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Wade Barrett

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  1. Wade Barrett
    Backstory (aka Hold On I'll Try And Explain This Crap)
    The year is 250 BC (Before Celestia. Don't let those Christians tell you otherwise.) Three tribes of ponies remain at odds: Earth ponies, Unicorns and Pegasi. Equestria does not exist: Instead, the three tribes are (presumably) too busy being discriminatory bastards to learn that pooling their resources could be an actual good idea.
     
    One day, a mighty blizzard strikes, famine befalls the land, and tensions boil over.
     
    Then, by the power of Deus Ex Machina (We can only presume it's THAT GODDAMN DISCORD.), the three tribes find themselves on a strange new planet, inhabited by ugly, two-legged creatures. The three tribes look around: The land is strange, and so are the people. "Humans" so they call themselves.
     
    Gaia or "Earth" is in a state of complete and total war. Unlike the three tribes of ponies, these "humans" have taken hostility to a whole new level. Forging strange items such as "swords", "spears", "shields", "slings" and a variety of other pointy or blunt implements, humans resolve their tensions by simply clubbing or stabbing eachother to death.
     
    Later finding themselves in different parts of a country called "Greece", the three tribes wonder what to do. They hate eachother, the climate is odd, and the humans are too busy killing or being killed to notice that in the streets of what were Epirus, Sparta and Athens, strange, large pastel-coloured ponies are wandering around.
     
    Athens calls them "GIFTS FROM ATHENA!", Sparta calls them "WARRIOR STALLIONS FROM ARES!", Epirus calls them nothing as they're too busy being oppressed by Macedon to say anything.
     
    This is good news for the tribes: No lengthy building of empires or cities. All they need is the right application of subversion and cunning, and they can and will take them for themselves. Not only that, but now they can kill eachother without actually killing eachother. Just persuade the humans to do it.
     
    Earth in 250BC isn't swayed by the arrival of magical fighting ponies. They're too busy with important shit like conquering, killing, raping and conquer-raping. The Roman Republic is making the slow march to being a Roman Empire by destroying anything that yells at them. Gaul is busy rampaging everywhere and burning shit down. Germania is busy rampaging into Gaul and burning shit down. In the far East, Nomadic tribes are running around firing arrows at everything that move, while Eastern empires such as the Seleucids, Baktria, Parthia, Pontus and others are running actual horses that aren't cartoon ponies over people and trampling them to death. To the South lies Egypt, now less Egyptian and more "Macedonia Two: We're Going To Kidnap Alexander's Body For The Lulz", Carthage is in the south-west, hording elephants and infantry to begin the almighty task of kicking the shit out of Rome, and Britannia is sitting around, doing nothing and instead scratching its balls while making human sacrifices. In Greece, they are now looking around and wondering what to do with pastel-coloured ponies that clearly don't make good food ("GODDAMMIT HEPHAESTION IT'S TALKING TO ME I CAN'T EAT THIS") and can't be ridden (That would open up some very grey areas, despite what clopfics may tell you.) All this while Macedonia and several Illyrian, Thracian and Dacian tribes hover nearby, ready to take advantage of cartoon pony-related weakness and take Greece.
     
    So why not go to war?
     
    The world is growing and changing. Seas and rivers no longer form boundaries, but just entities to step over while punching people in the face. Empires grow and swallow tribes. And now, stuck in the middle of it, are our beloved ponies.
     
    Do you spread love and tolerance? Or will you take the reins and create your own empire, an Equestria that spans another world?
     
    Wherever you go, everything wants to, can, and will kill you. Or maybe even sacrifice you. Or eat you. Or all three.
     
    This is Total War.
     
    How far would you go for Equestria?
     
    **
     
    Alright, so I took the next logical step with the mod. Most things are working right. There are a few grammatical hiccups from modding the text data, but otherwise? It's workable. When I start working on units, i'll probably think the bloody opposite, but it works.
     
    So, I decided to take the Greek States, and replace them with three different locations from the games, resembling the three tribes. Ponyville (As it was founded by Earth Ponies), Cloudsdale (Exclusively inhabited by pegasi) and Canterlot (Massive city of wealth, culture, and all kind of rich things. Like Unicorns. Fecking Unicorns).
     
    **
     
    Meet The Tribes
     
    Cloudsville (replaceS Sparta HAHAHAHAHAHAHA GOOD GODDAMN RIDDANCE)
    A tribe of mighty Pegasi and Human Warriors, there are few tougher, few meaner, and few more dedicated. Though they'd eventually form part of the Royal Guard, they were a terrifying tribe in their own right.
     
    Note 1: During a Civil War, Cloudsville has to fight Spartan Human Rebels.
    Note 2: Planning on giving a slight boost to infantry recruitable by Spartans, and plan to give slight trade boost to Sparta to hopefully stimulate them forming an empire and creating a more dynamic balance of power in Greece.
     
    Canterlot (replaces Athens)
    What would become the central city of Equestria, Canterlot is a city of culture, wisdom and wealth. Home of the Unicorns, and preferring love and harmony to warfare, Canterlot could very well form the beating heart of an empire should she decide to fight..
     
    Note 1: If Canterlot forms an empire (So far, it's only possible if you play as them. I assume that, if you play long enough, Athens may be enough of a world power if it survives to form an empire following a civil war), it forms an Equestrian Empire.
    Note 2: The major building it can construct for culture (ie; it's top faction building) is Canterlot Castle.
     
    Ponyville (replaces Epirus)
    A tribe of hard-workers, Earth Ponies have taken residence in Epirus, driving an agrarian revolution. They are still a tribe through and through, and will fight to the death to protect their fellow ponies and human hosts. The work and toil in the fields could easily forge a warlord capable of forging a new Equestria...
     
    Note: Will be getting a heavy tweak to ensure survival, especially in terms of soldier power and trade.
     
    **
     
    A Few Notes
     
    1) I'm going to have test out some mods on how they affect the factions. The reason for this is simple: Though i've shown that Canterlot/Athens can survive and grow, it's always grim for Ponyville/Epirus. It rarely survives, if at all. Sparta/Cloudsville varies: In some campaigns, it can rival Athens/Canterlot and make an empire of its own. In other campaigns, it sits there and does nothing.
     
    2) I highly, highly, highly, highly, HIGHLY doubt there'll be actual pony models in the game. The reason for this is twofold:
    i) I can't stress how shit I am at modding. I can make textures in Photoshop and create new units, but 3D modelling ain't my forte.
    ii) With how the game operates, and its files, I'm not sure if it'd take nicely to ponies.
     
    I know it sucks, but bugger off.
     
    3) The mods remaining private for now. Though this mod in itself is entirely made by me (This is a separate mod from the units i've added), there's still a crapload of work to do. It's not actually interested anyone, which is good, but on the off-chance that you're insane enough to: Sorry, but not now.
     
    **
     
    Pictures
     
    It's that time again. Time to show off what little work i've done! WOOHOO!
     

    As you can see, I need to create an emblem for Ponyville. As you can see, they have the trait "Love and Tolerance" that enables the brutal assimilation of enemy tribes under the guise of caring. You can also see a wee bit of description for the City State of Canterlot
     

    Same for Cloudsdale.
     

    The three cities. As you can see, Cloudsdale starts hostile with Ponyville, because it's weak as shit and can be beaten if you throw stones at it long enough. Only a fine warlord will be able to take Ponyville and mould it into something that isn't a punching bag.
     

    Cloudsdale emblem, based on Pegasi Tribe banner. Too faint, needs re-doing.
     

    Cloudsdale Hoplites looking ashamed in their shields.
     

    Thanks to the way the game works in terms of edited data (ie; Not very goddamn well), I've had to edit certain units with their own colour scheme. This is the only one completed so far, with Spartan Royal Guard replaced with Cloudsdale Guard. Notice their proud beards, good posture, fancy cloaks and pointy killing implements.
     

    There is a shit-load of re-texturing that needs to be done which will severely slow down the mod. Red crest? Pah, it won't work! Although the soldier next to the Captain clearly wants that awesome helmet.
     

    Case in point: I've edited the Faction Uniform Colours but for some goddamn reason (ie; It's Creative bloody Assembly) the changes aren't showing. Also notice how, because the Spartan emblem was uniform for every single hoplon, it's replaced with the Pegasi symbol in every instance. Unless I create entirely new shields, it's a horde of Pegasi coming at you. But notice how the oval shield of the standard bearer has the Spartan lambda still on it. Goddammit, this is gonna take a while.
    SPECIAL: TWO IN-GAME LOADING SCREENS
    (NOTE: Resized them for display or else my blog would explode.)
     

    The Pegasi were a fierce tribe who enjoyed killing, maiming, and yelling at people of a lower caste than them. This is why they won't expect the SUEBI TO WIPE THEM OUT FOR WODAN
     

    SHUT UP SHUT UP AND BOW TO FLUTTERSHY BEST PONY GODDAMMIT
     
    ...Rhodarein made this wallpaper, and it is fucking excellent.
     
    ***
     
    Parting Thoughts (aka Going Back To Work Dammit)
     
    This is going to take a while, and it's going to involve a lot of hardship, pain and punched screens.
     
    I'm enjoying it, at least. There's just something about seeing those poor humans, fighting in the name of factions related to a childrens show involving talking pastel ponies, getting completely minced by a horde of roaring Germanic berserkers. I also get giddy, watching as every little crap thing I do is somehow replicated on the screen without royally cocking up and causing my laptop to explode and cause red shot shards of glass to pierce my face and turn me into Colonel Volgin.
     
    Nobody cares about it, but I do. Mostly because this is a practice for improving the goddamn Brigantes faction AND LEADING MY ANCESTORS IMMORTAL GLORY, but, hey, its pretty neat being able to eradicate the Greek States and replace them with Equestrian States.
     
    I'm also interested in just placing spies in Greece/Equestria for a single campaign, and ending each turn without doing anything, just to see how the AI handles it. It tickles me to see Canterlot, in my current campaign, running riot across the land while Ponyville lies in tatters and Cloudsdale sits there, arms folded, waiting for either the moment to strike or the sweet release of a Roman Gladius to the throat.
     
    We'll see. But at the end of it all, I guess we'll be able to answer the question: "How far will you go to Equestria?"
     
    And if you answer doesn't include "Enslave half of the free world", then you're going to be in for a tough time.
     
     
    Crap To Do
     
    1) Edit units.
    2) Create at least 2 new units for each major Pony faction.
    3) Edit texts for Campaigns.
    4) Possibly edit texts and pictures for research tree.
    5) Lay down and cry.
    6) Drink.
    7) Create new emblem for Ponyville.
    8) Modify Mercenary units.
    9) Create "Legio Equestria" for Rome faction.
    10) Drink some more.
    11) Attempt to add Equestrian units to auxiliary pool if possible.
    12) Include sound files to have Equestrian factions yell out that goddamn spine-chilling ferocious war cry of "Winter Wrap Up".
    13) Possibly modify sound files for introduction of factions which, to me, a complete idiot, is going to be like re-programming the Ark of the Covenant while blindfolded and with hands stuck in buckets covered in piranhas with Velociraptors for teeth.
    14) Drink, cry, then drink tears.
  2. Wade Barrett
    Mods coming along alright. I'm currently in the process of editing missions for a more 'Equestrian' flavour. This should make it more interesting to actually play as Equestria in the future rather than it just existing as a new, exotic culture for my Britons to completely overrun and crush.
     
    Anyway, these are just a handful of pictures I snagged. There'll be a lot more to come later, but i'm focusing on getting shit done rather than showing shit, considering how little attention it gets (We have to give love to episode commentaries, right?) They don't show the major extent of work done, but they show a bit.
     
    For some goddamn reason, the pre-named armies I changed appear to have disappeared. While this is slightly good news (There were armies appearing with blank names. Presumably, they were traversing the world, looking to twat someone to get the coveted sword cutie mark.), it's something i'll need to look into further.
     

    Looking majestic and completely oblivious to the fact that there's empires forming far quicker than them.
     

    Translation: "Please don't kill us. We see you Briton's, expanding across Germania and Gaul, and we're protecting our asses here. Celestia sends some gold."
    My reaction: Accept? Nah. Feck off. We'll be seeing you later. At your gates.
     

    I was worried Equestria would sit on its arse in this campaign, It actually has a decent empire going, spreading love and tolerance across Hellas and into Macedon and further afield. Can't wait til late game when they take over half the goddamn map. (It's happened before)
     
    SPECIAL FEATURE: Waifu's.
     
    Well, because...............
     
     
    ...You know what? I don't know. it's something I added for the sheer craic.
     
    (NOTE: Yes, i'm using pictures snagged from deviantART. If you don't like it, just remember I ain't publically releasing it. And if I do, i'd sure as hell get permission from the artists first. If you still don't like it, i'll remove it and draw stick figures instead. It'd be far easier than getting lawyers involved.)
     

    Twilight, if you were smarter, you wouldn't have picked an Admiral who I use about as much as Kanye West uses his brain.
     

    I couldn't think of any better description text. So shoot me.
     

    Dawwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww. See? Every town would stop rebelling against my violent and lawless rule if we just had Fluttershy. And now I do. For one general.
     
    Which basically just means only one less town I have to worry about rebelling and raiding my goddamn provincial capitals.
     
    Right now, since this is an entirely hypothetical situation (ie; "What the fuck would happen if you shoved Canterlot into the middle of a world that was completely hostile to anything and everything that moved?"), the idea of Canterlot as a City State is something that has come to me. After all, look at it: All big and grand and the seat of power. I can imagine it being a City State at that point in time. Which got to me thinking: Why not turn Sparta (SCREW YOU SPARTA AND SCREW THE LACONOPHILIA OF EVERY MORON IN THE WORLD TODAY) and Epirus (Bad news: Epirus lasts about five turns in most games I start) into city states? Sparta could be Ponyville (or I could even turn Sparta to Canterlot, with Athens as Cloudsdale.) and Epirus could be....some...bloody random town that barely gets a mention in the series. Hell, I could expand further afield: Knossos could be Manehattan: Although it doesn't do ANYTHING. In eight campaigns i've started, the kingdom of Knossos just sits on its island and does absolutely nothing. Macedon could be the Crystal Empire.
     
    Yeah, Alexander's legacy was bringing ponies to the world. What a guy.
     
    Right now, there's a lot of work to be done. The moment I can get the aesthetics working, i'll move onto tweaking the world more. Why not? It'll save me from whittling away my weekends on TVTropes, at least.
  3. Wade Barrett
    For the 0 people interested, I took the next step with the graphics for my mod.
     
    Last night (or rather, early this morning), I modded a set of shields for "Princess Luna's Guard". However, fancy shields could not save them from the wrath of the Kluddargos. My Iceni run riot over them.
     
    As an amateur modder, and one who has pretty much 0 experience of actually modding a games models (Beyond using the GECK for the Fallout games), this is new territory for me. Again, I give the obligatory point to takeR's excellent Greek Mythology Unit Pack. I'm using his models as the base (If I ever get to a point where I can look at the mod and release it, I do plan on doing it from scratch rather than using someone else's hard graft. This is merely practice.) and they are f***ing lush. Give him some love.
     
    Anyway, onwards: Using generic DDS maps of armor, I decided to craft one cuirass for 'Celestia's Royal Guard'. Ten thousand times more badass than their Canterlot Royal Guard counterparts, and utilising weapons 20% more pointy, these Guards are one of the elite units I created. Unlike Luna's guard, I took the time to beef their stats slightly. To give a fair test (Rather than throw them against my horrendously OP Iceni custom units), I set them against one Legatus and two Veteran Legionary units of Rome. Against one Champion Hoplite and two Celestia's Royal Guard units. No experience for either units, on a plain battlefield with no terrain advantages/disadvantages.
     

     
    Basic shot one. I only created one cuirass (Why create four, or the entire armour set, if something cocked up and didn't work? That'd be hours wasted.) but the other three are to come. The phalanges are lacking in detail and colour, and it is something to definitely work on. Thankfully, the mark is clear on the chest.
     

     
    The specular looks like it may need a bit of tweaking. It looks relatively fine, but may need some better shading. At least the purple on the pauldrons comes through.
     

     
    An aerial shot. Not to show off the models, but to show off their effectiveness: We were actually flanked by the enemy (At least CA did something with the AI) and had to send the General onto the Legatus, and sent the Royal Guard into the Legionaries. As you can see in the back, there's only 15 left. For the record, there's 118 of the Royal Guard still standing.
     

     
    Random action shot. Blood textures still work on cuirass, so it's full steam ahead. This battle was a little more balanced: We only had around 80 left (Though, at the last minute, the Legatus flanked and charged my men which certainly caused a few deaths.) and it was a pretty entertaining battle.
     
     
    Right now, i'm busy with editing some miscellaneous files. Quite comically, since I combined the mod using the Hellenic culture as a base, it has the side effect of affecting every Hellenic nation.
     
    Basically, during my Grand Campaign, I had a notification pop up that Massalia (A small, Hellenic nation near the Alps and surrounded by Celts) had trespassed onto my land. Lo and behold, standing on my border, was an army named "Celestia's Chosen".
     
    I let them go. Besides, it takes balls to stand on the border of the Iceni and essentially stare us out.
     
    It's an interesting side effect. The only way around it, though, is to program an entirely new culture. The problems with that are:
    i) My complete lack of modding experience with scripts. Creating it is actually easy enough, it's programming it to work.
    ii) You need to create entirely new buildings for the culture. If not, the culture dies out (In Rome 2, culture is spread by relevant buildings such as shrines and affects public order for or against you) and its pointless. Coding that will be a nightmare.
     
    I'm sure there are some people facepalming and laughing at me. One thing I find that separates the Brony fandom from a lot of other fandoms is the sheer talent and creativity of the fanbase. There are a lot of very talented modders (and artists, and writers, and..etc; etc;) and i'm letting the side down here, I feel. However, it's best to start somewhere, right? Sorry guys.
     
    So, that's about it for this entry.In my next entry, I hope i've got the campaign map up enough so that I can share some shots of it (I'm mulling over whether or not to eradicate Greek culture in favour of just replacing it with the Equestrian culture. I really do hate the Greek States that much in-game. They're OP and other factions have bare bones rosters while they have an insane amount of unique units. If I do so, I could replace every Hellenic states name with some punny counterpart.), and i'm going to look into 3D models and see if I can dip my toe into those waters.
     
    Until then, if you see a barbarian wielding a rhompaia, run the hell away.
     
     
     
    In other news, I start my new job on Tuesday. Wish me luck.
  4. Wade Barrett
    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".
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