@Nomad416 not sure what their plans are for factions within the mod but historically Sicily would have been home to the Shekelesh(Sicels/Sicani), Southern Italy would have been the homeland of the Weshesh(Oscans) and the Teresh were farther north(Terramare culture). The Sherden(Nuraghe) were in Sardinia/Corsica.
This theory and it's supporting evidence comes from the Erasmus University of Rotterdam dissertation entitled "The Ethnicity of the Sea Peoples" by Dr. Fred C. Woudhuizen [1959 - 2021] published in 2006

What's the purpose of southern Italy and Sicily's presence on the map? They look to be functional provinces compared to the other unused areas.

Can we wait ''All Factions Playable''? Or something -Mycenae
-Knossos-Troy Campaigns?

@Benjin Any time window for the update? Appreaciate the effort and time you've been puttin in, cool mod!

pleaseee put more faction to campaign like Troy or Assyria

even though right now it is unplayable

@Benjin oh man an update is coming for real ?! I cant wait This mod a great potential !

can't wait for the update

Great work guys.

@Akhnaten
As an update to this mod.

@Benjin, a new update is coming? looking forward to it! Will it be uploaded on this page or will it be done like a patch-submod like Absolute Bronze?

This sounds great Benjin. Thank you.

@Rubino303
No, we’re not asking people to make submods to unlock factions. I’ve already unlocked them for the next update last weekend and entirely removed the "Slaves" faction from being able to spawn as that faction was one of the major sources of random crashing in the fog of war for many players due to something in their hardcoding (e.g. if the faction leader dies in battle, the game always crashes for some reason). There are still a few things I’m working on before release, but faction accessibility isn’t an issue. The only submod suggestion I made previously was for Israel since that’s something we’re not planning to do.

As for submods in general, I’d love to see ones that expand the depth of the mod, like Absolute Bronze, which introduces population mechanics and a tin/copper/bronze system. That kind of thing enhances the experience rather than just unlocking content that’s already in the works.

They want you guys to make submods for this mod that will unlock other factions and finish the work they no longer seem interested in other than Benjin maybe.
I was looking forward to the factions outside of the areas available to play in TW:Pharaoh,Dynasties, but im not gonna hold my breath.
Even if some brave soul did start unlocking other factions to play as, they wont be able to finish the mod with the weird tribal no man's land outside of the map areas they thought we shouldnt be reaching or whatever the thought process there was.

Interested. When the other nations become available I will definately be subbing to this.

i wish i could play other nations other then just 2 MAN

is there an ost? i love the ost of this mod so much

@beowulf; Egypt is rich it just takes time to build it up. If you recruit a navy in Sais, you can send it around and get a lot of money for trade rights + the income for trade is higher.

Also, I’d recommend using the absolute bronze submod, the additional copper/tin global market system adds more economic potential. And it has the script which helps major factions and makes late game more fun. It was removed from the base mod for some reason

my honest opinion about the mod, looks great factions are interesting and units look cool. settkements look awesome. but it is less emersive for the settlements when there are still a few "hellenistic" buildings scattered about. however, playing as egypt is extremly painful. everyone around you except for 1 or 2 factions absolutely hate you and i get declared war on by 4-5 factions around be by turn 10. ive replayed egypt on very hard, hard, and normal with the same thing happening. the economy is very much lacking to be able to effectivly support armies strong enough to fight all of that at the start of the gamre. in comparison to base game egypt or DEI egypt, the starting territories dont exactly feel rich and egypt feels rather very weak. i recommend either revamping the economy from buildings to increase income atleast in egypt or improving the opinions of some of the factions around you to prevent a bunch of people declaring war on you right out the gate.

also why no new factions why only 2

sea people as faction would be cool

@Airstoxenus
I think the best option would be if someone did a submod for AoB that included them. One very easy way - without having to edit the startpos - would be to either re-brand the existing emergent faction for the province of Canaan to be something like that, or potentially use one of the placeholder "bro_raider_##" factions (we left a few unused to allow players to do extra things with them for generated random events) to be a newly spawned faction designated as the "Habiru", "Israelites" or whatever other name given to them to spawn via a special event (either one-time at a certain turn time, within a range of turns or be dynamic via scripts - up to the mod author as to how complicated it should be). This way it can stay historical as a base but bring in the "what if" via player choice.

The Israelites were either in Egypt or had already left but hadn't settled in Canaan in this time period. 2 million strong by then. Should be a rebel faction at the least. -Coffee

@Aristoxenus, read the "Historical FAQ" section, this is a question that has been asked a lot

The Israelites could be an emerging faction, if possible to do, they were cousins of the Arameans, which the latter called them "Habiru" (Meaning "Hebrew")

When are the other factions playable?

@Degenerate Weeb
Okay but don't worry, I've had that bug you've got before and I'm sure it's fixable. If I run into it again I'll let you know what the solution is.

@Benji, Nah man, I just launched the mod and only the mod, even verified game files and then turned the mod off as well and base game ran smooth, then ran DEI, which ran smooth. I have no clue what the issue is.

@Mathicsatem
Thanks I'll check this out.

Map error: ORKOMENOS, Campaign, Hittites.
I’m working on a thrilling beach assault scenario, but the map you're using is set too far inland from the shoreline. As a result, my ship units end up stranded on dry land, turning invisible, and the game inevitably crashes.

@Benjin

@Degenerate Weeb
Are you using any other mods (e.g. Absolute Bronze)? I've had that happen to me once.

No clue what's wrong with the mod but the turn times take so fucking long that it's unplayable, can't really go past turn 5 without losing interest since it takes so damn long. Never had an issue with turn times with DEI or raidus so im just confused.

hi, it would be cool to be able to test another faction. a common sense greeting

@Inquerion
No, it’s not dead. Just because the next update isn’t dropping immediately doesn’t mean development has stopped. The work that remains only needs one or two dedicated people, and I’m putting in that time now. Calling it “overambitious” because progress isn’t instant is a lazy take. Mods of this kind always take time, and usually most of the progress is done by a couple of highly motivated people who have that time to spare.

@Benjin
So it's basically a dead mod since you lack manpower to properly develop and maintain it.
It's a overambitious project for such small team.

Still, thanks for what we got and also congratulations on your wedding and other real life related things.

Congratulations on your wedding, i understand the situation and i hope the mod will become better in the future. Thank you

Right now, my priority is unlocking the rest of the AoB factions via a submod at least as a temporary solution, as I’m also bored of just playing Egypt and Hatti. I’m also working on fixing major CTD bugs, and I think the worst one is linked to the ‘Slaves’ faction being attacked in the fog of war. Other modders I asked today confirmed that ‘rom_slave’ has been CTD-prone since Patch 20 when using a custom startpos, with no clear reason as to why they are crashing. I may just remove the faction entirely to prevent crashes like some others have done, as it was just a glorified rebel faction anyway.

It’s not a quick or simple process, and rushing it could cause more issues. I appreciate the patience of those who understand that modding (especially unpaid, complex work like this) takes time. I’ll provide more frequent updates over the next few weeks so that people are more in the loop here as not everyone here checks our Discord.

@MarZio
I get that it’s frustrating to run into crashes, and I appreciate you playing through both campaigns. That said, comparing our small team of three to DEI - which had 20-30 people, more resources, and over a decade of development compared to our 4 years - isn’t exactly fair. Even in DEI, startpos edits are rare due to how difficult they are. Dresden last edited it 4-5 years ago for a major update and swore never to touch it again after it took over a year. The lack of factions in AoB is entirely due to how frustrating startpos editing is for total conversion mods as it’s not a simple database change.

We also don’t have unlimited time - some months, one or all of us can’t work on it. For me, I had a wedding, changed jobs, and was upskilling on weekends, which put modding (including AAA: Generals) on hold for the past 7 months. Only yesterday did I finally get time to allocate to AoB, which is why I’m just now replying here.

morally i finished and won both available campaigns, in practice, the game randomly crashes during the end turns (during the slaves turn specifically, some times after 50, 70, or if you're lucky 100+ but it will nonetheless ctd) and there's nothing i can do about it. Too bad, the mod does some things good but it's unfinishable and i don't think it will be updated .

I understand it's an amateur unpaid project, but like, how many years do you need just to add some playable factions? DEI has been in development since Rome II launched and it changed the whole games and even added new factions, and you need years and years just to add a single faction?

Been almost a year since the last update. I hope it is still being worked on.

@Atlas there are Babylon and Elam but they are only playable in custom battle.

do we have sumerian civ?

This mod is a gem and I can't wait to see it finished.
To think about the fact that we got such talented modders using their free time to create something like this makes me happy. Thx for that! One of my favorite games never gets old because of mods like this.

I think the mod has a good base and need some more love and care. The graphics are better than the more expensive game. And this is a better game play also. Guys good work! Do continue! We are looking forward to any new developments! Super!

Jeez, the toxicity here is unreal, you'd think people would be grateful to have a free additional campaign for a ten year old game. Would not blame the mod devs for disabling comments here, but I hope they know they have at least one fan waiting for full release.

@Falcon yawn. Another weenie rider for an old ass dead mod. Holy shit I forgot this existed 😂

Holy crap the campaign is a broken steaming pile. Utterly impossible to survive past 10 turns. Everyone and their grandmother declares war on you by the end of the first turn and hits you with full stack armies after 2-3 turns. And naturally, it takes TWO of your full stack armies to squeak out a close victory against only ONE of their full stacked armies.

Don't waste your time on this mod's campaign, it's trash. Just use it for battle sims.

@Rubino303 What did you expect? It's a mod. It's free. It's glorious. Be grateful people even take the time to appease your pleb brain.

Once you reach 1299 BC, the turns crashes, Its a good mod and I love it, but the turn crash is a normal issue for any mod, but it should be fixed later on.

nice