500 BC ‘DAWN OF EMPIRES’
ORTUS,… ‘The Beginning’
THIS MOD IS PATCH-17 COMPATIBLE ONLY
To switch to ‘Patch-17’: Go to your Steam page and then select LIBRARY. Right click on your game ‘ROME II’ on the left. Go to properties. Select BETAS in the pop-up screen. In here you can select ‘patch_17’.
This mod brings you back to one of the most challenging era ever: 500 BC
– In the east the Persian Empire is struggling for domination, surrounded by potential foes. Will their dominance over their client states hold, or will these nations rebel against their sovereigns?
– Will the Greek States (Makedonia included) join forces against the threat from the east, or will conflict bring them down as the Persian Empire closes their lands?
– Rome is struggling for domination in the Italian Peninsula, surrounded by many foes, their situation has become a ‘do or die’ campaign.
THIS MOD IS BASED ON HISTORICAL FACTS (if there is a historical fact that you wish to be added, or if you disagree with some start position, please contact me)
This mod replaces the pike units (Pikemen and Levy Pikemen) with a more hoplite-like unit. The Romans also start with hoplite-like units (‘phalangae’ versions of Hastati, Principes and Triarii), as they adopted the battle tactics from the Greeks, in the years of their young republic. All these units can be upgraded to the original units when a certain tech is researched (shown in military tech-tree).
A new sub-mod is now available: "500 BC Faster Research". This mod gives you a research points surplus per region you conquer. The higher the level of your towns and cities, the more research points you gather.
This mod was created to speed up the research (on demand), because one-turn-tech mods are not compatible with the mod ‘500 BC’
Are you used to play with a 4-turns-per-year mod? The mod ‘500 BC’ is not compatible with such mods. It is, however, very easy to turn your saved game into a 4-turn-per-year version. First you need to download "EditSF" (free on internet). Open your saved game. You find your saved games in C:User/AppData/Roaming/The Creative Assembly/Rome2/save-games. Go to directory
CAMPAIGN_SAVE_GAME–>COMPRESSED_DATA–>CAMPAIGN_ENV–> CAMPAIGN_MODEL
–> CAMPAIGN_CALENDAR. Simply click on "CAMPAIGN_CALENDAR" in the left window. You will see a table in the right window. The first line says "1". You can change this into "4" if you want to have 4 turns per year. Save this and open it in game.
WARNING: THIS MOD IS NOT COMPATIBLE WITH ANY OTHER MOD THAT USES A ‘STARTPOS’!
TRY TO RUN THIS MOD WITHOUT OTHER MODS FIRST.
About the Persian faction: this mod starts with the Ionian revolt. Athens historically supported this revolt. In this mod Athens is only having good relations with these revolting factions, so the alliance grows. This makes it so that the war between Persia and the Greek States will begin later on (cfr. the Battle of Marathon 490 BC). The Persian Empire is vast and therefore hated (imperium level). It is more likely that other factions declare war on Persia than the other way around. The ‘satrapies’ of Persia are likely to revolt for the same reason, especially Egypt and Judea. The threat from Arabia is also growing. Persia starts with only a few good armies and must choose where to attack first (war on all borders). It should be quite easy to conquer the world when you play Persia, but Persia as AI is more likely to crumble.
Bithynia, Sinope, Lydia and Phrygia support the Persian Empire at first, but conflict between these factions can result in changing sides, for example: in one of my tests Bithynia crushed the whole of Asia and even defeated Athens, but when Sinope attacked Phrygia, the Bithynians chose the side of Sinope, which resulted in a revolt against Persia. This is the main reason why I’ve put these ‘satrapies’ on the borders of the Persian Empire. The biggest threat comes from Parthia: at first Parthia is the champion of Persia, but when their territory grows, Parthia is likely to revolt against Persia, resulting in the Parthian Empire.
HAVE FUN, COMMANDERS!
