Modding: 30% designing, 70% rummaging around in files finding that one little misplaced number or letter that is making the entire thing not run.

Spent almost all of today modding my copy of Total War: Rome 2. I start work on Tuesday, so I haven't got much to do. I've just been busy navigating Warscape, the environment of Rome 2, modding in a sort of Canterlot/Equestria replacement. As to why i'm posting it here...I don't know. i suppose it's as a back-up in case my laptop dies and I can see some work in progress. Although i've got, like, 6 back-ups, this things getting really dodgy lately.

However, I suck at modelling. So there's not a snowball's chance in hell that I could ever actually mod an actual pony into the game, and even if I did, would you really want to see an unstoppable horde of Iceni crush several of your favourite ponies into a fine red powder? I doubt it. So, it's basically a substitute.

I've managed to mod the campaign map, using Athens as the substitute for Equestria. There's two reasons for this:

1) Athens seem to incredibly OP. I'm not sure if it's patches or my other mods, but Athens often takes over half the world. Half the fun of this mod is me setting off conquering the world as, say, the Suebi, only to come against an unstoppable ersatz-pony horde in the late game.

2) I hate the Greek States in the game. I really bloody do. Especially Sparta. Stupid Laconophilia making Sparta one of the most diverse factions while the Iceni are left with a bare roster unless you add unit packs from the Workshop.

I suppose I might share the world later. All I can say is that, in my current campaign, Equestria has swiftly expanded into Macedonia and is starting to claim Hellas for itself.

For the units, as I suck at 3d Modelling, I utilised the phenomenal Greek Mythology unit pack by takeR (http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=218822557). I'm only using this mod for private use, but I feel the need to credit him a lot. He did some utterly phenomenal work on the units. I also use the Radious mod, but that's for general variant meshes. Still, Radious's Unit Packs are brilliant for expanding the sadly-thin rosters of the original game.

The first unit I decided to heavily mod, beyond the actual text files, is one of the Greek Mythology packs Poseidon Units (ie; they carry tridents.) and turned them into Princess Luna's Chosen. Sorry, Poseidon: The God of the Sea ain't no match for the lovely Luna. That and she's my second favourite pony after Fluttershy (And I am not including Fluttershy in this mod. I doubt she'd personally endorse mass killing...........................I guess.)

I've only barely tweaked their stats, I'm going to mod them later to carry an actual sword or spear as opposed to the trident (Which, IMO, looks utter crap). But, before I buffer them up, I send them into the fire. As a test, I set up 2 v 2: My Iceni modded units (Rycalawre + Kluddargos) vs Equestria (Hoplite Champions + Princess Luna's Chosen). This is a test for my two Iceni units, too.

This is just a view of the unit. So far, i've only modded the shield. Armour's to come. Something's fucked with the crest, though, so that'll need fixing.

Unfortunately for Canterlot, you can see their soldiers lying dead on the field already, and that's just my Rycalawre (Sword soldiers. Well, technically, elite soldiers. "Kingly Champions" as the name translates to.) The Kluddargos are going to give no quarter as they carry the Rhompaia, which is basically a weapon designed to flay skin, crush armour and kill everything within a close radius. It was the meat grinder of the ancient world and not even the Princess's are going to save you when it comes swinging for your throat.

I'll either have to add power to the Guard, or lower the power of the Kluddargos. It's an utter massacre at Camulodonun. There's blood everywhere, and there's going to be a lot of cleaning afterwards.

Five survived to run back to Canterlot. Sadly, the test failed for Luna's guards. If this was a siege of Canterlot, the Iceni would now own Equestria and the ponies would be wearing golden torcs and carrying swords in their hooves for Andraste rather than Celestia.

So, yes, still a lot of work to do. I'm glad I got the emblems in, though. These were a goddamn pain.

This ones their faction logo/shield. I took the design off of a flag that appeared in the show.

And this? I don't know. I think it's on some of their secondary banners or something. There's a lot more graphics files (PNG and DDS), but these are the two that show what they're roughly like.

..So, yeah, that's about it. It's off to sleep and back to modding tomorrow. Well, I say modding, it's basically buggering about in Photoshop aimlessly.

I'd love to mod music in, though, because nothing, nothing, NOTHING will be more goddamn entertaining than a horde of Rycalawre clashing with a Equestrian army as they sing "Winter Wrap Up".