[VENATUS IN] Europa Barbarorum - Rome: Total War's bigger, smarter brother.

The Glock

http://www.europabarbarorum.com/index.html

Alright, people. The gloves are off for this one. You thought you squeezed all you could from Rome: Total War and felt comfortable enough to move on to Medieval II, until this:





What is Europa Barbarorum?

Official Website wrote: »

Europa Barbarorum is a modification of Rome: Total War that is motivated by the desire to provide Rome: Total War players with a more fun, challenging, realistic, and historically accurate gaming experience. Europa Barbarorum is a total conversion mod, though it covers roughly the same time period as the Imperial Campaign included with Rome: Total War.

Contrary to popular opinion, Europa Barbarorum is not solely focused on barbarian factions (though the name was derived from the roots of the project when our desire was to portray barbarians more accurately). Europa Barbarorum goes to great lengths to portray all factions correctly, including Rome.

I'm fairly confident in saying that this the most historically accurate game depicting the ancient world ever created. Period.


Historically accurate, eh? How historically accurate is it?

Official Website wrote: »

EB was originally founded in January 2004, eight months before RTW's release, when the Europa Barbarorum team who were following the game's development became concerned that "barbaric" factions such as the Gauls and Germanic tribes were being portrayed as stereotypical hordes of unwashed savages, in a manner that was not accurate. The EB team felt that such representations conformed more to a sensationalist Hollywood stereotype than historical fact, maintaining (as many modern historians do) that the ancient "barbarian" cultures are often judged and possibly misunderstood based on an "interpretatio romana" or "interpretatio graeca" due to the nature of ancient historiographical conventions. The true nature of these civilizations, says EB, is better revealed through archaeological evidence and what remains of their own ancient texts.

Despite the name, the changes in EB are not limited to "barbarian" factions. The developers of EB tried to convince the Creative Assembly to alter their depiction of the period to make the whole game more historically accurate. Whilst some suggestions were taken on board and adopted in the final release of RTW, most were disregarded by CA due to publisher pressures/financial expediency. Some EB members continued to offer their services as historical advisors but due to inherent concerns over intellectual property rights, CA declined the offer.

Currently, most of EB's sources are primary archaeological and textual evidence. EB has people reading and examining this evidence in period languages. They consider secondary evidence as well. However, many of their sources are found in places that only academics will be able to access, and a few have not even been published yet. Their goal is to be as accurate as possible, not to please those who want to be able to find what we describe on Google.

So this is pretty much the most goddamn fun you'll get out of a "edutainment" product for a very, very long time. People who were historical advisors to the game began working on the EB project the second R:TW was released, that's how dedicated this team is. Hell, you've might even (Gasp!) learn something about ancient cultures while you play it...


So what new features does this game have?


An ungodly amount. Check here for all the features. But first, let's take a look at the map:




As of v1.1, the world has been expanded to encompass almost all of Europe, most of North Africa, all of Western and Central Asia, and a small part of India. There are 21 factions to choose from when start your campaign, each with their own unique military units, architecture, and languages.

Honestly, after playing this mod, I can never go back to vanilla R:TW again.

Let's see some screenshots.


But of course, milord:

Armenian cataphracts dishin' out the one-two smash.



My Getain army clearing the Epeirosian scum outta' the woodwork


Gettin' your history lessons in while you slay along the way.


Epeirosian horsemen thought they could get the drop on me.




What about multiplayer?

Currently, EB isn't getting much love online, but if you want to really start a tussle or two, check out this thread to get started.







So pick your allegiance and change history as we know it.

pogo1250

This looks pretty fun i played RTW way too many times until 4 in the morning.

Galielmus

Is this a ride-into-battle-and-fight-alongside-your-troops ala Mount&Blade kinda thing, or an omnipotent-general-commanding-everyone-on-the-field like RTW kinda thing?

Either way, looks pretty awesome. I love the fact they tout historical accuracy, I spend what was probably longer than I should have in the Civlopedia and Historical Facts parts of Civilization and Age of Empires, respectively.

Edit: OOhhhh this is a Total War mod, forgive my ignorance.

juggerbot

Yes, I played this mod a year ago or so, and would install it again if i wasn't 10,000 miles from my RTW disks. Its accuracy is to the extreme. Not only is the map embiggened, but there are WAY more cities to conquer, and the starting positions are as accurate as they could get at that time, with Pyhrus in southern Italy and such. Therefore, the difficulty really depends on which faction you choose. IIRC, the Selucid Empire is fucking huge at that time.

Another thing I liked was the fact that units are sort of tied to the region. For example, if as Rome you conquer Carthage, you can't start training legions there right away. You have to spend several turns "assimilating culture" before you can train/build Roman stuff. And they redid the voiceovers for the pre-battle speeches, in the native languages.

The Glock

Galielmus wrote: »

Is this a ride-into-battle-and-fight-alongside-your-troops ala Mount&Blade kinda thing, or an omnipotent-general-commanding-everyone-on-the-field like RTW kinda thing?

Either way, looks pretty awesome. I love the fact they tout historical accuracy, I spend what was probably longer than I should have in the Civlopedia and Historical Facts parts of Civilization and Age of Empires, respectively.

Edit: OOhhhh this is a Total War mod, forgive my ignorance.

The core of the R:TW perspective still remains, a la overseer-general type gameplay, but there is much more micromanagement in EB of towns and royal family, especially if your gunning for specific traits for certain family members.

Also, you can eventually receive campaign missions if certain factions capture certain cities, and you can choose to follow a more historical route if you want.

Food

This looks really cool, but I feel like I should actually finish a game of Vanilla R:TW before I download it. I had just finished conquering Greece as the Brutii and was working on Asia Minor, but I got distracted or something.