PDF Arco Mod

[Kristoffer O]

PDF's Arco Mod is now available.

[PDF]

Yesss ! Thanks K.O. !

Here's the readme, hope you'll appreciate the mod


PDF’Arco Mod
An Arcoscephale unit mod – v 1.1

Why this mod ?
I wasn’t very happy with Arco unit choice : amongst them only few were useful, and Arco’s armies were invariably a pile of Hoplites or Heart Comps, plus Elephants and Hypaspists on the wings…
So I made some changes to make units somewhat more « historical »- that is more close to Alexander ‘s armies – and hopefully to give more choice to Arco players. I didn’t want the mod to change game balance and give « better » units, only more balanced units, but maybe the Sacred Cavalry can be abused … gaming will tell !

History
Everything before 1.1 didn’t leave my own HD.
V 1.1 is first published release – Feb 1, 2004.

What’s in
First change is that crappy Cardaces have been fired , they are replaced with the « Phalangite » - medium infantry with a « long spear » . There’s been some debate about if they should be given a pike. Historically they should, the « sarissa » was more than 4m long – But in Dom the pike is supposed to be 2 handed, and as I wanted them to keep a shield they ended up with the long spear.
The phalangite isn’t that good (standard morale, 13 prot), but is useful for early expansion and as « standard cannon fodder », the long spear is a correct weapon, and best of all they replace the Cardaces also in the starting army and as Provincial defense !
With the Phalangite having « long spear » I downgraded the Hoplite to normal spear – more historical, and Hoplites are rather too good, so it balances them a little more.
The other main change is a couple of new units : Agema Companion Heavy Cavalry ! They are of « light knight » level (prot 15 and lance) but are sacred ! As such they are relatively costly but are IMHO a real good addition to Arco troop mix. An sacred Agema Commander is available too, I wanted him to have ldr 50 but I didn’t find that to be moddable so he has only 25. Both are only capitol-only troops, I used the Horses Vale site troops (Horse brothers units) for the Agema (at K Ostermann suggestion, thanks !).
Lastly the Spear-armed Light Cavalry has been uparmored a bit, up to prot 8. They aren ‘t still very good but at least survive a little better arrow shots…

Tech stuff
There’s no « real » new units, only changed units : Phalangites uses Cardaces id #199, Agema Companion Cavalry uses Horse Brother id #450, Agema Commander the Horse Brother Chief id #451.
The mod « removes » effectively the Horses Vale site and units.
Overall the is compatible with any other except one who would also change Horses Vale (none exists currently).

Credits
The mod and the units stats are my ideas, you can do whatever you want with them as long as you give proper credits or ,better, keep me informed !
All units graphics are courtesy of IllWinter (K.Ostermann), and you should ask them before using them. A hearty thanks to Kristoffer for his help, and his valuable advice !
The (not so good) mod banner is a proof of my poor graphics skills, but is mine.

Feedback appreciated, either at Dom2 Boards at shrapnelgames.com, or by email directly to me : pascal.difolco@free.fr

Feb 1, 2004.

[PhilD]

Originally posted by PDF:
Yesss ! Thanks K.O. !

Here's the readme, hope you'll appreciate the mod

[/b]

Thanks a lot - including .rtf readme files in your .zip is NOT non-Windows-world friendly... (yes, I'm a bit of a militant here)

[Saber Cherry]

Why not retain Cardaces, and make Phalangites a new unit number? Not a criticism, I'm just curious. Frame-capturing the graphics for a single unit, making them into a TGA, and adding a feather in the cap (or something to make them look a little different from Cardaces) would only take about 15 minutes.

[PDF]

Saber,
At first I did make a new unit with Phalangites, but as I also wanted to make them PD troops I realized it would be more logical to just overwrite Cardaces... And who ever bought Cardaces ? They were totally useless...
If you really want, making a new unit with them takes rather 15 sec than 15 min :
In the Arcomod.dm file change the line
#selectmonster 199
with
#newmonster 2501
and add a Last line to the file :
#addrecunit 2501

Pocus informed me that there was a bug, the Agema had no swords in 1.1 due to a typo. I corrected that and send a new 1.2 file to IW, who should host it soon ! Sorry ...