Roma Surrectum
Contents
Overview
Roma Surrectum II is a total modification of Rome- Total War, and the most recent piece of work by the Roma Surrectum team. It begins in 217 B.C (or A.U.C 536), with Hannibal in Italy during the second Punic War. The campaign map covers the whole Mediterranean, much of Northern Europe, North Africa, and the East. From Iberia to Persia, and Egypt to Scandinavia, there are 19 playable factions from all over the ancient world.
The mod is well known for its legion system- giving the Roman faction 28 unique recruitable legions. RS-II offers a fun and mesmerizing gameplay and promises RTW players utmost satisfaction. For new players a difficulty of M/M or M/H (Campaign/Battle) is recommended while experienced players can start with H/H difficulty to get the full nail-biting experience of the mod.
Features
Factions
The following factions are included in Roma Surrectum II:
Unplayable factions are:
- Slave
- Free barbarians/Roman rebels
Campaign Map
The map has been totally redone, using NASA satellite data for realism. All the campaign map textures are new, and are trying to imitate more closely reality with darker tones than the bright Roma Surrectum I map.
Intriguing Features
- Can work for Steam users
- A completely redesigned environment
- Brand new and in some cases custom made faction music
- 28 unique legions
- Brand new models and skins for all factions as well as new factions
- Unique campaigns tailored to each specific faction
- An immersive yet understandable building tree
- Several new battle-map buildings
- New Traits and ancillaries, including Roman leadership tree envisioned by Calvin (R.I.P)
- Two Roman Rebellions
- A redesigned campaign map
- New banners and UI
- Regional resistance script that generates enemy armies after conquering a key enemy city
- Free People Faction to simulate independent kingdoms
- Diversified "barbarian" factions to highlight their uniqueness
- Diverse Areas of Recruitment
- Large mercenary pool
- Presence of Historical characters
- AUC (Ab Urbe Condita) system of year-keeping to prevent the 66BC CTD
- Non-adoptable characters capable of forming new family trees
- Greater Population control through buildings
- Standalone Launcher
- Faction Intro movies - Available in Separate Download
- Custom victory conditions for each faction for improved AI and a more difficult game
- Modesty patch for those who do not wish to see a completely naked unit
Legions of Rome
The most defining feature of Roma Surrectum has always been the legions. Now there are a total of 28 unique legions, each with their own area of recruitment, appearance, and standards. Because each legion has its own particular Area of Recruitment (AOR), is unique to itself, and can only be recruited after the Marian Reforms, people often ask that one question: How/When can I recruit the legions? Rest assured, this is a simple guideline to to facilitate you in recruiting the legions. Each RS-II Legion has it's name according to history, numbers and standards, can be recruited in the respective historical area they served. Each has an ordinary cohort and a first cohort. They wear equipment ranging from the old Iorica Hamata, to the shiny Iorica Segmentata, with numerous different kinds of helmets, scabbards and belts.
The 28 legions are divided into two categories: the Hamata legions and the Segmentata legions with the Hamata being representative of the legions that existed in the latter days of the Republic and the Segmentata legions being representative of the legions that were levied after the establishment of the Principate.
- The Hamata legions
- The Segmentata Legions
Legion's Recruitment
RS-II involves a tactical way to recruit Legions. You can:-
- Initiate the Marian Reforms by building an imperial palace in Akragas (located in Sicily). This allows you to recruit non-named and non-numbered legions.
- To set the basework for recruiting numbered and named legions, you must build a Supply of Army Rations in the city you wish to recruit from
- To be able to recruit the Hamata or "Republican" legions, you must build a Roman Fortress in the city you wish to recruit from.
- To be able to recruit the Segmentata or "Imperial" legions, you must build a Curia Hostilia in the city you wish to recruit from.
- To be able to recruit early Praetorian legions, you must build the Praetorian Guard Training Ground in Rome.
- To be able to recruit late Praetorian legions, you must build the Castra Praetoria in Rome.
Other Features
RS-II Launcher
Roma Surrectum II is using a launcher which makes it easy to choose among the numerous options available at start. This launcher is the only way to start RS II, and requires a relatively recent version of .net framework to work. The launcher starts automatically when double-clicking on the shortcut created by the installer.
Script Usage
Roma Surrectum II uses a background script which must be activated each time a campaign is started or loaded from a save. This script includes numerous events like the different Roman rebellions, armies spawning, and the Roman AI recruitment. To activate the script, click on a city, when the advisor pops up, click on the "Show Me How" button to activate the script. If the "Show Me How" button is grayed out, then simply click the advisor to activate the script. Each time the script is activated, a denarius will be added to your treasury. To verify script activation, check to see that your treasury has gone up a single denarius. Caveat: The script will not activate even if you do click on the "Show me how" button on the advisor if you failed to exit the game upon switching campaigns. To ensure proper script activation, quit from Rome Total War and re-launch RSII via the launcher before starting a new campaign.
Roman Rebellions
Roman history has had its fair share of rebellions, whether from allied cities of Rome or even her own generals. In Roma Surrectum II there are two large rebellions that faces the Roman Faction. These are NOT pre-set rebellions that will occur on a certain year but rather triggered rebellions based on the diplomatic, military, and territorial powers of the Roman Faction.
The First Rebellion occurs at the very beginning of the game. Set during the height of the Second Punic War when Hannibal is in Italy and marching towards the gates of Rome, this rebellion is meant to simulate a political what-if situation in the precarious region of southern Italy. In this time, southern Italian cities are still a relatively new addition to the Republic. The news of Hannibal's presence in Italy and his many victories against Roman armies were a hopeful sign to the southern Italian cities of possible liberation from the oppression of the Romans. Following the Roman's defeat at Cannae, the most powerful city-state in the region: Capua, defected from Rome. Capua's defection led to the further defection of several other Italian city-states. They were more hopeful in Hannibal's military prowess than they were fearful of Rome's wrath. In Roma Surrectum II, the mod simulates this defection. Lose too many battles and southern Italy will revolt. Will Roman valor carry the day, or will you crumble to the combined armies of Hannibal and his newfound Italian allies?
The Second Rebellion occurs towards the end of your campaign. Namely, it occurs when you reach 85 settlements. This is a simulation of a combination of the Republican Civil War of Julius Caesar, the Civil War of Octavian, as well as the tumultuous civil war of the Year of the Four Emperors. Entire provinces will be lost, large swathes of land will turn themselves to the Roman Rebels Faction, and your armies will be near decimated if the rebellion is big enough. This is the defining moment of any Roman player's mettle. Do you retreat towards a base of operation and slowly rebuild? Will you trade space and lives for time? Will you mount an all out assault against Rome and the feared Praetorian legions in the hopes of regaining your homeland? Will you ultimately regain control of your empire or die trying? Conversely, if the rebellion allows you Italy, will you crush the rebels beneath your boots? Or will a few ambitious men overthrow your hold of power and sweep away all that you have worked for? And all while fighting the rebellion, the external enemies of Rome are eyeing her weakness and are all preparing to take advantage of a rich divided empire.
Misc Details
The date is no longer recorded in the standard B.C. format, but rather in the form Ab Urbe Condita, which means "from the founding of the city". ('the city' being Rome) 0 AUC is 753 BC, so the start date of 217 BC is 536 AUC. Rome- Total War's user interface has been totally redone, with a unique campaign and battlemap interface for each culture.
The economic system has been totally revamped, making it much more realistic and requiring more micromanagement from the player. An explanation can be found here.
The battlemap environment has been changed to have far more vegetation and more realistic elevation, making for a much more challenging experience for the player. An explanation and screenshots can be found here and here.
Bloom Effect
RS-II has incorporated this 3d-effect to enhance the bloody battlefields of RTW. Bloom effect is basically is a computer graphics effect used in computer games, demos and high dynamic range rendering (HDR) to reproduce an imaging artifact of real-world cameras. The effect produces fringes (or feathers) of light around very bright objects in an image. Here is a sample pic to show 3D-bloom in effect. Notice before and after that the terrain looks more beautiful in Bloom and it's not just a brightness effect.
RS-II Video Previews
Screenshots
For more Screenshots visit the RS-II's official screenshot thread.
Performance
Roma Surrectum II uses beautiful and high quality models and skins. As such, the mod is more taxing on the computer than vanilla RTW was. Also, despite the graphical improvement, Rome Total War as an engine is six years old. Its age simply does not allow it to take advantage of the improved hardware that have been developed in the intervening years. In fact, a single core processor running at 3.2Ghz will actually show better performance than a Twelve-core with HyperThreading capability running at 2.8Ghz simply because Rome Total War can only function on ONE core. This also unfortunately means that many of the optimizing features of newer model graphics cards are unrecognized by the game and will largely be ignored, making graphics card memory the most important factor in game performance. Finally, because Rome Total War is running on one core only, a large portion of your RAM will be left to side idle because they're simply not accessed.
Therefore, don't expect your brand new Alienware to be the beast it really is when it comes to running RSII. But a more modern computer will still see some degree of performance increase over an older computer.
While the units may look like they are demanding the most resources, it is in fact the vegetation that is the largest resource hog. Grass and trees are far more numerous than units.
The settings in the option menu still function as they do in vanilla, but we have added a few of our own in the launcher so you can have fewer trees on the battlemap without reducing their quality. The model can also be swapped between two options. However, it is the sprite distance which is changed by this option. It would also seem that running the program on compatibility XP SP3 with vista or 7 could remove a few crashes on the battle-map if you have some.
Running RS-II on Steam
Running RSII through Steam is a hassle but not impossible. Several Beta Testers have successfully ran the game through Steam and have imparted their knowledge to the rest of the team so that Steam users are able to enjoy the game as well. To run RSII on Steam, it involves adding some extra lines of code to your game library and a bit off a different installation. For more info on how to do it please see here.
RS-II Modding Crew
- Project Leaders
- Unit/Building models
- Bebe
- Burninator
- MihaiV (siege units and strat map character)
- pacco
- tone
- MonkWarrior (Carnyx animation).
- Unit/Building textures
- Argent Usher(horses)
- Bebe
- Dr Hobo
- Leif Erikson
- pacco
- tone
- Unit Cards
- Leif Erikson
- Pacco
- Tone
- Banners
- pacco
- Map
- Northern ranger for Conversion from Mundus Magnus
- apple (coastlines)
- Paedric (coastlines)
- Squid (battlemap coding)
- dvk901 (battle map coding, battle map environment "water")
- tone (battle map coding, battle map environment "ground textures, grass textures, vegetation")
- Marcel (textures), pacco (strat map settlements)
- Gotthard (battlemap coding).
- User Interface
- Tzar
- Launcher
- PatricianS
- Paedric.
- Scripting
- Tone
- MihaiV
- Salvor Hardin
- Mr Blackadder
- HouseofHam
- Traits and Ancillaries
- Calvin
- dvk901
- tone
- Sqυιd
- Suppanut
- Gez
- Battlemap Statistics
- Aradan
- Faridus
- tone
- Galvanized Iron (multiplayer)
- Paedric (multiplayer)
- Music
- Apple
- Arn
- Garv
- Elendil
- [www.marios-aristopoulos.com Marios Aristopoulos] (rgex570)
- Coding
- dvk901
- Roman_Man#3 (units)
- tone
- Alavaria
- apple (music and victory conditions)
- Historical research
- Keravnos
- Mulattothrasher
- Swhunter
- Cherryfunk
- Rory O'kane
- Pseudocaesar
- MarcusTullius
- Unit and Building Descriptions
- Mulattotrasher
- Macky
- Arnspac
- Jean=A=Luc
- Philip_II
- Bull3tpr00f
- rory o'kane
- dvk901
- Keravnos
- SonOfAlexander
- Bob bobinson
- legio
- MacScottish
- Ketchup
- Louis XI
- The Sloth
- Paedric
- Gotthard
- MarcusTullius
- Other Contributors
MarcusTullius (beta testing organisation, PR), apple (beta testing organisation), lolgast (building pictures), Brusilov (screenshots, previews, general help and support), Gotthard (new temple theory, economic theory, environmental research), Elendil of Numenor (Custom Battle pictures and setup), Visarion (Dacian names and suggestions), LT1956 (use of his forts and technical advice), DimeBagHo (idea of 'recruitable mercs' that led to the pairing of the Legions and many other units in RS2), Naxzul666 (movies), Roman_Man#3, aja5191, RTR team (technical infrastructure (SVN hosting/administration) and friendly support), daschewy (help with Steam), bladerunner900 (final installer)
Releases
The mod was officially released on 5th September, 2010 and it's official link can be found here
