Rome, only stakes for other factions)
• Roman Latifundia (Estates) does no longer support recruitment of Roman legionaries. All recruitment is now done through the military branch of the Divided Assignments chain, which has been moved to its own building category in the UI. Added in one additional tier of Military Colonies. Military colonies now support recruitment of Legionaries and provide a small additional garrison
• Completely rebalanced effects for all Roman farms and colonies. Latifundia now provides high-value goods where profits are maximised from exporting these to neighbouring provinces, but provides less food than most other farms. The changes implemented aim to represent the diverse uses of public land in a historical fashion
• Updated cultural effects for all buildings. Other Foreign Cultures has been removed from the game
• Sieges: Reduced attrition to the besieged garrison and updated cost of constructing siege engines
• Slightly reduced campaign movement on some terrains (grass, plains and deserts)
• Fixed a bug where movement points would be higher than intended on roads due to hidden modifiers
• Technologies: Unit upkeep added in to a diverse set of military (and some civic) technologies. Researching military advancements now increase the upkeep of particular units or of land or naval forces in general, depending on technology
• Some rebalanced effects from technologies
• Updated commanding units for several factions - now generally elite cavalry troops
• Reworked effects of some missions. Removed the -10 Public order penalty from 'Caesar in Gaul' objective chapter
• Updates to some character and army traditions. Carthaginian army traditions are now visually fixed (previously bugged on the screen)
• Increased the chance of disloyal characters rebelling
• Lowered the rate of new characters refilling the character pool
• Increased the public order bonus from garrisoning with an army
• Slightly increased effectiveness of walled settlements in auto-resolve
• AI should be more inclined to sally out if it has a stronger army in a siege
• Updates to the composition of some garrisons, including Parthian
• Carthage can now recruit siege machines through their new Artillery Range building

Bug fixes

• Resolved bug where Armenia could not recruit new generals
• Fixed custom and campaign CTD involving Parthia
• Fix where Civitas Militaris (Tier 4 Military Colony) could not recruit legionaries
• Countless other bug fixes and improvements (I did not keep a proper change log on this, apologize )

Battles

• Units now lose cohesiveness when on the move
  
  • Organised troops like legionaries preserve a better order when wheeling
  • Cavalry lose their organization rapidly when moving and even more when encountering physical obstacles
  • Elephants have minimal cohesiveness and moves in a slow, disorganized fashion
  
  
• Unit spacing patterns improved for dozens of units to look more realistic and better reflect the fighting style and discipline of that unit
• All units now take morale damage from fatigue, unlike previously where many unit types considered 'elite' would suffer no penalties from exhaustion
• Added resistant to heat attribute to Eastern units
• Adjusted unit attributes
• Improved the effects of several special abilities and impact bonus of pila and javelins
• Unit stamina rebalanced. Units with good stamina will now fatigue quicker and situations where light troops run across the battlefield without taking fatigue should no longer exist
• Cavalry fatigue improved and fatigue effects generally rebalanced. Less impact from inclines. Units fatigue slowly when walking now, and recover more slowly from being stationary to encourage clever use of reserves
• Projectiles are now less focused around the center point of the targeted unit and more dispersed to cover the entire body of soldiers, reducing the gamey visual where most projectiles would converge towards an arbitrary center-point
• Slightly reduced physical and damage impact from cavalry charges
• Increased mass of elephants to allow easier disruption of formations
• New standard unit sizes:
  
  • 240 for special units (First Cohorts) and levy units
  • 200 for most melee infantry
  • 180 for all missile infantry
  • 90 for all cavalry
  • +2 additional men per unit representing officers
  
  
• Increased cavalry charging distance
• Slight tweaks to overall combat pace and balance. Major further changes planned in this area and for battles in general

New features

• Graphical improvements: new city models for Punic and Hellenic cities
• New campaign lighting
• Several new building icons
• New Parthian and Nabatean unit cards
• Province Growth added back to the game. Not finished - will be tweaked significantly in the nearest future to ensure it is a strategically important mechanic that doesn't make the game tedious/difficult for the sake of it

*Disclaimer: while extensive, this changelog does not capture the full improvements to the mod over the course of these last few weeks, or the sheer amount of work that has gone into it and support from the community

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Our Community

With all this said, I would like to extend my full and sincere gratitude to everyone who has been involved in the project this far. I'd like to highlight the contributions from a number of people who have recently joined our team as members and beta testers, in particular a worthy recent addition to our ranks, Texoman, who has done an incredible job providing new ideas and insight into the process, making vital contributions to new units and mechanics, and for supporting the public download thread here on TWC. Thank you everyone who has joined our ranks as beta testers to help make this mod the best experience it can be. And thank you to everyone out there in our community, providing invaluable feedback to us.

The project still has a long way to go, with new factions, mechanics and units to be added. More to be revealed on these subjects soon

[Sheridan]

Chanelog 1.02d

New Features

• A new Fame system implemented to explore the political complexity of the ancient realms further: historically, threats to many ancient kingdoms came from within, posed by ambitious generals or claimants. After success in foreign lands, these would amass great fame and support, leading to famous civil wars (The Great Roman Civil War and subsequently the Wars of the Triumvirate, the Seleucid Dynastic Wars or the Alexandrine Civil War). Characters with great military successes are more prone to become disloyal and form their own faction. Conquests, battles and influence are the three main determinants of the Fame mechanic.
• Characters are now influenced by their mothers when coming of age. The mother's trait makes the character likely to pick up certain traits, adding to the importance of female characters in politics.
• 11 new Carthaginian buildings: Drill Field, Artillery Range, Missile Range, Healer etc.
• 7 new Parthian native units: Early General, Late General, Cataphract Archers, Parthian Spearmen, Parthohellenic Thureophoroi, Parthian Skirmish Cavalry, Late Parthian Horse Archer

Campaign

• Regional Integration mechanic now introduced for Carthage and Roman factions. Having an administrative edge over its historical rivals, Rome is able to integrate conquered territory more efficiently, meaning they are able to extract more of the potential value from a region. 'Regional Integration' is a mechanic tied to the main settlement and works by reducing income and upkeep in a region, which represents limited control over a territory; this effectively reduces the margin of profit from the area, allowing players to build either wide (conquer many regions) or tall (integrate their regions into their core territory to make full use of the region's potential). This mechanic aims to slow down conquest in a realistic way, and differentiaties the different government types even further.
• Campaign AI: Now more aggressively attacks nearby settlements and will be more prone to sally forth when under siege
• Campaign AI Recruitment: Should now recruit more forces
• Reworked effects from Roman and Carthaginian main settlements
• Reworked base cultural influence ("Local Traditions" mechanic) in all campaign regions. Cultures native to an area now have higher influence, making historical regions such as Persia much harder and slower to convert to your culture. Thus native discontent will last longer
• Reduced effects from native discontent slightly
• New Pontic building and unit descriptions
• Unit upkeep now increases after certain technological advancements
• Can now recruit and replenish in provinces that are rebellious, albeit at heavily reduced capacity
• Added higher bonus to public order from lowering taxes
• Adjustments to several edicts
• Removed 'Powerful Senate' Roman faction trait
• Reworked faction and culture traits for Rome and Carthage
• New faction traits for Pergamon
• Tweaked effects of some Ruler traits
• Tweaked effects from several ministerial offices
• Updated Nabatean main settlement upkeep costs
• Characters with command level 7 and higher can now initiate night battles
• Fix to Carthaginian native discontent which is now normal
• Fix where the player would build too tall siege equipment against Iberian and other barbarian cities
• Fix to several building names that were previously bugged
• Visual improvements to display of certain building effects
• Startpos updates to traits and factions
• Updated triggers to some ancillaries
• Updated Parthian garrisons
• New Pontic unit & building descriptions
• Lead Resource added to two Iberian regions and one region in Britannia Superior

Battle

• In-battle crash fix for various factions (incl. Pontus) involving skirmish/ranged units
• Reduced the size of elephant units to 16 elephants (24 previously)
• Increased the mass of elephants, allowing them to break up formations more efficiently
• Increased ammunition of late Roman skirmishers to 9
• Fix to unit fatigue that would sometimes not properly apply to certain units. Reworked fatigue gain for different unit classes
• Reduced ship hit points
• Slightly increased artillery damage (land and naval)
• Improved unit formation patterns for several unit types

[Sheridan]

~ Reserved

[Romaion]

Thank you very much for this detailed Change log.

btw: Is the 4tpy sub mod now compatible to 1.02e?

[Swarbs]

Lead Resource added to two Iberian regions and one region in Britannia Superior

Is this definitely the case? I started a new game just now with Part 1, Part 2 and Patch e enabled and there was no lead in Iberia. Which regions should it be in?

[Sheridan]

Is this definitely the case? I started a new game just now with Part 1, Part 2 and Patch e enabled and there was no lead in Iberia. Which regions should it be in?

Could have been left out by accident. I'll check

[UMCenturion]

Is this definitely the case? I started a new game just now with Part 1, Part 2 and Patch e enabled and there was no lead in Iberia. Which regions should it be in?

We are still working on this. having trouble with implementing the change. but hope to have this complete by the next large update.

[Swarbs]

We are still working on this. having trouble with implementing the change. but hope to have this complete by the next large update.

In the interim, maybe have higher level sanitation buildings available without lead? The increased sanitation benefits they offer are kind of pointless at the moment, as very few civs can build them, and the Romans did originally build piping from terracotta sealed in concrete until they gained access to large lead deposits.

[Zom]

... and the Romans did originally build piping from terracotta sealed in concrete until they gained access to large lead deposits.

I guess that would explain why the first two buildings do not use lead? Maybe?

[Swarbs]

I guess that would explain why the first two buildings do not use lead? Maybe?

Not really - the Romans built public latrines and public baths without lead for centuries until they occupied Britain, Iberia and Gaul and secured lead. Maybe the imperial bathing complex could require lead, but not the first four options if there is no lead resource available.

Greek factions can and did build public baths without lead, so I can't see why Rome should be handicapped in this regard when they had some of the best sanitation in the classical world.

[Sheridan]

Not really - the Romans built public latrines and public baths without lead for centuries until they occupied Britain, Iberia and Gaul and secured lead. Maybe the imperial bathing complex could require lead, but not the first four options if there is no lead resource available.

Greek factions can and did build public baths without lead, so I can't see why Rome should be handicapped in this regard when they had some of the best sanitation in the classical world.

It's a sensible proposal. Will update lead requirements tonight

[Swarbs]

It's a sensible proposal. Will update lead requirements tonight

Thanks

[Petellius]

Can't say we aren't fair

[HuoShan]

It's a sensible proposal. Will update lead requirements tonight

Great！Have you update it？

[Swarbs]

It's a sensible proposal. Will update lead requirements tonight

Got a minor update last night, but lead requirements haven't changed, even with starting a new game as Rome and after verifying local files through Steam. Not sure if it's a problem at my end?

[Sheridan]

Got a minor update last night, but lead requirements haven't changed, even with starting a new game as Rome and after verifying local files through Steam. Not sure if it's a problem at my end?

Will check in a few hours. I had implemented it into my own files last night, but sometimes a table gets lost in the process of forwarding it in the team.

We have a lot of interesting things coming up in the near future. Work is being done in diverse and quite new areas for the mod, I'm excited to reveal them once finished.

[HuoShan]

Will check in a few hours. I had implemented it into my own files last night, but sometimes a table gets lost in the process of forwarding it in the team.

We have a lot of interesting things coming up in the near future. Work is being done in diverse and quite new areas for the mod, I'm excited to reveal them once finished.

THX your effort！We are very looking forward to in the coming days.

[Sheridan]

Updated with changelog for 1.03! Be sure to check it out!

[strength&honour]

Hi guys. I have been a Total War player since 2000 and love the series. I have been pretty disillusioned with it from a historic and depth perspective for a number of years. I downloaded and started playing this Ancient Empires mod during the week and I would like to congratulate everyone involved because it is absolutely excellent. So much depth, realism, immersion and detail. It has revitalized the whole series for me, thank you.

[The Wandering Storyteller]

When you mean new city models - do you mean the city on the campaign map or new building icons?