Creating the Ancient World - An Interview with a Videogame modder

By Owain Williams

Nowadays, videogames are quickly becoming one of the main mediums through which people are exposed to the ancient world and perhaps inspired to study it in greater detail. While there are games like Total War: Rome 2 and Imperator: Rome, many people turn to modding – the creation of additional assets for games, sometimes completely altering the game and changing it into something else – to create the ancient video gaming experience they want.

I spoke via email with the lead developer of two modifications (mods) for Mount and Blade: Bannerlord (hereafter, Bannerlord) that recreate the ancient world in digital detail.

Who are you and what mods are you working on?

I go by Alexander Drakos on Discord, the forum where we do most of our organizing, and I am known by that name in the Bannerlord modding community. I am currently the lead developer of the Bannerlord mods Tides of War, which I started, as well as recently becoming the lead developer of Eagle Rising, which is a beloved mod in the Bannerlord community that was created by my friend who goes by the name Plebian Kilo. 

The work on these mods is a team effort. We have a multi-cultural team of very talented people from across the world.

What can you tell us about these mods? 

We have different goals for Tides of War: 335 BCE and Eagle Rising. 

Tides of War will recreate the ancient world of the fourth century BC, from northern Britain to Bactria, featuring well-known factions like Rome, Carthage, and Persia alongside lesser-known factions, such as the Ligurians and Garamantes. Tides of War is fully historical and we take painstaking effort to make it as accurate as possible, though the game’s limitations as well as our own personal limits play a role in that as well. I believe we are getting closer to an accurate representation than any other game or mod we are currently aware of has in the past. The Divide et Impera (DEI) mod for Total War: Rome 2 and the Rome at War mod for Mount and Blade: Warband both come really close to being fully accurate as well.  

Eagle Rising is also historical mod, as we are moving to a custom map of Europe and we will release both a Punic Wars and an Early Imperial Roman era version. However, Eagle Rising is less strict on the actual armours and allows for some artistic license, while Tides of War is much stricter on the equipment used in the mod. 

What was the inspiration behind these mods? What drew you to ancient history?

I can't fully say what the creation of Eagle Rising, but from what I understand it was a love for ancient Rome and he was given a digital model of a Roman helmet to use in his mod. The rest is a long history, before my time on the Eagle Rising team. 

For Tides of War, my inspiration was playing Total War: Rome 2 using the DEI mod and the Alexander campaign sub-mod. I loved playing in the era of Alexander the Great and I wanted to bring that to Bannerlord. Since then, I have learned so much more about ancient history. What used to be just a simple interest in hoplites and Sparta (from pop culture and movies) has now turned into a near obsession with researching the truth to ancient history and separating it from the Hollywood fantasy that most people are familiar with.  

I personally love reading primary sources, such as the works of Xenophon, Arrian, Herodotus, and Livy. 

What is your research process like? 

Our research team uses any resources they can to get the most accurate information possible for creating a troop/unit. This includes scouring the Internet, as well as history textbooks, primary sources from historians, archaeological records, modern historian opinions. Websites like Academia.edu or ResearchGate.net where academics upload their papers are invaluable. This is very difficult as the information that is out there is often contradictory or has been influenced by representations in popular culture. Some of our team also use the illustrations in Ancient History and Ancient Warfare magazines for inspiration. 

A good example is the late fourth century BC, the era in which Tides of War is set. We have a lot of writings about Alexander the Great and his campaigns, as well as writings from Xenophon about the Persians from the mid-fourth century BC, but there is a lot of storytelling and exaggeration that has to be examined in the sources. We try to take in all the evidence we can to make as much of an educated decision as possible for our troop designs. Oftentimes this goes against popular culture that we are used to, the Corinthian helmet was rarely used by 335 BCE, for example, and the Romans didn’t fight with scuta and chainmail yet. Our researchers are constantly having discussions on the evidence to try and make sure no one is putting a personal opinion over the actual evidence. 

We have also had some support from other mod developers working on mods set in the ancient world, such as the Rome at War (a mod for Mount and Blade: Warband) development team.

Bannerlord is a game about war and conquest, first and foremost, and so far, you have talked about creating different troop designs. Yet players can also go into towns and cities and interact with the inhabitants. How do you plan on making the urban environments immersive and authentic?

As you said, Bannerlord is a game about war. The player and AI ‘lords’ recruit troops into their party and roam the world map, where they fight with each other or join larger armies to have larger battles or besiege castles and cities. The player not only commands troops in their own, but they also fight on the battlefield themselves, creating fun and immersive gameplay. 

The player can enter settlements to perform various tasks or trade, recruit more troops, where they are exposed to the non-military side of the cultures in the game. To adapt the various environments, such as cities and villages, to the ancient world, we are adding historical characters, such as Alexander, his generals, and Darius of Persia, and plan to change the Non-Player Characters (NPCs) to era-correct clothing. The settlement scenes are something we have started working on as well, but it’s very time consuming and we are working within the game limitations as always. We want to eventually change all the scenes to era appropriate ones that are immersive for the players.  

For the wider world, we have plans for adding custom code for other things like population and social class recruitment for troops, the slave trade (which is not currently in Bannerlord), diplomacy etc. through a partnership with another modder, but that’s still in the future. 

Can people currently play the mods? 

We have no exact release date as the team is composed entirely of volunteers and real-life circumstances can affect the amount of time we can dedicate to the project. There is a playable version of both mods, though. Eagle Rising has a published version on Nexus and beta testing for Tides of War is available on our Discord forum.