Redeo Ad Exordium: Back to New Beginnings

Description

The aim of RAE is to unify the best elements of M2TW Vanilla and Kingdoms with some own special contributions, but without losing this special Total War Vanilla feeling. 31 original Kingdoms & MTW2 factions fighting for their existence or for the world domain, in the most completest "Kingdoms-Grand Campaign" manner. Adding Ireland, Wales, Norway, Novgorod, Lithuania, Teutonic Order, Jerusalem and Antioch to the already existing MTW2 vanilla factions. 28 factions will be playable including the Saxons. Even Mongols and Timurids are waiting for your Leadership, but without getting rid of their (now!) fully functional and daunting invasions, if ai-controlled!!! At the campaign start, each faction will be the owner of max. 2-4 settlements only, going to a 'pre' MTW2 vanilla start feeling (year 1079). In order to expand, your faction needs to get control of the nearest rebelling settlements, from those many presents at the start. Coz later, to expand you must hold steady, in front of others real powerful factions. In the course of this, thanks to the vastly improved AI, now it really worth to decide, if adapting a diplomatic or a militaristic strategy! Despite all changes, the main aim for Redeo Ad Exordium, is the functionality and the intention to maintain the right 'near MTW2-vanilla/Kingdoms feeling', as far as possible, without adding to many personal influences to this MOD - except for many good stuff from the Kingdoms expansion and some exclusive features, many ideas and fixes, from the RAE Team!

Features

Unique campaign random generator:

• Starting rebel-settlements garrison-strength
• Starting-region-ownership assignment
• Kings purse
• Starting faction standings and relationships
• Initial region religion value

-Ai-pathfinding-friendly map (Medium-Map), with 150% landmass of the original Grand Campaign Map with more than 195 regions

-3 fully visually and functionally integrated World Wonders on the map (Pyramids, Stonehenge, Parthenon)

-Many other features, tweaks and fixes, see the changelog for details.

The Team

Userpro : Mod leader & developer, Ideas & research, Scripting, Coding, Mapping, Sound-coding, Texting, Animation & Model-coding, Skinning, Graphic Artworks, Alpha-Testing

MasterMint ( founding member) : 3D modeling leader & skinning, Overall consultant & Unit specialist, Coding, Beta-testing

Evil_Dane (founding member) : Beta-testing (suspended, Jul.2009)

Hxr030771 (founding member) : Overall/Historical Consultant, Beta-testing(Missing in Action, Apr.2010)

MiiKLL ( auxiliary - since the beginning) : XAi-specialist, Beta-testing, translations

Sashone (member since Apr.2009) : Texting, Homepage, Art-work, Translation, TWC co-moderator, music composer

weissnicht : ( member since May 2009) Skinning, Coding, TWZ co-moderator & quite recently also 3D-modeling

Dave Scarface ( special guest - since Sep.2009) : special guest star & voluntary beta-tester

Visual Material

Stonehenge:

Parthenon:

Army Generals:

The Map

History

The RAE mod started out to be a sub-mod of KGCM and the mod almost fell apart there. Soon after trouble started to arise, the team members decided to start from scratch on a mod of their own. And thus, the new RAE was born.

This is an interview with the Mod Leader, Userpro in the Eagle Standard:

Why and how did you get into modding and how long have you been doing it?

I've been modding now for 1-odd year with M2TW. After being a team member of KGCM and helping Dave Scarface out a bit with his great mod, I found out that modding is so easy (meant ironically). I have my own special ideas, to create a mod with all Kingdoms and original M2TW components united, plus some unique features of our own, in a combination that I've not found in other M2TW mods.

Your favorite/worst modding moment so far?

My worst moment in modding so far was the moment when RAE was still a submod of KGCM and at a certain point I realized during the mapping work, that the M2TW AI was not doing well, mainly due to mapping issues.

Sad moment but true, I was near resignation after this, until I decided to make all my mod work from scratch. I began with the creation of a whole new map, and so, my worst moment turned into one of my favorite moments, because RAE was reborn as an independent mod. The founding of the RAE developer team, and the following assignment of our own hosted mod forum here on TWC, was a really unforgettable favorite moment, too.

What are the mod's key features and goals?

The perfect and carefully tailored integration of as many components as possible, from all the Kingdoms campaigns, and from the M2TW original campaign, in one new great mod. The fully functional and visible integration, and also the enhancement of the world wonder concept of Rome TW, in a new designed AI-friendly balanced medium-campaign-map. Also some new ideas, like an unique and hopefully well balanced random-generator for some important initial-campaign-key-values, like the initial region-religion-level, that depends also from the random-generated garrison strength,of all rebel-settlements; the kings-purse values; faction-relationships, and war and alliances of all RAE factions.

How much has the mod progressed so far roughly?

The internal release, of the most-advanced and fully functional beta version, is about 97% done in the final balancing and bug-finding work. I would guess that the overall progress of the final and official RAE release version, in terms of remaining work -- not the remaining time -- is about 85%.

What about any unexpected/major breakthroughs/problems?

There's a major breakthrough every time we are able to somehow beat the modding limits and known modding boundaries.