Making higher level settlements display as lower level settlements on the battle map

[FactionHeir]

Well, after some nagging (you know who you are!) by fellow Citadel members, I'm putting this info up as a tutorial now. Not as a mod because I don't think I can find a space to upload some 700 megs.
As such, be warned. You need up to 800 megs for the final modification, depending on which settlement size you want. It can be more or less, ranging from 100-800. For my example, it will be 410. You will need a total of around 1 gig for the preparation as the initial unpacking will produce some junk files too unless you want to spend an extra hour reconfiguring your unpacker to extract 1 file at a time!

Please note that the below only applies if you have the packed files that were installed with your game. If you have already unpacked the files completely and got rid of them, you won't have to unpack anything and just go directly to the folders below (just keep reading, you'll notice when you are being addressed! I will call you 'no packs') and do what it says here.
[As a 'no packs' person, you will not actually need any extra disk space unless you make backups]

You probably only want to continue reading past this point if:
1. You experience siege battle lag
2. You hate large settlements on the battlemap
3. You are a modder and simply interested
4. You are bored. Severely.

These changes will also affect a running campaign, i.e. are retroactive

OK, now, let's get working. Firstly, you want to modify your unpacker first of all.

Make it unpack: *_a.worldcollision
That will create a data folder with a settlement subfolder and a lot of further subfolders. If you have little space to start out with on your hard drive (such as me), you want to delete any folder and its contents that is NOT:
data\settlements\middle_eastern\castles
data\settlements\middle_eastern\settlements
data\settlements\north_european\castles
data\settlements\north_european\settlements
data\settlements\south_european\castles
data\settlements\south_european\settlements

In other words, only the above folders and the contents of the last folders should remain. Delete anything else (in the data\settlements folder, not your entire M2TW installation folder! saying this just in case you blame me afterwards...)

Now, repeat the above, but this time make your unpacker unpack:
*_a.world

Again, you'll get a lot of junk folders and contents. And again, do the same as above.

To verify you got everything correctly, check your data\settlements folder. Is there anything else besides the middle_eastern, north_european, and south_european folders there? If so, delete. [Only if you are working from pack files]
Then, open each of these three folders in turn and check whether there is anything other than the castles and settlements folders there. If so, again delete. [Only if you are working from pack files]

Now you should be left with a total of 12 files, 2 in each of the named folders above. [Might be more if you have unpacked everything before reading this tutorial, but those 12 files are important, read below which 12]

Now envision on which settlement size you started experiencing siege battle lag on first. The smallest settlement size on which it happens that is.
If you experience it starting in minor cities (such as I), then you want to use the large town files for example. Basically one down. I also have issues on fortresses and citadels for example, so I will make those look like castles (although it does remove some rings, you probably rather want to fight the battle than auto resolve it, eh?)

As such, I will walk you through making larger settlements look like large towns or castles, depending on settlement type.

Go to your large_town folder. There you will find two files with rather intuitive names such as:
middle_eastern_large_city_a.world
middle_eastern_large_city_a.worldcollision

You now want to copy both files into each of the following folders:
middle_eastern\city
middle_eastern\large_city
middle_eastern\huge_city

Then delete the old files found in those folders. [You should rename them to bak files if you are amongst the 'no packs' I mentioned in the introduction - otherwise delete] Now rename the copied over files to the name the old ones had. Basically the huge city file was called the same as your copied over file except that it was named middle_eastern_huge_city_a.world for example.
Do this for all three folders.

Now go to the next culture (north_european or south_european) and repeat the above steps with new large_town files found there.

Now you can go over to the castles folder. The names of those folders are slightly less intuitive, but they mean the following:

castle = Castle (Stone)
fortress = Citadel
large_castle = Fortress
stone_keep = Castle (Wood)
wooden_fort = Motte and Bailey

Go to the castle folder and repeat the steps you did for the cities above, except that you use the castle files and fix them for the fortress and large_castle files.

Now you can delete all folders you did not change including your large_town and castle folder, as those files are redundant (your game loads those from the packs instead, no need to have duplicates out) [unless you are a 'no packs' person!]

Now move the settlements folder (the one found directly in the data folder) over into your actual data folder (or your mod folder if that's what you're using). [again, if you are a 'no packs' person, you will have been working direactly from your actual data folder so ignore this step]

To make the game run your changes, you need to henceforth start your game with a command line.
Basically, you can create a shortcut on your desktop and change the target to:
D:\Medieval\medieval2.exe --io.file_first

Where D:\Medieval is to be replaced with where you got your M2TW installed. Base installation folder that is. [Again, only need to do this as a 'no packs' person]

Now you can go and enjoy your game and forget about this tutorial

[FactionHeir]

One thing I forgot to mention when I wrote this:

The enemy walls/towers may look like the weaker versions but they actually are as strong as the settlement's walls would be normally, so a catapult shot at a wooden wall of a large town does 12% but at the huge city's 'wooden wall' would do 2%, i.e. the settlement works like its actual size, but only displays as a smaller one.

[John_Longarrow]

Does this affect arty on the walls? ie, would I still have Cannons on my now wooden walls if I built them in the campaign?

[FactionHeir]

Yes you would. It doesn't look awkward either.

[doorknobdeity]

In Rhedd's post on stone forts in the Crusades, you mentioned that it is possible to use this method to put them in instead of the crappy wooden ones we have now. I have to admit that even with this tutorial, I don't know how to apply this method to the forts; could you please write up the process for that?

[FactionHeir]

I would if I had Kingdoms, but I don't.
If you want to buy me a copy, I'll write it

Still, this tutorial can easily be applied to get the forts working there. Should be fairly intuitive.