hardcoded limits gone

[Achilles Lacedaemon]

Personally, I'd rather see the team have more freedom to change minor things to make the game more authentic with the way the game is hard coded than go and add a bunch of new factions.

You want the team to have more freedom to change stuff, but the game to be still limited? Nothing authentic will come of that, just something limited. Many TW mods dont have the freedom to add more details, such as reforms, cultures, officers in the units, interfaces, etc... Because of the game being limited.

[maurel]

Yet, adding 1 or 2 culture slots and +1,2 factions would be nice. also expand the number of settlements (i am pretty sure you can add atleast 20 settlements without major bugs or issues)

It will give more freedom for EB team.

[paradamed]

I think the most important changes are increase the 500 units limit and increasing the culture limits.

[LinusLinothorax]

I want maybe around 5 new factions, like eg. Massalia, Syracus or Colchis. Factions which are important but not important enough to implement them in the current 30 factions-game. Also more settlements, maybe around 20, are needed, especially in Central-Asia and Africa.

[lolIsuck]

You should realise that this memory editing breakthrough is far from providing all the answers and breaking all the limits, it has only just started and nothing has been released here. They still have to find out how to increase region limit etc.

[Tankbustaz]

If anything, they can eventually give Takshashila it's own culture slot, seeing as keeping it in the east culture slot, the same as Parthians would be stretching history at best.

[Wierdobill1]

Allegedly. My understanding of how this works is theoretical at best, which I am sure is representative of most of the people here. I have also seen a lot of breakthroughs in the past, and they take years to flesh out properly and become common in mods. I HIGHLY doubt that the individuals working on this will have any tangible and stable results for some time. All we have right now is what they think they might be able to accomplish with this. It's alright to hope, but lets temper our expectations for the time being.

[Yayattasa]

I HIGHLY doubt that the individuals working on this will have any tangible and stable results for some time. All we have right now is what they think they might be able to accomplish with this.

They already have achieved some results, so you are wrong. The acceptance comes with time.

[leemyster]

Small changes can be done by sub modders once things have been found out. The EB2 team aim is to make a polished, stable build.

When people get playing EB2 and delve into modding then these people will experiment with sub mods which change the limits. Just like the other big mods people make their own tweaks and adding content. Expect players to have small sub mods which add 'Faction A' or to increase the unit size x2. These can then all be put together into the main mod.

I praise the EB2 team for their continued work over the years. From an outside perspective I see that modders inevitably have different preferences. Some stick to one title while others dabble with lots of titles doing smaller mods. I expect when EB2 is released the modders who are making smaller mods for Rome 2 or are dormant will try their hand at making small mods for EB2 that change the hardcode limits.

New information and individuals will come from this and if stable I would assume these minor changes will be incorporated into the main EB2 mod in a patch. I would expect they have enough on their plate anyway than to now try and implement something completely new. With a released EB2 then the energy of others will come to the fore.

[James the Red]

The way I see it is that these limits gone would not effect EBII very much for a long time.

Although, this could be usefull since there are several good ideas for new factions but not enough faction slots for them, so I guess I can see EBII later on having a few more factions than previously belived possible, but not anywhere near a hundred factions.

One possible idea is perhaps have the Eleutheroi faction divided into two. A Rebel faction for rebellions and bandits, and another for independent peoples not big enough for their own faction slots. Both would be unplayable of coarse, but one will act like the default total war rebels like before, but the other would act more like a real faction and the players would actully be under threat of invasion by these Eleutheroi.

The limit for culture being gone is an interesting idea, depending on what culture actually determines in the game. This could mean that the nubia/ethiopia faction idea is no longer ruled out by just the culture limit anymore.

The province limit, meh, I don't really see the point in adding in too many new provincess if adding any at all except perhaps to balance the map a bit better. I know the team had to axe some provinces that were in EBI to create new provinces in EBII, I suppose those ones can come back now at some point.

[nein]

Unless it also fixes the crippling engine limitations adding so much content will mean turn times taking up to 10 minutes and battles turning into a slideshow... maxing out the possible kingdoms faction slots (34 or something similar) and using a lot of scripting already has a massive impact on the juddering m2 engine

[Kull]

Small changes can be done by sub modders once things have been found out. The EB2 team aim is to make a polished, stable build.

When people get playing EB2 and delve into modding then these people will experiment with sub mods which change the limits. Just like the other big mods people make their own tweaks and adding content. Expect players to have small sub mods which add 'Faction A' or to increase the unit size x2. These can then all be put together into the main mod.

I praise the EB2 team for their continued work over the years. From an outside perspective I see that modders inevitably have different preferences. Some stick to one title while others dabble with lots of titles doing smaller mods. I expect when EB2 is released the modders who are making smaller mods for Rome 2 or are dormant will try their hand at making small mods for EB2 that change the hardcode limits.

New information and individuals will come from this and if stable I would assume these minor changes will be incorporated into the main EB2 mod in a patch. I would expect they have enough on their plate anyway than to now try and implement something completely new. With a released EB2 then the energy of others will come to the fore.

That's a very insightful post, and actually reflects the thinking of several of us on the team. M2TW offers far more potential for modding than did RTW1, but that also means the number of things you can work on is exponentially greater. But over time, the team had to narrow it's focus and concentrate on the key areas. So let's consider one specific example from your post:

The EB2 AI is sort of a middle of the road approach so that people who despise incessant warfare and no diplomacy can have an interesting role playing type game. But many prefer a non-holds barred, always in your face AI. So after the release, if somebody sits down and puts a lot of time and effort into creating a real "frothing at the mouth" AI for EB2, and it's tested and proven to be stable, we might very well incorporate it into the mod as a selectable option during the install. And that could be true in many other areas.

We can't do everything, so it will benefit everyone if folks out there take the time to develop ideas that could significantly enhance gameplay in many areas. We look forward to that, actually.

[Samraat Mahendra Maurya]

I think a reasonable upgrade that wouldn't alter the game that much would be: 15 more factions, 50 more settlement , several in India and due to this expansion, we could expand and add the Mauryan Empire and other factions like Pandya or Satavahtana dynasty to act as a rebellion, maybe a Jewish faction or even Galatia! Hopefully this will find it's way to EB2 as a mod or something, i've always wanted to play a game with historical Mauryans!

[Mr.IAmHere]

I think a reasonable upgrade that wouldn't alter the game that much would be: 15 more factions, 50 more settlement , several in India and due to this expansion, we could expand and add the Mauryan Empire and other factions like Pandya or Satavahtana dynasty to act as a rebellion, maybe a Jewish faction or even Galatia! Hopefully this will find it's way to EB2 as a mod or something, i've always wanted to play a game with historical Mauryans!

15 more factions... reasonable ?

[Samraat Mahendra Maurya]

15 more factions... reasonable ?

Ok, thats not reasonable, my bad... maybe 5 more factions?

[QuintusSertorius]

A huge issue arises from this; units. I would love to have 100 factions but if each one only has 1 unique unit, or even none, then it would be terrible.

Units are indeed the big deal, if they just manage to increase the unit limit a little bit, many actual factions could get more detail and attention.

I don't understand why this is a big deal. Maybe it comes from playing a lot of EB with a migrated faction drawing on the generic regional rosters, but why are unique units necessary? As long as a roster is broad enough, who cares whether or not you have troops that only you can recruit?

[Nilash]

If anything, remove the existing amount of settlements. I'll salute he first mod\TW game to archive not becoming Siege: Total War.

[Yayattasa]

I don't understand why this is a big deal. Maybe it comes from playing a lot of EB with a migrated faction drawing on the generic regional rosters, but why are unique units necessary? As long as a roster is broad enough, who cares whether or not you have troops that only you can recruit?

This, this and this. I'm perfectly fine with clone factions and shadow factions/subfactions. In fact, I think it adds a lot to the game because you start fighting against the same units you own in your area and then moves to different targets.

[Smeel]

If they actually manage to unlock more faction slots, I'm sure some modder will do a quick and dirty cloning modmod of the Koinon hellenon faction and set up independent greek cities and Syracuse for the first open beta. Or more gallic celtic faction for that matter. Would work beautifully with EB2s regional recruitment system.

[Lord Baal]

It's too soon to even think into implementing this into EBII or any current "next to release" mod. Yes, eventually it might be very possible to add more factions, more cultures, more provinces and units, etc... however that needs plenty of time. As it stands now, I think EBII would need to wait(and expect) until a major update way after release and something tangible is released by the memory-editors in order to take it into account.

How it is in English? A bird in the hand is more worthy than 100 on the bush?

What I'm try to say is that the modders can't count on this until is actually solidly released. Then yes, the sky and your computers could be the limits, but until then, this is interesting news to watch upon carefully, but to not be taking into account for modding.