Medieval mod IV v4 beta: Path to Glory

[WesW]

Edit: I'm pretty sure that last folder was left out of the guide, too.

I have just finished uploading the texts (again). The custom graphics added about 6 megs to the size of the download.

I got to looking into the names and descriptions, and I must have meant to get back to the Muslims and then never did, back when I was doing all the other factions, because they hadn't been updated for version four.
I then finished adding unit bonuses to the rest of the provinces. I also shifted a few around, so remember to look over the Faction Descriptions readme for your faction when you begin play.

If any of you are running custom battles, please take time to notice if the units' weapons are properly placed, or even missing. There may be some with the non-Catholic factions especially.

[JR-]

fantastic, can't wait for the final object.

[Pericles]

Wes:

I am very happy to see that you are back modding MTW - surely, one of the best games available...

Cheers!

[Big_John]

hmm, with the update, will i be able to continue my campaing of almohad dominance? or do i need to start a new campaign?

[Aenlic]

Ah, thanks, Wes! The info in the heroes texts is wonderful. Those guys did a great job.

8 folders? Well, crap. That explains a few things in my own fledgling mod. PlateCav too (sigh). Well, at least I won't be pulling my hair out in big clumps... until the next wall smacks me in the nose.

Was it corrected in Starkhorn's v1.1 of the adding_new_factions.pdf? The one available for download is the v1 with all of the errors. New modders, me included, are beating our brains out on v1 of that guide.

Heh, Big John, so you have a thing for the Almohads too? There's just something special about smacking around all those hoity-toity late era uppity armies with a good old-fashioned early and high era army.

[WesW]

Yeah, you'll have to start a new campaign for the changes to take affect.
If you're looking for a struggle, you might want to try out the Bulgarians. I hear the Horde's a blast!

[Aenlic]

Well, I hit a CTD and I have no idea why. Tried to isolate it and nothing obvious is jumping out at me. Playing the Russians, year is 1395. Hit end turn and crash. I had 2 buildings ready to finish for the next turn, a merchant in Kiev and a copper mine in Armenia. Deleted them from the building queue. Still CTD. No units of any kind being built. No units being moved. No wars. The only thing which might happen the following turn is my leader, Grand Prince Andrei IV is 45 and might die. Otherwise, nothing at all is happening in my territories to explain the CTD. It has to be something happening elsewhere; which, of course, I can't see.

A couple of other things. just minor bugs.

Lithuania has a Setbuilding for a shipyard2 at the campaign beginning. Being an inland province now with the expansion of Livonia, they shouldn't have a port. Ships can be built; but they'll disappear into the ether when finished since Lithuania has no border with a sea. I suspect this may be why Lithuania was so easy to conquer as the Russians, after I finished off the Horde. The AI was building ships.

The SetOrigin for the Baltic probably needs to be adjusted a little south. Right now, AI ships appearing in the Baltic end up just south of Gotland right on top of where the 2 new seas intersect with the Baltic. It's difficult to tell that they're actually just in the Baltic, rather than one of the two new seas, until the AI moves ships into the new seas making it obvious.

Last one is a minor thing which might be intentional, but I thought I'd better check. Some names have odd capital letters in them. I suspect it might be to due to a non-standard character set imported into the MM4_Heroes.txt file. It's not all of any particular letter, just some. The new letters seem to always be capital letters in odd places, which clued me in to the problem. So some a's in some names, particularly Hungarian, but some others, appear as a capital N. So the name Istvan, for instance, appears as IstvNn. It shows as IstvNn in the heroes.txt and in the game. The same for some other characters. Some o's ended up as X, so Otto looks like OttX. Some i's came out as Z, so the Egyptian names Ali and Khalil came out as AlZ and KhalZl. That same Z appears in some Spanish as well, such as Garcia and Diaz being GarcZa and DZaz. Some e's are showing as Q's making Clement into ClQment and d'Orleans into d'OrlQans. There are others which are possible but I'm not sure of them. Some of the names for the Golden Horde have odd capitals in the middle, like ArigbVge, GYyYk, HYlegY, JVchi and JgVdei and some others. There is a suspect capital M in the middle or at the end of some of the Scottish names, such as the BroiM and the RoM and FeniM and ViMman.

[WesW]

Good work, Aenlic, this is just the type of info I need. I had noticed the odd capitals in the Hungarian names, but I thought it was just the way they spelled them, like Kent Hrbek. Anyway, I went through and corrected all the ones I ran across. They seemed to come in bunches, and they all seemed to be vowels, so they were probably supposed to be accented and didn't translate properly. I did the best I could with them, but at times I felt like an official at Ellis Island.

To better see what is going on in the game, read the Godmode commands text that is included in the Charts and Readmes folder.
It will show you how to unlock the debugging commands used by the programmers. They let you see the whole map, change which faction you control, or let the AI take over all players. You can't control the new factions, unfortunately, so you can't see what they are building, but it's great for checking out the finances and such of the original factions.
The commands work with saved games, too.

[Aenlic]

Ah! That's good news. I didn't realize that the god mode works on saved games. I still have that 1395 Russian game saved. I'll go back and peek around at other factions and see if I can isolate that crash.

[Aenlic]

Well, using god mode I still get the CTD at the end of any turn after 1395, if I leave the AI turned on. I've stopped building production and unit production for all of the factions I which I can control. So it isn't something being built or a unit being produced by one of those factions. If I turn off the AI, using the "I" key, then the game runs fine, either manually or using the "A" key to autorun all of the years frm then on. Of course, with the AI off, nothing moves and the only new units which appear are princesses and heirs and those units and buildings in the queues I can't control. If I turn the AI back on, I get a CTD immediately after the hitting the end turn, no matter which year after 1395. Something that the AI is doing is causing the CTD; but it's nothing I can see using god mode and scenic tour. I've tried everything I can think of doing. Turning off everything, autosave, unit cleanup, emptying queues for all factions I can control, stopping all unit movement I can control. Sorry. I'll start up a fresh campaign and try again from the start, to see what happens near that point in the game.

On the subject of the names. They appear to be an artifact from CA. The original names.txt contains the exact same errors; but only in the names within the [] brackets. They show correct in the {} brackets. So under the Hungarian surnames it shows, as copied and pasted directly from the unmodded CA version of names.txt:

["AndrNs"] {"András"}
["LNszlX"] {"László"}
["BQla"] {"Béla"}
["KNlmNn"] {"Kálmán"}
["Geza"] {"Geza"}
["Samuel"] {"Samuel"}
["IstvNn"] {"István"}
["OttX"] {"Ottó"}
["KNroly"] {"Károly"}

and so on. It's definitely the vowels with accent marks. But it's not something that happened in your mod; because all of the accent marks in your Portuguese names came out just fine. It's CA's fault and I'll bet it's duplicated in every mod. At least they show correctly in the {} bracketed lists, so fixing them to the correctly accented vowels is easy, if somewhat time-consuming.

[poirot]

Why are all of the new factions with flags and shields of the Almohads?

[Aenlic]

Look about 5 paragraphs down in Wes's opening post in this thread. There are placeholder graphics for the new factions and units, etc while we beta test the mod. Once everything is working to Wes's specs, then we'll get the completed product which will have a correct map, and all of the correct graphics and names.


Wes, I have no idea what was causing the immediate CTD after an end turn. I started up a new campaign as the Scots, had the same type of CTD in year 1325; but I couldn't duplicate it after I restarted from an autosave a few turns earlier and played all the way to 1450 with no CTD's. It's something that is happening just after the end turn and before the faction leaders' graphics pop up and the the new turn starts. I'm not familiar enough with how the game works to know what goes on during that period.

[poirot]

I am playing the Golden Horde right now and I notice the following problems:

1, No inns

2, Cannot build ships

3, No emissaries

[Aenlic]

Poirot, inns can only be built in specific provinces. That's one of the changes that MedMod makes from most mods. There is an excel file called v4_stats.xls in the total war/medieval total war/charts and readmes directory with much info that will answer your questions. You'll also find the faction descriptions, unit descriptions and a newbie guide in word format. If you haven't played one of the earlier versions of MedMd IV, then you really should read all of this info. MedMod is quite a bit different from the usual mod or the original game. Inns and mercenaries are restricted. You can only build units in the "homeland" provinces for your faction (explained in that Excel file, which shows homelands for each faction). Unlike the unmodded game and most mods, you can't just conquer a province and start building your troops there with the proper buildings, that includes ships. As for an emissary, not all factions start off with an emissary, like in the normal game; so, you're going to have to build one in your unit queue. Khazar has a royal palace at the start for the Golden Horde. Not all factions start with ships, either. If you want ships, you're going to need a shipyard built first. The Crimea or Levidia would be a good choice.

It's a fun mod; but it does take some getting used to before you'll be confortable with the major changes to the way things work. Alt-tabbing or using the Windows key to minimize the game and check the various info files in the charts and readmes folder is definitely needed until you're familiar with the various changes, and even after.

[poirot]

I get the rest, but for Golden Horde I don't have an emissary icon to CLICK. I noticed that only VI original factions have emissaries. Even if I have a royal palace, I can only train assassins, spies, and shamans. No emissaries.

Thanks for the tips!

[Deutschordensritter]

I was really pleasantly surprised when I saw that MedMod IV would see the light. I have played two previous versions of MedMod and overall, especially the SP campaign balance in mind, MedMod is the best mod available for TW series(best mod setting/idea would be the Reconquista, though). I have tried BKB Super Mod and XL as well, liked them very much, but in the end, the gameplay in those mods tend to be pretty much same as with the original.(=lack of challenge mainly because AI cannot build effective units enough and also lack of historical atmosphere because of too many shared units between the factions.)

I would still play MedMiod 3.14, but lack of Genoese/Venitian distinction and Teutonic Order are the reasons why I play both BKB Supermod and XL(latter because of working GA mode) campaigns instead of it. Hopefully Glorious Achievments will work(at least with original factions) when the final version of Medieval Mod IV comes out, as "conquer the whole world" campaigns tend to get boring after a few games.

As for beta testing, I cannot be much of help since MedMod IV crashes to desktop every time after I hit the enter or press the end turn button. No matter which faction I play, i'ts always CTD after the end turn. I have tried to uninstall the game, get rid of all MTW folders, did the fresh install(with VI + 2.01 patch), then MedMod IV beta, but no chance to continue the game after the first turn.

[Aenlic]

Poirot, my deepest apologies. You are correct. Even with a royal palace in Khazar, the horde can't build emissaries for some reason. This is definitely one for Wes to check. I haven't played the horde faction yet. So, it's the same with ships as well, after you build a shipyard? Inns can only be built in those special mercenary provinces, the closest to the Horde being Georgia, which the Horde already owns at the start, and Livonia and Volhynia.

[Aenlic]

Deutschordensritter, perhaps it's a resolution problem. Have you tried setting the strategic map resolution to 1024 x 768 instead of the default 800 x 600? Also try turning off all of the options at the top of the map, like autosave, etc. I only get the CTD very rarely, but I have played some games entirely without one.

We'll have to wait and see what Wes comes up with for ideas on this.

[Aenlic]

Ok, went all the way up to master shipbuilder in both Novgorod and Khazar with the Golden Horde, no ships can be built by the Horde, and no emissaries. Good catch, Poirot! Ihad no trouble with building inns in Volhynia, Livonia, Georgia and Poland.

This presents a problem for the Horde. They can't get a complete win without ships to conquer the islands, and without emissaries they can't propose to princesses to keep their line going.

The Horde also seems way overpowered. I took out the Russians, the Lithuanians, the Teutonic Order, the Poles, the Bulgarians and the Hungarians by 1355 and most of the HRE (it was left with only a part of the French it had conquered), the Danes (except for Gotland which I couldn't reach without ships), half of the Byztantines (down through Achaea to Constantinpole and Nicaea and most of the Turks by 1380. At that point, I had to stop expanding to protect my sea borders with troops; since I had no ships to cover them. This was doing only automatic battles, as well. I think maybe either the opening unit numbers or the opening economics for them need a bit of a tweak downwards. I was wondering why they were so powerful when I was trying the Scots and turned on god mode and saw a similar situation by the 1390's fr the Horde with the AI playing it.

[Aenlic]

Poirot and anyone else, I have a temporary solution to the no emissaries or ships (except for the carrack which needs both compass and master shipbuilder) for the Golden Horde. You're going to need an editor for the unit_prod file. The downloads page here on totalwar.org has Gnome's editor. It'll work just fine. Run Gnome's editor and open the file MM_Full_unit_prod.txt in the directory medieval total war directory for MedModIV.

Go down to row 233 and across to column 50. Since we're only dealing with Late era at this time, you want to only make changes to late era ships - that would be Cog to Carrack. Since Chernigov can have a cog, it seems reasonable to allow the Horde to as well. So at the end of the line in row 233, column 50 right after FN_CHERNIGOV add a comma then FN_GOLDEN_HORDE before the end quotes. You can also add the ability to make a caravel in row 236. There, you click on row 236, row 50 to open the entire line, and right after FN_TEUTONIC add the same comma then FN_GOLDEN_HORDE before the end quote.

For the emissaries, it requires only a small change to row 240, column 54. You'll see there that emissaries are enabled only for Catholic, Orthodox and Muslim. We just need to add a comma and PAGAN after the MUSLIM and before the end quote. It should look exactly like the lines for Spy and Assasin above it. Then save the file.

These changes will allow the Horde to build the appropriate ships as soon as they have a level 3 shipyard, without having to wait for the compass event and then build a master shipbuilder. And emissaries may be built at any Horde royal palace.

[Big_John]

thanks aenlic, you're doing some great beta-testing! if i can find some time to play this game, i'll try to help out in the future.

[WesW]

Guess who spent his weekend working on map files?
At least they are finished, and new updates of all three portions have been uploaded to the webpage.
I hope these are the final versions of the map files. All the new names have been added and removed as necessary, and I have adjusted the placement of the castles and units so everything looks nice. I even adjusted a few of the original settings where they were annoying, such as Ile de France and Franconia. I'm really happy with how the land names worked out, since I had to copy and paste in individual letters from other names to form them. The ocean work was a pain, as usual, but I did the best I could, unless I wanted to get really detailed, and it wasn't worth that much more effort for the small aestetic (sp?) improvement.

That said, I would really like help with the faction graphics. If I use the ones from BKB's mod, it will help, but there are a few that still need to be made. It would be nice if someone who has done this before, or is good with graphics programs would volunteer to take this off my hands. I made a stab at it myself, but graphics aren't where my talent lies, unfortunately.

Deutschordensritter, you probably have the initial files I posted, which had a CTD bug on the first turn. That has been corrected, so get this new update.

Aenlic, I don't know what would be causing the CTD's you have experienced. Now that I have the maps done, I plan to start my own game, so maybe I can find it myself.

I also added starting Emissaries and Princesses to the game.

The things you have noticed with the Horde are not bugs, though I had forgotten to mention them in the readmes. I added this section to the Unit notes Readme, which I hope makes everything clear:

"The Horde cannot build ships, as they are designed to be more of a force of nature than a traditional faction. This means that you cannot conquer the world as the Horde, but then the Horde are too overpowered to offer any kind of challenge for the player to control. They are available to you, but they are designed to be akin to the Big Boss enemy you fight at the end of the game.
Also, neither they nor the Chernigovians can produce Princesses or build Emissaries, as the Horde weren’t known for their negotiating skills, either. (Nothing against the Chernigovians, but they are also Pagans, which lumped them in with the Horde for these restrictions.) Playtesting revealed that the Horde would happily sign treaties and alliances if given diplomats, which is not what the Horde should be doing in this game."

[Aenlic]

That's great news! Looks like I'll be spending the evening playing with the new maps. Thanks, Wes!

I wasn't sure if the Horde lack of ships and emissaries was intentional. That's why I posted the info on how to change it. Now that I know it's intentional and not a bug that crept in, I'm fine with it. It makes perfect sense, with the Horde being so powerful. As the Horde, the AI takes out Russia and Lithuania almost immediately; and it's even easier playing the Horde. I do have one question about not having emissaries, though. Are Pagans hardcoded like Muslims so that they don't need to find wives for the princes? Being dependent on the chance offerings of other faction's princesses for marriage seems like it might leave the Horde vulnerable to a massive revlt without an heir; and, therefore, not available as the end game bad guy such as you envision.

I haven't had any CTD's at all lately. I don't know what caused the initial CTD problem when playing the Russians. I had no such problems as the Almohads, and just the one singular CTD early on while playing the Scots, which never came back when I went back to an earlier autosave. I've been playing lately as the Nordic factions to get a feel for them.


Sadly, I'm extremely deficient in the graphics department, or I'd gladly help with the unit graphics. I'll gladly help in any other way that I can. I'm retired, so I have plenty of time on my hands.


What program do you use for editing your unit_prod and build_prod files? I can get the unit files to load into Gnome's editor; but the building files get a formatting error using Gnome's editor. I tried loading it into Excel, but many of the building descriptions have just spaces rather than using an under_line; so the delimiter tabs and spaces put some buildings like royal palace into the wrong columns.

[Aenlic]

The map looks great! The lettering came out beautifully and the seas look just fine too. I do have one small question. Shouldn't Languedou be Languedoc? Everything else is perfect.

[farfarer]

Wes - something seems to have happened to knights of St George and Gascon Knights. In battle they were flickering, horses looked empty from some angles, arms in mid-air etc. Didn't notice this before the CTD was fixed, so maybe it's a by-product of the changes made then? Let me know if noone else has got this - but I haven't changed anything myself, so I would be surprised.

[Big_John]

i must agree, the map looks fantastic. and assuming that "langudou" is a typo, i just copied the C in franconia over the U; it looks fine to me. i would post a pic, but i'm not sure if WesW would mind. anyway, it's easy enough to do.

aenlic, i opened up MM_Full_build_prod.txt in a freeware spreadsheet called "easy spreadsheet" (part of the easyoffice suite), renamed it and saved it. the gnome editor opened that duplicate file without a hitch.

[Aenlic]

Ah, ok, Big John. I have Excel, so I'll try opening in that, renaming it and saving it and see how that works. All I have for viewing the maptex2.tga is irfanview; so I don't think I can fix the map myself.

I just finished a complete game (well to 1453 anyway) as the Danes. No problems at all. I'll try out the English tomorrow t see if I can duplicate the flickering that farfarer witnessed.

Also, the stats for caravels are carracks are something I thought t ask about. Did you intend for carracks to be weaker than caravels? It seems backwards to me for caravels to be 40 30 3 and the higher tech carracks to only be 20 20 2. Just wanted to make sure that this was intentional. Carracks don't come into play much, since they need the highest shipyard and the game doesn't last long enough to build more than a few before 1453.

[Big_John]

Ah, ok, Big John. I have Excel, so I'll try opening in that, renaming it and saving it and see how that works. All I have for viewing the maptex2.tga is irfanview; so I don't think I can fix the map myself.

what do you think i used to do it?

i just drew a selection box around the C in franconia (i thought it looked like a close terrain match) bounding the red letter pixels (i think it was ~10x12 pixels) and copied the selection. then i drew a selection box over the U in languedou and pasted the C over it. saved the image and violà. though, i haven't tested it in-game yet.


edit: i've played the game with my editted version of maptex2.tga. looks fine. also, i can confirm a graphical bug with the knights of st. george (flickering is as good a description as any).

one question, why do the french recieve constant grants of 1000 florins from the pope? is this to reflect the french relationship with the papacy? was this part of vanilla mtw (i haven't played vanilla in years)?

[Aenlic]

Ok, I'll give that copy and paste a shot.

The 1000 florin grants are common to all Catholic factions that stay on the Pope's good side and do things the Pope likes, such as attacking excommunicated factions. It's hard coded into the game, I believe. It's always been a part of plain vanilla MTW.

[Deutschordensritter]

Why are all of the new factions with flags and shields of the Almohads?

New version seems to work fine(=no more 1st turn CTD), but I'm also interested about those shields. It seems that every new faction has Almohad shields. Is this intentional with beta version or is this a bug?