How to work out how many are actually playing EBI and EBII?

[MeiguoJinjang]

This is mainly curiosity. My ancient TW collection configuration includes:

RTW1/EBI

RTW1R/RIS

MTW2/EBII

RTW2/DEI

ATW/AE

The non-EB are easy to workout as it it reasonable to assume the majority are via Steam subscriptions. So, like DEI comes in with 270K and AE with 70K. RIS with 17K.

But EB I am playing both outside of Steam and there are no WorkShop items for them anyway. Of course, there are MODDB downloads like 37K for EBII 2.35, but there are installers and non-installers; multiple download sources. And finally, a subscription in the WorkShop is a bigger chance of activity than a single lifetime download.

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I am really curious about these stats and why? What do they say about the community or players in general? Overhaul players? And history oriented overhaul players? I am very impressed by EBI and EBII. (especially EBII being like an interactive history book, never have I experienced such a game)

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I started looking for stats after watching 2 reviews of GODS OF WAR for Rome 2. It looked extremely good on the reviews: graphics, mechanics, factions, configuration modules (like DEI, but way more), and BMB as one of 2 developers who is a recognized expert in TW AI modding. But surprisingly there were only 7K subscribers.

I know DEI has won awards. I play it, and it is very well done. But it seems 1-2 orders of magnitude more popular than other choices of Antiquity. Why? It is it something about the mod itself? Are there a bigger Rome 2 customer base than others? Is it that RTW1, RTW1R, and MTW2 are too dated? Where as ATW/AE although not dated delivers less FPS per host than RTW2/DEI?

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Interested to hear you thoughts on our community? I guess is would call us Grog/Historic/Antiquity Community in that is perhaps to common thread that runs through all of these with EB leaning heaviest toward Historic.

Comments?

Thanks.

[bismarck 1899]

I'm a social scientist with lots of experience analyzing stats. Getting anything meaningful comparison-wise is practically impossible.
- For example (I guess you mean) gods at war was last updated in 2016 (even the updated version was last updated in 2018), DEI was last updated on February 24, 2022.
- DEI is on the first page if you click on most subscribed. Gods at war is on page 7? of the subscribed lists.

Comparing mods like eb2 and DEI is more or less impossible. You would have to make some kind quantitative survey for that.

[MeiguoJinjang]

I'm a social scientist with lots of experience analyzing stats. Getting anything meaningful comparison-wise is practically impossible.
- For example (I guess you mean) gods at war was last updated in 2016 (even the updated version was last updated in 2018), DEI was last updated on February 24, 2022.
- DEI is on the first page if you click on most subscribed. Gods at war is on page 7? of the subscribed lists.

Comparing mods like eb2 and DEI is more or less impossible. You would have to make some kind quantitative survey for that.

Thank you for your thoughts.

I will state my professional background, but interests are much more broad as evidenced by EBII. Retired software engineer/senior manager.

I think you made me aware of a key concept. That some of how much each of these mods are played may have nothing to do with the content on offer itself, but be more in marketing of it. So, a well conceived name. Getting exposure by someone who is very talented as a YouTube influencer. Whether the community lives on FB, forums, or Discord ... meaning how well are the Google and YouTube algorithms tickled.

Bismark, thank you. I had not considered that there may be many other factors which are really independent of the mod itself. But knowing what I know about YouTube and other platforms, we cannot discount what used to be called marketing or these days optimizing the algorithm.

NOTE Mod Developers: I am not saying that you are doing anything deceptive to influence player share ... simply that such factors exist independently.

[Wulfburk]

ModDB was a great influence for the earlier Total War mods. Third Age Total War was the first massive hit there, and that entire community was mostly unaware that Rome Total War had a LOTR mod (Lord of the Rings Total War, which, incidentally, is in my opinion far superior to Third Age), many years before Third Age was released. It simply wasnt a hit like Third Age.

EB 2, in contrast, was released when the total war fans in ModDB and so on were already on Shogun 2, and the Darth Mods and beyond. Even so, regarding EB 2, It did not help that early on there was not much of a community outreach there, if I may say so, which led to EB 2 not being nominated to top 100 mods a single time (iirc), which is something that you can easily get in ModDB, with minimum popularity.

Now, as far as I know, Total War Org is long dead, and the same destiny may come to Total War Center, at least regarding the modding community.

There was an interesting discussion in the Warhammer 2 TWC subforum. People nowadays prefer Discord and reddit, not forums like these, to talk about their favorite mods. Which is understandable. And this is further accelerated by steam workshop and so on. In a way, this EB 2 subforum right here is a bastion in this part of the internet. The fact that EB 2 is this popular even though it swam against the tide, marketing wise, for so long (regarding discord, ModDB, AND the fact that the one initial youtuber to make a video about it was not really EB 2's target audience, and more or less bashed it), is a testimony to its quality and strengths, really.

[MeiguoJinjang]

I was a late comer to Steam. As I opposed authorization/server based DRM schemes. I was okay with serial numbers (which I understand the issues for piracy and could tolerate insert the disc). But finally, I had to cave in or I would be playing DOS and Win98SE games forever.

But I have to say that MODs became very easy with Steam. So, easy, in fact, I bet there are lots more users of mods than there would be because it is simple and standardized.

Of course, before the the large migration to Steam, developers started to make it easier with mod folders and front ends. Before that, you had to alter the original game, and if a community was serious, then they might integrate mods to for JSGME which came out of the SH3 community.

(I will skip many issues with Steam, since we are talking about EB being widely known and played.)

Well, to me the Discord concept seems as old as the Internet; pre-Internet CompuServe and AOL had chat rooms. And the early Internet had IRC similar to Discord.

I have noticed Discord draining forums. I see it for collaboration of developers, but I still think it is a poor substitute for forum communities. If I want to write a 3000 word discussion of using traits in EB2, this is far easier to do on a forum than Discord and further have a thoughtful discussion. So, Discord does not handle organization and in depth discussion nearly as well, and searching. Further, I believe Discord like social media is resulting in a populace incapable of focus. EB is something that requires focus if you want to get something out of it other than map painting, since EB is quite unique. No other mod seeks to achieve such historic depth.

The only thing which I have seen with Discord I like is that ATW/AE has in game click button to their discord. So, as long as it remains popular, instant support will be a click away. This was a very clever concept.

Another problem I see for EB are the REMASTERS, since Steam only allows you have to Old or New, and the old is simulated old, but the actual architecture is still new; so doubt old mods are going to work. So, unless you know how to turn you Steam copy into an offline disk copy rome.exe/bi.exe/alex.exe before buying the REMASTER, then you have said goodbye to a world of classic mods forever. So, I think EBI Classic is kind of finished, and perhaps sooner or later EII Classic as well.

Very sad. And this is one of the problems with Steam for the convenience you lose control over your software; unless you understand PCs.

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I had the original MTW & VI, but my PC was too slow. When I got a faster PC, CA was not supporting newer video cards. But I decided to try Shogon2 and later DMS and liked it.

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RTW1 is never played unmodded. I started with DMS, but a friend convinced me that RS3 would be far better. So, that was my main RTW1 experience. Now, I have installed RTW1/EBI and MTW2/EBII. But I find EBI too much clicking after getting use to the better UIs in later TW games.

Further I have modded the TW games to be more ergonomic with www.autohotkey.com, but for some reason RTW1 just does not work with co-resident scripting. MTW2 has no problem. I have hot keys to remove the HUD in combat. I have hot keys to display forces sorted, settlement sorted, and agents sorted. Saves clicks. But I cannot get this in RTW1.

But I worry EBI/EBII days are numbered when it comes to WIN11 compatibility and a community that has gone REMASTERED. Further on the whole, the REMASTER UI is a step up from the older originals.

WELL LET ME CONCLUDE HERE. EBI/II TEAM, I NEVER IN A MILLION YEARS IMAGINE HAVING A TIME MACHINE TO THE ANCIENT WORLD. THANK YOU. YOU HAVE MADE HISTORY REAL.

[QuintusSertorius]

I'm one of those outliers who doesn't use Steam. Not even now, when most distribution has moved that way, but then I don't play PC games any more, outside of modding EBII.

I haven't played EB1 since I was able to play EBII over a decade ago. Whilst the battle engine in RTW1 is better than that in M2TW, that's the only thing that is. By contrast, I've never played un-modded M2TW. Or any other mods, for that matter.

[Roma_Victrix]

Interesting topic, OP! The number of downloaders for EBII's latest version 2.35 at ModDB being 37K sounds about right to me, certainly in the ballpark of what I would have guessed. However, you're right about the true number of players being a bit elusive, given the range of download options over time.

I'm one of those outliers who doesn't use Steam. Not even now, when most distribution has moved that way, but then I don't play PC games any more, outside of modding EBII.

I'm in the same boat, and have always been annoyed that Steam has been a roadblock to modders (with installation guides requiring separate instructions and different measures for Steam users). In the past I have had physical disc versions of RTW and M2TW as well as digital copies of TW games that didn't require a CD-ROM, namely from Direct2Drive.com. I'm also uninterested in playing PC games anymore outside EBII, since that's already time-consuming enough. Then again I was never much of a "gamer" in the first place. I had PlayStation growing up but don't care for it now. I occasionally play classic Nintendo and SNES games like Mario Kart while drunk with friends and only for the giggles. For PC games I just played a few common old-school titles like Wolfenstein, Duke Nukem, Doom I and II, plus various SimCity iterations and city building games like Caesar and Pharaoh, but I don't even play those anymore.

I haven't played EB1 since I was able to play EBII over a decade ago. Whilst the battle engine in RTW1 is better than that in M2TW, that's the only thing that is. By contrast, I've never played un-modded M2TW. Or any other mods, for that matter.

Really? Not even Stainless Steel? That's a rather fantastic mod, but then again I remember you telling me you're wholly uninterested in the medieval period. There are also Renaissance and Early Modern mods like 1648 - Thirty Years of War that are quite decent.

I also never thought of you as the fantasy genre loving type, so that definitely excludes the Third Age mod.

I'm just slightly surprised you never played De Bello Mundi (DBM) for M2TW, since it takes place during classical antiquity like EBII, or even Invasio Barbarorum II (IBII), a late antiquity mod with multiple iterations and several different time frames and theaters of war. The Chinese historical mod Rise of Three Kingdoms (RotK) is also pretty cool, naturally takes place in China during the early 3rd century AD, but I guess most gamers in the West are not huge fans of East Asian history outside Japanese stuff like Shogun Total War titles (or at least weren't that interested until SEGA/CA came out with their own Three Kingdoms game).

[MeiguoJinjang]

A few more questions. Are RTW (particulary ALEX.EXE compatible with WIN11)? With the current RTW1 remaster and coming MTW2 remaster is there any way to prevent the death of the EBI and EBII? As best I know, buying the remaster wipes out classic. (There is a technical way to capture and preserve classic from Steam. But the steps to do that are no help to anyone purchasing after the remaster has dropped. Also, posting the technique violates Steam rules and probably this site's rules as well. Thus, it will remain low profile.)

It would be a shame to lose RTW1/EBI and MTW2/EBII for perpetuity. As the base games are part of our digital heritage and culture, and mods themselves are true classics of their genre representing antiquity and connection to those who has such a large effect on what Western society and thought became.

I am less skeptical about technical difficulties running these games on WIN20 as we have seen with DOSBOX many classics live again and play better than they every did under MS/DOS 6.33. So, one day, there may be a WINBOX when hardware can support such an emulation like with DOSBOX.

PS: I did try a port of EB to RTW1R. As a proof of concept, it worked, but I would not call it playable. In general, the remaster is very exciting with limits removed and finally a 64 bit address space. I remember the white boxes in RS3 when it would run out of memory.

[William the Silent]

I stopped playing EB1 since RTW (CD version) didn't work on Windows 10 anymore.
With EBII I can only play campaign and not battles (Steam).
So I stopped playing that too.

It's sad because they are GREAT mods and they are for a big part responsible for making TW profitable.
Without mods TW would never have been so popular.

So their gift to the gamers should be: KEEP MAKING IT POSSIBLE TO PLAY THE OLD MODS ON NEWER GAME VERSIONS AND COMPUTERS.

The gamers and modders that made your game popular deserve that.

[Roma_Victrix]

I stopped playing EB1 since RTW (CD version) didn't work on Windows 10 anymore.
With EBII I can only play campaign and not battles (Steam).
So I stopped playing that too.

It's sad because they are GREAT mods and they are for a big part responsible for making TW profitable.
Without mods TW would never have been so popular.

So their gift to the gamers should be: KEEP MAKING IT POSSIBLE TO PLAY THE OLD MODS ON NEWER GAME VERSIONS AND COMPUTERS.

The gamers and modders that made your game popular deserve that.

Indeed they do, but corporate masters don't really care about the little details involving the little people until it bites them in the ass financially. I don't see that happening. Even if it did hurt CA in the long run, the original people running the show are already retired, working at other companies, or too wealthy to give a crap about the tireless modders on this forum making their behemoth franchise into what it is today. Sad but true.

I'm also infuriated about the whole RTW thing. I have Windows 10 and an Acer laptop that doesn't even have a CD-ROM, so any CD-ROM game has to be virtually mounted for me, which I do for some old games. However, I haven't been able to do that with RTW for a host of reasons. On top of that, that old website "Direct2Drive" where I used to own an online digital copy of the game went defunct for a long time and now I'm unable to download it from their website even though they're back up again, apparently. Virtual highway robbery at its finest.

[MeiguoJinjang]

I have kept old CDs as if they were gold. But they fail with new OS', since they use driver standard breaking tricks to run (copy protection). So even though I paid extra for an optical drive ... forget later versions of Windows.

There are other tricks. Getting a good master from Steam, and then solving the Steam check problem. Once you have a good master, you can upgrade to the remaster without consequence. But this was only good for previous owners; now they only sell the remaster. They should have offered it as a totally new SKU. That would not cut into sales, and have preserved classic mods.