Europa Barborum 1.0 Released

Sand

The rather excellent Rome Total War mod, Europa Barborum has been released.

If you have played it before youll probably have downloaded it by now. If you havent, its worth the download - completely revitalises the game with an overhaul of units, building, factions, traits and ancilliaries, special events and historical locations.

Pugsley

Fan f**king tastic, remember playing one of the first releases of this, best R:TW mod about back then, even topped the far more established R:TR. Just have to reinstall R:TW now though.

Pyr0

Re-installing RTW just to play this, sounds class !

uglyjohn

what do you guys think so far? im installing rome again to play it...i saw this mod about a 18 months ago when it was .6 or .7 and got really excited, looking forward to finally playing it.

Sand

I think its excellent tbh. There are weaknesses in the TW series [Diplomacy, weak strategic and battle AI] that modders simply cant solve with the tools they are given, but these guys have done incredible work with the traits system. Im playing a Macedonian campaign currently, my main general is rampaging around Asia Minor installing client kings [ whose loyalty Im coming to realise is not unquestionable...], whilst his treacherous cousin in Korinth has just competed in and won the Olympics. Meanwhile, his brother - in - law has travelled to Sparta and is now participating in the Agoge.

On an annual basis the "Year in history" scroll gives a run down of major events that historically happened on those years. If your general conquers specific areas, he gets messages relating his victorys. Roman generals can earn triumphs in Rome, and theres a province system for Rome where governors can be assigned to control a province [ several in game settlements] via the trait system.

Theyve also got a basic model of supply and logistics worked in via the traits system, a ethnic or social caste for each character to model particular tribes or plebians and patricians. Each little bit of work theyve done is small on its own, [loads I've forgotten too] and maybe doesnt jump out at you, but taken together its a much needed update. This is the game that the vanilla version could have been. I dont think it needed flaming pigs to be commerically viable.

The team are currently working towards Europa Barborum 2.0 which will be based on the M2:TW engine. Sadly, again it seems unlikely they will be able to solve the root problems in the TW series because they tend to be hardcoded. Theres also a question of whether they can actually model a phalanx properly in the M2:TW engine.

Pyr0

I'm sure they will be able to model the Phalanx using the MTW2 engine, if you look at the Halbierds they'd use the same concept for a phalanx.