TTW 4.0 Feedback

[zahid]

is this mod worth buying rtw for? I do not think M2TW is that good, but RTW does not have the awesome charges, has this been worked on?

[Zhuge_Liang]

Am I missing a post in this thread? I can't access page 2.

EDIT - nvm, i can see it now that i have posted on it.

is this mod worth buying rtw for? I do not think M2TW is that good, but RTW does not have the awesome charges, has this been worked on?

I'd say that RTW is a lot better value for money than M2TW which sucks. If you buy RTW in some compilation pack you can get RTW and BI (and manybe Alexander, but that sucks too) and once you buy them you can have about 10 other games in the form of mods, for free.

With regards to the charges the only thing we changed was charge distances for certain units.

[Nicodemus]

A question : Doria is set up as a barbarian, but yet doesn't seem to gain barbarian ancillaries, rather it receives 'civilised' ones, ie decorated hero, not famous warrior. Is this deliberate ? Is the trait barbarian, but the culture not barbarian ?

[Nicodemus]

A question : Doria is set up as a barbarian, but yet doesn't seem to gain barbarian ancillaries, rather it receives 'civilised' ones, ie decorated hero, not famous warrior. Is this deliberate ? Is the trait barbarian, but the culture not barbarian ?

I think I understand: the 'culture' in a city is RTW:BI's "religion", rather than the underlying "culture" of the faction. However, ancillaries are associated with the underlying faction "culture", so I would guess that somewhere a faction's culture is defined and for Doria ( & Thrace ) this isn't "Barbarian", hence they end up with non-barbarian ancillaries. :hmmm:

[Zhuge_Liang]

I think I understand: the 'culture' in a city is RTW:BI's "religion", rather than the underlying "culture" of the faction. However, ancillaries are associated with the underlying faction "culture", so I would guess that somewhere a faction's culture is defined and for Doria ( & Thrace ) this isn't "Barbarian", hence they end up with non-barbarian ancillaries. :hmmm:

Bingo

The barbarian ancillaries would probably be as realistic as the greek ones. Not much difference.

[Nicodemus]

S0, two questions:

1) How do I return assasins to the game ? They appear to be in the obvious file already, but still not available, even when I change the buildings file as well.

2) How do I make my diplomats talk to capital cities ?

[Nicodemus]

Actually, the assassins work. I realise that some changes require a restart of RTW, and the buildings change must be one of them.

Advice on how you took out the diplomats abilities would be appreciated though : am new to RTW modding.

[Zhuge_Liang]

I'm actually not sure how to make the diplomats talk to everybody. Honorius changed this last year when my ISP abandoned me and I have no idea what he did. I'm also in the middle of an animation project right now and have little time to go looking to find out how to fix this. Perhaps there is some information in the workshop section?

If you find anything then please post it here so that other people can change it too if they want. I may include it as a fix in the next patch/release..... whenever that will be.... if ever.

[Nicodemus]

Hi Zhuge,

Attached are a few txt files that will fix the diplomats, a few descriptions etc, and also how to add assassins back into the game.

There's a readme as well.

Always back up before applying. I think these will also work with save games.

Fixes are:

\Rome - Total War\bi\data\export_descr_units.txt
Fixed Argos Javelin unit to allow it to board ships ( sea-faring )

\Rome - Total War\bi\text\expanded_bi.txt
Corrected some faction descriptions ( ie Argos to Argive, Thebian to Theban, Mycenan to Mycenean )

\Rome - Total War\bi\text\export_ancillaries.txt
Corrected some mis-matched descriptions ie {hun_turncoat} should be Hittite Turncoat, not Greek Turncoat

\Rome - Total War\data\text\quotes.txt
Corrected minor spellings,ie 'gotten'

\Rome - Total War\data\descr_cursor_actions
Allowed diplomats to talk to cities as well as other diplomats

[Nicodemus]

Just wanted to add to previous posts how enjoyable this is...

The graphics are really great (yes, I'll vote for that in the awards thingy ) and I think that the unit balancing is pretty good too.

Once chariots can be built it makes a huge difference to battles : they can be very effective against the right troops but also useless if attacked with the correct ones...

Unfortunately, the AI generals sometimes want to just chase the chariots, which is a bit pointless. Is there any way to tune this ?

Lastly, the wooden walls in sieges ( instead of sap points ). Do they do anything ? The AI builds them, but doesn't seem to use them in sieges - just sits with them

[Zhuge_Liang]

Yeah, we had to add the wooden walls because the seige towers needed to be replaced by something. The only function of the wooden wall is to provide cover for the advancing troops (the AI always advance the whole army to the walls anyway so at least with mobile wooden walls they don't all get shot by the arrow towers).

[bobby77]

What a fantastic mod. It really gets the mood of homerian greece just right. Excellent graphics. Interesting and varied unit types.

I've been playing computer games for more than 15 years now and I must say: Rome is just the greatest game ever made. And the mod-community and this shining Troy mod improves and rejuvenates the brilliant game once again.

However, when I played this mod, I found the starting characters a bit dull. They were just 'greek' or 'eastern'. In this way the characters are clean tablets, whose tale is still to be written, but I wanted it another way.

Instead I wanted the famous heroes of Homer to be more characterfull from the start. I've made a little mini-sub-mod - so now Hektor, Ajas, Odysseus, Achilleus etc. have different traits, including a special hero-trait.

Also I was thinking of changing the 'influence' marker for the characters to one named 'fame' - and then letting the characters gain fame based upon their deeds (adding and changing traits and triggers). But this idea exceeded may limited modding skills. Just wanted to toss the idea out - anyone fell free to use it.

Attached to this post is my mini-sub-mod adding traits to the starting characters. Also included are a few changes to the units. I lowered the upkeep for the generals units to prevent the player and the ai from going broke in the early game. Furthermore I took away the phthia general units missile capability - it doesn't go well together with it's tendency to go berserk.

Provided as is. Unzip in the Troy total war directory. Leave the unit_descr out if you don't want the lowered upkeep.

[Zhuge_Liang]

Thanks for your contributions Nicodemus and bobby77. I imagine that in the future there may be other slight changes made as I and others continue to tinker with the mod in a similar way that George Lucas constantly tinkers with his star wars movies.

[Nicodemus]

Hi bobby77,
I too, played around with desr_strat to give the characters traits and ancillaries. I also switched a couple of rebel provinces to Aleysha & Lycia, as I noticed they were always overwhelmed by Lydia ( usually ). I also changed the diplomacy as it was set to base BI. Now most factions are neutral, except toward Thrace & Doria.

However, once I started on that I found that I had to go through other changes as well, since the Religion(Trait)/culture(culture) implementation causes a few hiccups with these.

I noticed that with Argos, I kept on getting new characters coming of age as an Eastern trait instead of Greek ( doesn't help when trying to manage a Greek city . Its because the the 'culture' of most of the factions is eastern, but this is different to the 'religion'/trait of Eastern. So when a character comes of age, and his father isn't around, he drops through those "same-as-dad" triggers to one that says "if eastern culture give him an Eastern trait" ! Logical, but not what I want.

Same for ancillaries,as they are usually based around the 'culture' of the faction, and not the trait. This means Thrace and Doria ( Barbarian) end up with non-barbarian ancillaries as their culture isn't barbarian ! Confusing, but it happens.

I've resolved to go through the ancillaries as a start and actually make them fit what TTW seems to want, so eventually I will end up with things like the relics in BI becoming things like "Spear of Athene" for the Amazons etc..(and they will actually get it too ! )

As you say, more a mini-mod of TTW than anything else.

I think the idea of a "fame" trait is great, but you'd have to keep re-generating the characters ( ie Ajax, Achilles etc ) to keep this going through the generations. Might be hard to do....

Regardless, I think the graphics and unit balance are great and enjoy playing this mod.

My main campaign as Argos has seen me remove most of Greece and I am now up against the 'barbarians' of Doria and Thrace : looking forward to the next set of battles !

[bobby77]

Hi Nicodemus

Interesting ideas you've got. Please make it available online when you think it's ready.

About the culture/religion problem - I've encountered it as well but still haven't figured it out. As greek Pthia I also sometimes get 'Eastern' characters. Perhaps the key to the problem is looking into the way BI creates characters for the Sassanids. When BI was new I played a few campaigns as the zoroastrian Sassanids - and as far as I recall didn't get any other than 'zoroaster' characters whether it was coming of age, marriage or adoption.

The fame idea was to introduce a snip of rpg into the game. The main aspect of the campaign would still be to build an empire, but as a 'side-quest' you should build up as much 'fame', 'legend' or 'hero'- points for the characters of the ruling line. The aim is to have your characters immortalized as legendary heroes. In this way you start out with all the characters of Homeric fame, but it's up to you to make the next generation equally famous. 'Fame'/'hero'-points or whatever they should be called should be earned winning underdog battles, conquering provinces etc. I think triggers could be set up to do this. The influence-meter text (the mouse-over remarks like: 'This man's opinion carries little weight') should be changed to a scale going from 'This man is so unnoticible that sometimes his wife forgets his name' to 'This man is a legendary hero. Tales of his deeds will be told and admired millia'.

[Nicodemus]

Hi bobby77,

The Religion/culture thing basically means that you have to change a number of the triggers, and also the culture file.

What I have done is to change the culture of Thrace, Doria and Amazonia to 'barbarian'. This ensures that they receive barbarian ancillaries, ie 'famous warrior' as opposed to the more civilised 'decorated hero'. They still have a Religion ( ie trait ) of Barbarian though, so the characters will pick up the trait from their father. This, plus a fix to the coming of age triggers, means that 'fatherless' 16-year-olds will end up with the correct Religion/trait of Barbarian/Eastern/Greek , although there is also a chance that they gain the 'disillusioned' trait with this

I think that the intention of the mod was to have more than 3 cultures ( ie NOT Religions) so that the various ancillaries & linked triggers could also be used. It looks like this diodn't quite make it into the final product, which is why some of the ancillaries ( ie Hun Turncoat has a description of 'hates Greeks' and can't be picked up by eastern culture ) have the wrong description and can't actually be picked up by those that need them.

I changed the 'Hun Turncoat' to Hittite Turncoat and , with the change of Amazon culture from eastern to barbarian, they now pick it up after battles.

I'll gladly attach it when I've updated as much as I can.

[Zhuge_Liang]

I intend to have a look at the issue at some stage, perhaps we could all work together to sort something out. I'm really busy at the moment though, so it may be a few weeks before I can even look at TTW again.

[Nicodemus]

Hi Bobby77/Zhuge,

Sadly, things take time, but..

So far, the Greeks have their own culture now ( the roman, with Eastern flavour so there is no apparent visual change : probably makes an upload that bit bigger though as you have to add in the UI folders & cards). I tested with a few ancillaries and traits and all seems to assign OK.

Since they have the 'roman' culture, I can now give their oppoents a real Greek Turncoat to assist in battles.

It looks like the original idea was that Troy should also have a culture, so I will do that, but I am also drawn to improving the position of Amazons s they seem to have nowhere to go, being surrounded by Hittites. Maybe boost their military, or remove the Hittite coastal province that restricts them ?

I also experimented with using the Client Kingdoms mod so as to have conquered kingdoms offer troops occasionally. Almost works.

Lastly, since this an 'heroic' mod, I think that maybe adding some 'god events' into it might be fun, ie with the correct godly traits + priest, you are "helped out" by Zeus boosting your army/command ability/money ( even 'fame').

[Zhuge_Liang]

That all sounds interesting . I'll have more free time over easter, so maybe we can add more features and throw an installer together then.

[Nicodemus]

Attached should be an example of a turncoat ( Lydian ) and an office, which have called "Annointed Commander" but is technically {office_eran_spahbod}.
This one turned up naturally in the final rounds of my Argos campaign,which was nice

Other things seem to work as well, so things are looking good.

I finally managed to win as Argos, despite having a hard time from Lydia ( presumably because I captured Troy ). Thrace with tough chariots is quite a prospect, but just not enough of them....Lost a battle, but not the war

Voting: I have managed a couple, but am being prevented a couple of times. Maybe you really need 50 posts ?!