A Magna Mundi: Rome, of sorts? An open letter to modders

[Cheexsta]

This was originally going to be a PM to some of the more prominent modders in the EUR community, but the list started to get too long so I figured it'd just be easier to make it a public post

Let's face it, this is probably an idea everyone has had since the release of EUR. That is, we need a big mod that changes even the biggest fundamental aspects of the game.

For those who have never played it, Magna Mundi for EU3 is a great mod that aims to create a better historical setting, and updates and expands the map, event chains, ideas, decisions, etc. For me, it really provided something extra for the game and made what I thought was a mediocre game (vanilla EU3, before the expansions) into a playable one. After the expansions, things only got better.

So what I'm thinking is that Rome needs the same treatment. The potential is there, and what we as modders have done so far is merely the tip of the proverbial iceberg.

Goals

1. Historically accurate setting. We all know that from EU3, Paradox has started to take the stance of setting up historical conditions and letting the player go from there. EUR has the basics already set up, but there's plenty of work that can be done, including:
   a) Proper country setups. Macedonia should be facing a civil war and be beset by barbarians at the start, for example.
   b) More historical army strengths and weaknesses to create more diversity between the different states.
   c) More accurate relations between states, as well as a few other tweaked relations to force more historical resolutions (eg, Carthage and Egypt should rarely go to war).
2. Many more event sequences, based on historical events. For example, the Socii Wars could be forced if the right conditions are met in Rome. Or the Ptolemies might run low on Greek mercenaries, reducing their manpower for a limited time if they've lost too many men in a war.
3. More of an addendum to the above: internal politics events. VV has greatly expanded internal politics, but in many ways it's still lacking. I'd like to see characters pushing for laws to be passed; for there to be bloodshed on account of unpopular laws; characters conspiring with and against each other, etc.
4. Many more laws and decisions. Laws would be things with ongoing effects, while Decisions would be more like one-off manually-triggered events.
5. New countries and cultures. As an interesting sidenote, I've noticed the "accepted_culture" code is still in EUR, yet nothing makes use of it. This might be something that we can use for cultural absorption events (ie, a culture becomes an accepted culture first, then those provinces start to turn to the country's own culture).
6. Changes to governments, especially Barbarians and tribes. Something really needs to be done here, they're just too dull at the moment. The generic "Barbarians" have always been a subject of contention since EUR came out, and tribal countries don't seem terribly interesting to play. Monarchies need a bit of love, too.

A good place for us to start would be a mix of RIMP and the Mod Collection. Basically, any mod that already exists that improves the game should be included from the start and could then be used as a basis for more specific and targetted changes.

What do you all think? Any additions for the above list? Any corrections? Anything you think is absolute rubbish?

 

[orwell]

I hadn't intended on this being so long, but the pithy do like to write. If you can't be fucked to bother reading this, skip to the bottom.

1a) A good idea, though perhaps secondary or part of other ideas raised.

1b) Army changes, while a good idea, may not be going far enough. MM diversifies through giving you 3 national ideas at the start, perhaps something like this could be implemented. You're available 3 (or 4, or has anyone been able to get in 5? One from each venue would be great) could be used as sort of flags to represent the state of the nation. A backwards society in Britain may have a druidic focus, with another idea promoting defense, and a third one representing what kind of economy it currently supports. Or maybe something civic. Implementing the 3 key traits of a society this way would be a worthwhile goal I think. It could depend on civilization value plus a range of other ones deemed fitting. Changing these would represent a shift in the nature of society itself.

So after being vassalized by Rome, this society may go from being disorderly, open, tribal, to stratified and somewhat disciplined. As it gained civilization value, and presuming the game went on that long, England may emerge. Demonstrating that shift from societies that were tribal and had the loosest cohesion to the height of the unity of Rome, and perhaps it's potential for decline as well. A sufficient drop in 'civilization' would send ANY nation back centuries, if not millenniums. Even today it's still very visible. Between Britain, the Balkans, strict arabic nations, and Afghanistan. All varying levels of civilization. But in the game, the greatest difference between Rome and some back water is hardly notable at all, really. Sure, some options might be limited, but you're still uninspired by them as can be seen. However, to avoid merely nerfing backwater nations any more in place of 'modern' ones it's important to develop the internal politic module; this alone I think is the most essential component of energizing the EU:R community. With nations feeling vibrant and unique, you can really be engrossed even despite the relative handicap in character management.

1c) I believe can be addressed through a much improved map. The size of the territories seem, more or less, as big as they are in EUIII, and that game covers the entire world. While additional province management would be a pain, I don't know if we can get a really good model of relations without realizing that these are huge distances we're working with. From what I've read anyhow, I've gotten the impression that much of the reason war between Egypt and Carthage was limited was because the border of their territories was desert. You've no reason to march from the life giving nile to the middle of nowhere, excepting Cyrene. So if there was a couple absolutely low value provinces in there, plus a little help with the AI, there should be no reason to go a-conquering. It's unfortunate that VV didn't introduce the AI stuff that IN got, but hopefully we'll get another expansion giving us that and proper character control to forge dynasties.

Along this line, another MM concept is the administration capability of a nation. Rome was held together seemingly as much by the value of it's conquests and discipline of it's armies and people as it was by good administration. By making those low value provinces a chore to enforce control in, it would give ever more incentive not to go and conquer the other half of Africa that one faction doesn't control. Any nation that wishes to expand such will need to be held together by many factors, whether it's the ability of Alexander, or the bureaucracy of Rome.

2) While I agree to some extent based on historical events, history should only occur on a broad scale. There was no guarantee of the Socii wars at the start of the game, so why should they occur unless the proper pre-conditions are there? Again like MM, historical outcomes, NOT historical accuracy, should be, for lack of a better phrase, the watchword of any major mod. Otherwise you either restrict the player and hurt gameplay, or develop enormous alternate history chains. Of course, researching as much history of the period and developing plenty of potential event pools would be a great addition to the game for involvement in the world. Like the Barbary pirates of MM, the pirates of the Adriatic could eventually lead to an attempt at invasion and occupation of the region.

3) This is the head of the nail that must be pounded upon; without the internal politics of the nation, the individual nature of these nations can not be properly realized. However the active modders shouhld choose to approach a major mod, creating a integrated system of politics, both internal and potentially external, should be a goal. When implementing whatever it is you want to add, ask yourself; Can this work within the broader system? This I feel is something MM is in need of addressing itself, we walk on the moon, not the beach. Every political action should weigh into a system, as nothing is decided and cast into a void like much of most strategy games are. If you pull men for the army, then you deprive yourself of men to work in the fields in MM, one particular example of how the mod is interconnected. Of course, it seems like slavery should offset that effect at least some, but if it does I haven't noticed it.

4) Dead on, nothing really more to say here besides perhaps realizing that, while we may not have provincial decisions, using a decision to hide a collection of decisions, you may be able to achieve something approaching a provincial decision from a national one. So you enact "Provincial decisions" which opens up a subset of specific province tasks, and from there potentially it would display every decision, each affecting a special province. Alternatively, if you can conduct spy missions, or their equivalent, in provinces, this could also act as a way to trigger events that would function like decisions.

Five and Six I believe I've already addressed, and I have little to add myself besides that I'm interested in modding Rome at some point in the future and will be watching.

Since it's likely the person reading this skipped to the bottom I'll just say I think it's imperative that a community project of internal politics gets going above all else.

 

[Darthvegeta800]

All very ambitious.
Though for now i'd just go for the 'mod collection'.
Make small mods adding new content, laws, countries, titles and gather them together like Descartes is doing. MM is 'very' big work.
And regretfully (in my eyes unjustly) EU:R is less popular than EUIII so finding enough modders will be hard.

 

[kristoff]

I'd go for Cheexsta's proposal: MM-like mod for Rome is necessary. Many issues were already addressed, but there are much more waiting to be improved. If you just simply merge different existing mods, the whole thing becomes more and more unbalanced.

IMHO, such mod should end with no-brainer choices. I.e. why populists are only bad? When in power, they could for example lower tax income (public money spend to please the plebs, tax evasions, forgiving debts ect.), make characters less loyal (intensified clash between "new people" and old establishment), but lower revolt risk (they stirr up things going for power - when they get it, why would they incite people against government?; also they please the plebs with grants, tax reductions ect.), speed slaves to freemen or freemen to citizens conversion (broadening of citizenship) or raise manpower (capite censi into the army). It's just an example.

First, I'd love to see National Ideas totally revamped. Current ones are silly, unbalanced, have nothing in common with historical reality and - again - are only good. Same with laws. Characters should have passing or revoking specific laws in their objectives, tied with loyalty drops or rises. Cancelling debts, giving citizenship to more people ect. - such things should provoke bloody internal conflicts and political struggle, not just a click for -1 stab hit and voila.

 

[Duke of Bavaria]

I thibk the most important step would be to get as many modders together for a major project first and someone to coordinate it. The details should be discussed later. That being said, i would like to offer my humble skills. I also think the mod should not be too deterministic, but plausible and the focus should be on internal politics and character interaction, as this part has lots of potential in Rome, but ATM is very dull.
So who thinks he can lead this project?

 

[comagoosie]

While I think Cheexsta's idea is brilliant, the trouble will be finding the modders and the time. I support this motion, but I have no modding experience, so I won't be able to help.

 

[orwell]

While I think Cheexsta's idea is brilliant, the trouble will be finding the modders and the time. I support this motion, but I have no modding experience, so I won't be able to help.

Unbridled ambition says that won't be a major obstacle in X number of months. Admittedly I thought I'd be much further than I am, kinda got sideswiped by school there.

 

[TheLand]

Well, there have been at least 2 serious mod efforts started, but both on Rome rather than Vae Victis.

There was SPQR, principally by myself and Mate0815, which was getting somewhere, but was basically abandoned when Vae Victis was announced, because VV dealt with most of the territory we were working on.

There was also another (closed) mod project called Mare Nostrum, which also seems to have stalled.

There was never a particularly big modding community. Indeed, I only got involved with modding it myself because there was a truly blatant problem with the rate of colonisation, which I saw an easy solution to. I didn't actually have any modding knowledge or a great deal of knowledge of the history of the period, though producing an easy, early mod was great fun to do

Personally my gaming time is going to be preoccupied with beta-testing HOI3, and then modding it when it's out. I'd be happy to contribute to a mod for VV from time to time.

If you're going to start on such a project then I recommend you have a look through the SPQR forums on terranova.dk and also at some of the 0.3 and 0.4 versions of it.

 

[mate0815]

after TheLand (chieftain of SPQR) has answered, i will give my comments, too.

1. great ideas, cheexsta.
2. esp. the system of climates in rimp is a new thing, that should be improved.
3. one point i want to focus additional: a more historical creation of governments and nationbuilding.

for example: the greek nations are more a liga of cities, then a compact nation. that can be represented by a lot of small nations (what vanilla do) or as province modifiers (as SPQR it tries) with "states of the province inside a nation" (imperial, allied, fullcitizenship).

i prefer a modified second way, so (triggered by governmenttypes and culture) nations can be created more different and a lot of internal stuff can be triggered by the state of the province.

what are you thinking about this ...

 

[Cheexsta]

1b) Army changes, while a good idea, may not be going far enough. MM diversifies through giving you 3 national ideas at the start, perhaps something like this could be implemented. You're available 3 (or 4, or has anyone been able to get in 5? One from each venue would be great) could be used as sort of flags to represent the state of the nation. A backwards society in Britain may have a druidic focus, with another idea promoting defense, and a third one representing what kind of economy it currently supports. Or maybe something civic. Implementing the 3 key traits of a society this way would be a worthwhile goal I think. It could depend on civilization value plus a range of other ones deemed fitting. Changing these would represent a shift in the nature of society itself.

This is exactly what I had in mind, down to a tee. I've even drafted up a new ideas.txt with new military ideas, completely revamped from the beginning. There are three "types" of Military Ideas: Type 1 deals with the source of manpower (citizen levies, professional soldiers, tribal recruitment, etc); Type 2 deals with the preferred military doctrines (infantry-heavy, cavalry-heavy and balanced); Type 3 deals with a focus on land, naval or combined warfare. Each country has been given 3 Military ideas to define their country, and at the start only has access to 3 specific ideas that best suit their country at that time. Through a mixture of Laws and Decisions, countries will be able to institute military reforms to go from one set of Military ideas to another.

So, to use Rome as a well-known example, they'd start with a Citizen Levy (Type 1) with an Infantry doctrine (Type 2) and a Land preference (Type 3). In order for them to go through the Marian reforms, they'd have to implement a number of Laws: firstly, to let the capti censi (head count) be included in the census and be recorded properly; secondly, a law would have to be passed to let the capti censi into the army and lift the property requirements for the citizen levy type army. Finally, a Decision would need to be made to officially turn your Type 1 Military Idea to "Professional Army". After this, the player would be presented with new laws on how to pay his soldiers: he could grant them land in conquered territory (as Marius did in history, through his then-ally Saturninus in the lex Appuleia), set up colonies in Italy, or any mixture of these (and probably others). There's a lot more boiling around in my head, and not just for Rome.

1c) I believe can be addressed through a much improved map. The size of the territories seem, more or less, as big as they are in EUIII, and that game covers the entire world. While additional province management would be a pain, I don't know if we can get a really good model of relations without realizing that these are huge distances we're working with. From what I've read anyhow, I've gotten the impression that much of the reason war between Egypt and Carthage was limited was because the border of their territories was desert. You've no reason to march from the life giving nile to the middle of nowhere, excepting Cyrene. So if there was a couple absolutely low value provinces in there, plus a little help with the AI, there should be no reason to go a-conquering. It's unfortunate that VV didn't introduce the AI stuff that IN got, but hopefully we'll get another expansion giving us that and proper character control to forge dynasties.

To an extent, it could be addressed through an improved map. RIMP would be a great place to start, but I was thinking specifically of modifying the actual relation level between countries. This isn't possible to do directly through the text files but can be done through the title hack method so the player doesn't even notice the relations being set at the start of the game.

Along this line, another MM concept is the administration capability of a nation. Rome was held together seemingly as much by the value of it's conquests and discipline of it's armies and people as it was by good administration. By making those low value provinces a chore to enforce control in, it would give ever more incentive not to go and conquer the other half of Africa that one faction doesn't control. Any nation that wishes to expand such will need to be held together by many factors, whether it's the ability of Alexander, or the bureaucracy of Rome.

Very good idea, and I think a mod of this scale would be perfect to implement something along these lines. I tried to do something like that in a very general sense with Total Conquest, but I wanted to do as little as possible on such a specific level. This would be a great opportunity to do something more detailed.

2) While I agree to some extent based on historical events, history should only occur on a broad scale. There was no guarantee of the Socii wars at the start of the game, so why should they occur unless the proper pre-conditions are there? Again like MM, historical outcomes, NOT historical accuracy, should be, for lack of a better phrase, the watchword of any major mod. Otherwise you either restrict the player and hurt gameplay, or develop enormous alternate history chains. Of course, researching as much history of the period and developing plenty of potential event pools would be a great addition to the game for involvement in the world. Like the Barbary pirates of MM, the pirates of the Adriatic could eventually lead to an attempt at invasion and occupation of the region.

When I used the phrase "historical events" I should have used "historically-inspired events". I completely agree with you that history should not be forced upon the player like in EU2 (and its AGCEEP mod), that's simply not what the game is about. So, by "Socii Wars" I really mean something along the lines of an event chain starting after a set of very specific conditions (laws that have been passed, decisions that have been made, etc) are met where subject cities get a little irritated at your administration. The events could fizzle out and not have any effect, or they could cause massive uprising like in the historical Social Wars.

There wouldn't be an event specifically called "Social Wars" or whatever, just a general set of events that follow the effects. Just about any country could be affected by a similar set of events, though of course they'd have to be tailored to every major country/culture.

3) This is the head of the nail that must be pounded upon; without the internal politics of the nation, the individual nature of these nations can not be properly realized. However the active modders shouhld choose to approach a major mod, creating a integrated system of politics, both internal and potentially external, should be a goal. When implementing whatever it is you want to add, ask yourself; Can this work within the broader system? This I feel is something MM is in need of addressing itself, we walk on the moon, not the beach. Every political action should weigh into a system, as nothing is decided and cast into a void like much of most strategy games are. If you pull men for the army, then you deprive yourself of men to work in the fields in MM, one particular example of how the mod is interconnected. Of course, it seems like slavery should offset that effect at least some, but if it does I haven't noticed it.

Absolutely agree, nicely said.

4) Dead on, nothing really more to say here besides perhaps realizing that, while we may not have provincial decisions, using a decision to hide a collection of decisions, you may be able to achieve something approaching a provincial decision from a national one. So you enact "Provincial decisions" which opens up a subset of specific province tasks, and from there potentially it would display every decision, each affecting a special province. Alternatively, if you can conduct spy missions, or their equivalent, in provinces, this could also act as a way to trigger events that would function like decisions.

I think I understand what you're saying. As an aside, espionage and more "across the border" politics is definitely something I'd love to look into. I started to dabble in it with Total Conquest, with things like donating provinces to neighbours, and I can see lots of potential in it!

Since it's likely the person reading this skipped to the bottom I'll just say I think it's imperative that a community project of internal politics gets going above all else.

Good point. I think a lot of work can go into making a good set of "general" political events, but every country really needs to be diversified based on its own unique setup. It's quite exciting to think about the possibilities, actually. I wish there was an easier way to transcribe what's actually in my head, I feel sometimes words just can't cut it.

 

[Cheexsta]

All very ambitious.
Though for now i'd just go for the 'mod collection'.
Make small mods adding new content, laws, countries, titles and gather them together like Descartes is doing. MM is 'very' big work.
And regretfully (in my eyes unjustly) EU:R is less popular than EUIII so finding enough modders will be hard.

Indeed, it is big work, but I think EUR can really benefit from it as a community. MM seems to bring EU3 together a lot, and for many it really 'makes' the game. I figure that the more people are interested in EUR, the more likely the devs will reward us with patches and expansions

I'd go for Cheexsta's proposal: MM-like mod for Rome is necessary. Many issues were already addressed, but there are much more waiting to be improved. If you just simply merge different existing mods, the whole thing becomes more and more unbalanced.

I'm inclined to agree. We'd start by merging a few of the current mods out there, and simply use that as a springboard for our own big changes. There are lots of good mods out there already, they could just use some expansion. Cursus Honorum, for example, is a fantastic mod that really reinvigorated Rome as a country for me, it would be great to extend this to all countries. Not just one or two, but all.

IMHO, such mod should end with no-brainer choices. I.e. why populists are only bad? When in power, they could for example lower tax income (public money spend to please the plebs, tax evasions, forgiving debts ect.), make characters less loyal (intensified clash between "new people" and old establishment), but lower revolt risk (they stirr up things going for power - when they get it, why would they incite people against government?; also they please the plebs with grants, tax reductions ect.), speed slaves to freemen or freemen to citizens conversion (broadening of citizenship) or raise manpower (capite censi into the army). It's just an example.

I assume by "end with" you mean "make an end to" no brainer choices--in which case, I fully agree.

First, I'd love to see National Ideas totally revamped. Current ones are silly, unbalanced, have nothing in common with historical reality and - again - are only good. Same with laws. Characters should have passing or revoking specific laws in their objectives, tied with loyalty drops or rises. Cancelling debts, giving citizenship to more people ect. - such things should provoke bloody internal conflicts and political struggle, not just a click for -1 stab hit and voila.

Agreed, see my above post which includes my ideas for National Ideas. There are lots of things that can be done, and the negative effects are just too simple. They should cause friction amongst characters who may not agree with them, while others would greatly support it for whatever reason, etc etc.

I thibk the most important step would be to get as many modders together for a major project first and someone to coordinate it. The details should be discussed later. That being said, i would like to offer my humble skills. I also think the mod should not be too deterministic, but plausible and the focus should be on internal politics and character interaction, as this part has lots of potential in Rome, but ATM is very dull.
So who thinks he can lead this project?

Very, very good point. I'll put my hand up for the leadership spot, but I'll be the first to admit that there are probably better candidates out there. At the moment, not having a full-time working position I can dedicate a fair amount of time to this mod, though.

Well, there have been at least 2 serious mod efforts started, but both on Rome rather than Vae Victis.

There was SPQR, principally by myself and Mate0815, which was getting somewhere, but was basically abandoned when Vae Victis was announced, because VV dealt with most of the territory we were working on.

There was also another (closed) mod project called Mare Nostrum, which also seems to have stalled.

There was never a particularly big modding community. Indeed, I only got involved with modding it myself because there was a truly blatant problem with the rate of colonisation, which I saw an easy solution to. I didn't actually have any modding knowledge or a great deal of knowledge of the history of the period, though producing an easy, early mod was great fun to do

Personally my gaming time is going to be preoccupied with beta-testing HOI3, and then modding it when it's out. I'd be happy to contribute to a mod for VV from time to time.

If you're going to start on such a project then I recommend you have a look through the SPQR forums on terranova.dk and also at some of the 0.3 and 0.4 versions of it.

Many thanks for your input, TheLand, I was hoping you would be able to say something. I noticed you were selected for the HOI3 Beta while I was perusing its forum, congratulations! If you could find the time to contribute that would be most welcome, though it's completely understandable if you can't.

after TheLand (chieftain of SPQR) has answered, i will give my comments, too.

1. great ideas, cheexsta.
2. esp. the system of climates in rimp is a new thing, that should be improved.
3. one point i want to focus additional: a more historical creation of governments and nationbuilding.

for example: the greek nations are more a liga of cities, then a compact nation. that can be represented by a lot of small nations (what vanilla do) or as province modifiers (as SPQR it tries) with "states of the province inside a nation" (imperial, allied, fullcitizenship).

i prefer a modified second way, so (triggered by governmenttypes and culture) nations can be created more different and a lot of internal stuff can be triggered by the state of the province.

what are you thinking about this ...

Well, I think that you can easily argue that every province in a country is ultimately made up of semi-independent cities that are bound together by the larger state by treaties. Most people consider Rome to have "owned" the Italic peninsula, whereas in reality it was more like a set of independent states bound by treaties of alliance and mutual assistance to a central state (Rome). The difference between Rome and the Greek Leagues lies in its level of centralisation, which will be reflected in the Government type. Which is definitely something I have been planning on looking into!

Thanks everyone for the feedback so far, I'm very much looking forward to starting this mod

 

[Cheexsta]

So, following on from Duke of Bavaria's suggestion on getting the modders together first before figuring out details, it's time to ask the question:

Who is interested in joining the team?
What kind of people are we looking for? If you fit any of these criteria and are willing to help out, then raise your hand:

1. If you know your way around the EUR text files. Chances are, if you know how to create events and understand how they work, then you'll be able to pick up the rest of the game's modding language extremely easily since they're all based off the same set of text file commands.
2. If you are any good at graphical mods. I'm sure we'll need lots of icons, flags and other graphical changes somewhere along the line. I dream of the day we even get around to changing the 3D models (and/or their skins) on the map...
3. If you have a good knowledge of history during this period, or at least have reliable access to both primary and secondary sources.
4. If you have a willingness--and time--to learn any of the above.

Just a simple "Aye" is all that is necessary for now. Then, we can work out the details about what we need to achieve and where best to start.

 

[Jayavarman]

Good luck.

 

[TheLoneGunman]

Well you can count me in, since returning to EUR and starting to mess with VV, I've realized that it has much more potential then we've even scratched the surface on.

I dare say my own thoughts might be a little more ambitious.

1. I'd like to see all of Paradox's events and traits either thrown out completely, or redone one-by-one. Many of their original events are almost worthless or don't do anything significant in VV. IMHO, the entire system needs to be built around VV from here on out. We need more events covering wide ranges of possibilities to keep players on their toes and managing their characters efficiently. The Paradox approach to this was to make everyone eventually turn into a Populist if you weren't careful, and that just isn't good enough. We've got loyalty, popularity, prominence, wealth, and family prestige to work with here, and those are only the basics!

2. Another thought I've had is just as drastic. While we can't extend the timeline of the game past Emperor Augustus, we CAN extend the game backwards! If anything, some of the best parts of antiquity occured in the time leading up to Rome's rise to power. You have the wars between Greece and Persia, the wars between Sparta and Athens, the wars between Thebes and Sparta, the Samnite Wars, the Latin Wars, Phillip of Macedonia's war on Greece, Alexander's War on the Persian Empire, and then the Successor Wars which split Alexander's Empire, and those are only to name a few of the wars that happened during that period.

It also gives more room for technology, since some of the technological discoveries in EUR are ridiculous for their timeframe, like fighting in a Manipular System. The Romans had already been fighting in such a system for some number of years. Not if we turn the clocks back though! It also allows people to play as a fledgling Rome, that isn't already the nearly unstoppable superpower it will become by the official gamestart.

It's a big bite to swallow for sure, but thinking of getting all of that accomplished would make VV a brand new and much more exciting game for anyone.

PS: I'm not asking you guys to adopt my vision, just sharing it with you, I'll still gladly help out with whatever basic modding is getting accomplished!

 

[TheLand]

It also gives more room for technology, since some of the technological discoveries in EUR are ridiculous for their timeframe, like fighting in a Manipular System. The Romans had already been fighting in such a system for some number of years. Not if we turn the clocks back though! It also allows people to play as a fledgling Rome, that isn't already the nearly unstoppable superpower it will become by the official gamestart.

There is a general point about technology - technological change in this period was really glacially slow. None of the tech triggers on buildings really work in the context, and the driver of military improvements was very rarely technological innovation.

One way I started to model this in SPQR was to give civilized nations much lower Morale, which increased over time after fighting lots of battles with Celts. So the main improvement in Rome's army comes from learning to win against Celts, not because someone is sitting in Rome thinking up a new kind of spear to use.

As for buildings, I was starting to think about having buildings made available by province and government characteristics, rather than by technology, but never got very far with it...

 

[TheLoneGunman]

One way I started to model this in SPQR was to give civilized nations much lower Morale, which increased over time after fighting lots of battles with Celts. So the main improvement in Rome's army comes from learning to win against Celts, not because someone is sitting in Rome thinking up a new kind of spear to use.

Well it's a known fact that Rome routinely "borrowed" tactics, weapons, and armor from the enemies it fought, combining them into an effective killing machine. It was this ability to adapt that made them so successful against other nations.

So fighting the Samnites might lead to using manipular tactics, while fighting in Iberia might allow the use of the gladius.

Even the Greeks had to adapt the use of peltasts to their armies after the Thracians showed them a thing or two about mobility.

So I'm in full-agreement with you there.

 

[orwell]

I'd be happy to contribute concepts and what I dig up from my history books, and I'm already familiar with EUIII's modding ability, so it isn't a great leap to carry into VV. Unfortunately between school and an EUIII probject, I'm not sure how much I could jump in for actual coding. We'll see how that'd play out. I'll definitely be keeping an eye on the community.

 

[mate0815]

So, following on from Duke of Bavaria's suggestion on getting the modders together first before figuring out details, it's time to ask the question:

Who is interested in joining the team?
What kind of people are we looking for? If you fit any of these criteria and are willing to help out, then raise your hand:

1. If you know your way around the EUR text files. Chances are, if you know how to create events and understand how they work, then you'll be able to pick up the rest of the game's modding language extremely easily since they're all based off the same set of text file commands.
2. If you are any good at graphical mods. I'm sure we'll need lots of icons, flags and other graphical changes somewhere along the line. I dream of the day we even get around to changing the 3D models (and/or their skins) on the map...
3. If you have a good knowledge of history during this period, or at least have reliable access to both primary and secondary sources.
4. If you have a willingness--and time--to learn any of the above.

Just a simple "Aye" is all that is necessary for now. Then, we can work out the details about what we need to achieve and where best to start.

well, counting me in, too.
ok, i´ve only experiences in point 1 of your list but i hope my "jobs" in bughunting, finetuning, merging mods & adaptions (e.g. SPQR for RIMP) and a spleen for correct translations english -> german can help to improve the ideas.
spare time is a problem, sometimes i can nothing spend and other times there are a couple of days possible. lets see, how it works.

 

[Duke of Bavaria]

I would like to contribute, i am a beginner when it comes to modding, but i already know the basics of a .txt file when i see it. I can say what it does adn can perhaps change some things. I only have problems to figure out how the different parts of the code are connected and what triggers etc. are available. So i could be useful to edit larger chunks of data in files.
I am a history buff and very good at finding data and infos for events and adopting them into "game language" (not code).

 

[Darthvegeta800]

Well if anything try to build forth from what is already made. As seen in the mod of Descartes which gathers several. It'll somewhat give you a headstart in some regards. Especially cursus honorum and extra nations are handy.