Visual update of the mod

[UrienRheged]

I've been a fan of your amazing mod IB2: Conquestu Britanniae for years now. Because it's possibly my favourite time period and location I'm quite invested in the mod. Just for a bit of fun I created new faction logo's with new color schemes, strat map colors, banners, individual ship textures, strat map model textures (did almost every single faction). AND I finished Laigin and Rheged, two factions I missed terribly on the campaign map, so I put them on it. I don't know if this is annoying or interesting to you but would you mind having a look at it? I'm pretty happy with the visual side.
I gave Laigin Dal Riada's Scotti Campwyr (which I renamed Loingsaig: mariners/exiles) as an extra 'unique' unit, giving the Laigen's close alliance with Dál Riata. I gave Rheged the Marchaucion Cichfran (Raven Cavalry, based on my favorite ATW unit, the Marca Bran).

I'm also reviewing the endonymic faction names and making them slightly more historically correct (as far as I know =P) and correcting and tidying up the unit and building names. Still going through all of the settlement & region names. I also gave the Alemanni (which I renamed Cyvvaari, as that is their oldest known OHG endonym, 'Alemanni' was an exonym) and the Thuringians (Duringōs, not Þoringoz, sorry) the use of river boats. I downgraded the unit hit point system to one down every time (4=3, 3=2, 2=1, etc) to make missiles more effective and shortened the build times a bit, but that's mainly just my preference, I guess =)
I ed around with the splash, loading screen and backdrop images, colorgrading a photo of a beautiful misty landscape in different images to make it look as if the menus move between parts of the day, it's weird but looks pretty cool when you’re clicking through it.

Just so you know. It's not finished by a LOOONG shot because of several fundamental shortcomings on my part:
1. I can't do anything in 3D so that's the limit of my effectiveness. It's all in the text and the visual representation.
2. I ran into an annoying setback: the Aztec (Laigin) faction logo on the strat map UI overlaps with that of the construction panel so you can't see the Laigin logo there, it's just another tower button =/ I know nothing of the programming of the menu and which tile corresponds with which part of the .tga, so I've not no solution to this.
3. The Grand Campaign menu can only take the standard amount of playable factions, so when you put Rheged and Laigin in, you lose Connacht and Alba (the Picts). No clue how to manually change this but I tried Gigantus's grand campaign selection menu minimod and that looked teeeeerrible, so i deleted it.
4. Is there a reason why javelinmen only throw a tiny amount of spears? It's such a shame cause now they lose almost all of their effectiveness.

Extremely large post, I’m sorry. What I meant to say was: does anyone want to try my unauthorized sub-sub-submod?
As soon as I figure out how to post images to these posts I’ll add some.

[UrienRheged]

Just wanted to add that the things I’ve changed shouldn’t in any way be seen as some sort of rebuke to what the original modders/researchers did, I’m just having fun customizing this awesome creation of theirs and possibly adfing to it 💚

[Serapio]

hey king urien

its great that this mod has still enthusiastic fans and i appreciate your engagement to improve it. maybe you should ask midnight. he is still active in this forum.
for years i helped the team members with some information about the germanic factions. you want to rename the thuringian faction (Duringōs, not Þoringoz). its really dificult to find a proper description for this germanic group. Around 395 Vegetius Renatus called this tribe "Toringi" and underlined their ability in horse breeding. beside this, there existed different versions of names like Toringi, Thuringi, Duringi etc. There are assumptions that the Duringi-version lead back to the germanic tribe of the Hermunduri (latin durus = hard). But there are also credible theoeries that the name derives from the god of thunder Thor or from the gothic/eastgermanic Terwingi. even the tribe of the gallic Turones is sometimes mentioned in this debate. and if you start the discussion of endonymes/exonymes you will find much more possibilities to name this germanic group. in fact historians issue until today about the mystery of the thuringians and their selfdesignation.

[UrienRheged]

Hey!
I agree it dééééfinitely isn't a simple issue! I just decided to go with the Old High German name for Thüringen: Duringa, from which I extrapolated the Proto-West-Germanic Duringōs. It also corresponds a bit better to the HermunDURI theory. I disregarded the Thoringoz-hypothesis because that would make them Donaringos or Thunoringos, as the 'Þorr' in Þoringoz is a Viking Age Old Norse version of the West-Germanic Donar. And the 'oz' ending implies them speaking Proto-Germanic which is a bit anachronistic I think. That better fits the timeline of a classical era mod.
Yes, the Þerwings! My favorite Gothic subfaction I in fact gave the Thuringians some east-Germanic flavor, with the -isks and -iskai suffix and the titles Þiudans and Arbja. The Thuringians most likely were West-Germanic weren't they? But it's good to have some linguistic diversity!

I decided quite early on (a bit like I think you did) that I was gonna give the factions their slightly later languages, because sooo very little contemporary sources survive. The Brythonic peoples speak Old Welsh (and some a bit of 'Cumbraek' flavor), the Franks speak Old Dutch/West-Germanic, the Gaels speak Old Irish (Primitive Irish sounds too primitive =)), the Ingvaeonic settlers (Ængle, Seaxan, Ēotas, Frīse) speak Old English, the Alemanni speak Old High German, the Thuringians a mix of West-Germanic and Gothic/Vandalic and the Saxons of Saxony speak Old Low German (Old Saxon). And I'm just winging it a bit with the Picts. It's absolutely brutal with them. They're so unique and interesting but the only sources there are are just names. Half of which are just weird spellings of Gaelic names! So I'm going with a Proto-Brythonic vibe with a lot of Uu's. =)

In fact I kept most of the names, and they were all really good, but I just wanted to make my own version just cause it's fun =)
As I said above I really don't want to discredit anyone who worked on this mod because I've been playing it (and casually modding it) since 2016 and have put hundreds of hours into it. Great respect for those who did research on it!

[Serapio]

hi urien, in interpreted your own version of faction-names not as discredit it is an exciting debate with many variations and theories.
as i said before, it is wonderful that people have fun with this mod many years after release!