New Campaign

[Kraellin]

ok, i've uploaded a new campaign. it's currently in the test uploads area, waiting for testing and scanning by the admins. the name is 'K_s_EarlyRussiaQ.zip' and can be found here: http://www.totalwar.org/Downloa....iaQ.zip (http://www.totalwar.org/Downloads/Mtw_Uploads/MTWupload/K_s_EarlyRussiaQ.zip)

barocca,
i made a mistake in the zip file name on the first upload. could you please delete the one with the apostrophe. it reads in the test upload area as K\'s_EarlyRussiaQ.zip. my bad, i forgot about the character rules. just delete it, but leave the other, please. the K_s_EarlyRussiaQ.zip is fine.

this mod is the one i've been discussing in the other thread. it includes all but the golden horde as a playable faction. so you can now play the sicilians, the burgundians, the swiss and many others, as well as all the standard ones.

there are no land bridges. none.

shipping is increased for the ai. this is still a bit goofy at times, but i now get some factions that do it fairly well.

there was no attempt at re-creating history here. this is just a mod for the fun of it and to test certain mod capabilities.

one other caveat... the nov's and the russians use the same flags and colors on the campaign map. so, pay attention to whom you are really fighting. and for all i know, this may crash the game later on. i've played it up past the compass event, so far, and it works ok. no crashes, but beyond that i dont know. if someone wishes to mod the nov's or russians to make better distinctions between these two factions, why, feel free.

there are many tweaks to province ownership, starting units, starting money and other factors. i've only played this mod as the sicilians so you may get some really oddball opening conditions if you play as another faction, particularly if you play in normal difficulty. i always played in expert, so the mod is tweaked for the human playing sicilian in expert. results playing other factions may well be quite favorable or disfavorable.

one of the main features i wanted to effect was having the various factions last longer in the starting game. this has more or less been accomplished. you can still get random factors which can change this, but overall, it works.

the swiss have been added to this campaign, but they are a high period faction, i believe, so they are very limited in their starting position in this mod because of their better capabilities.

there is quite a bit more money in this mod, as well. many of the provinces have been tweaked upwards as far as tradable goods and resources. the tradable goods were raised to encourage trade and trade routes and to balance when and how a faction got more money. the same was done with resources. the HRE, for example, got many resources so that they have to take the time to build mines. this delays their money income a bit but can make them quite the powerhouse if they can hold onto their stuff long enough.

the HRE is also a very large faction in this mod. they may seem like an overpowering one, in fact, but, in almost all of my games, they end up losing or being pushed back severely. the reason for this seems to be their geographical location, being bordered by quite a few very aggressive factions. it is almost like they are the cape buffalo, quite large, but being hounded by the hungry lions or wolves surrounding them. they simply get picked to death, in most cases. i really dont know how they play if played by the human.

feel free to mod this mod. if you do, i simply request that you include my original readme file as part of your own zip file files.

i thank CA for making a very moddable and quite incredible game. very nicely done :)

i also thank Doc, who was always about 2 steps ahead of me in modding this stuff and made my job easier. thanks Doc :)

the other thing i copied/ripped off was the origin points from the Africa mod, the co-ordinates. i knew what and where to mod this stuff to get the sahara turned into a playable province, but i didnt have to figure out the origin points for the castle and ports and unit locations because of the person's work that made the africa mod, so thanks to him/her, whoever it was :)

most of all, have fun. if you wish to criticize my work, that's your problem; if you wish to praise it, send money :) if you just wish to discuss it, why, i'm in here most every day ;)

K.

[monkian]

Sounds good, I'll give it a butchers http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif

[Knight_Yellow]

well im on my dads comp at the moment but if windows installs this time (ddr memory, my new mother board screwed up with 333 fast speed ddr so i got 266 and was told that would work) i will try out this mod with mutch anticipation i hope the trade routs have been improved upon as mutch as uve said as the normal ones arent all that good i only biuld ports now to get from a to b quikly http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/frown.gif
i will post again on how i find ur mod if my comp works (fingers crossed) x
http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif

[Kraellin]

well, dont expect the ai to just go out and concentrate on shipping. it wont happen. it does seem to do better with these mods, but it's still not as much as i'd like to see. and the AI tends to like to start wars with ships, which also has a deleterious effect on shipping. in my current testing, however, i have got the egyptians covering all of the medit and moving around spain to the northern waters. i ever lose my alliance with them it's going to be one big sea struggle between me and the egyptians. however, to maintain this peace with the egyptians, i've had to cancel ALL other alliances and because the egyptians have gotten quite strong and quite aggressive, i'm now in wars with 4 other factions that see me and the egyptians as way too powerful and are protesting my alliance with the egyptians.

oh yes, the AI does know how to make use of their sea lanes. the egyptians have now invaded, from the sea, italy. this was a very nice surprise, except it also caused the italians to declare war on me. lol. apparently the AI does care about who is allied with whom ;)

K.

[Kraellin]

rofl, i like this mod, if i do say so myself :)

the year is 1204. the egyptians are king even though they've suffered a massive civil war in the near past, they've now put down the rebellion and are back to invading, well, just about everyone....by sea their most recent attempt was scotland, but the scottish have held fast and repulsed the yellow horde.

i, as the sicilians, hold the rest of england and ireland, but it was a near thing and i almost had to abandon it. i did have to abandon livonia and finland. the novs, the danes, the english and the spanish were all harrassing me no end. i had way too many mercenaries to support in trying to take and maintain my extra holdings. my sea lanes to the north had been cut by 3, then 4 factions and i couldnt re-establish them. the nov's were threatening sweden and norway, which i also held, the danes were no threat other than harrassing my shipping and if i attacked them, the bloody pope would intervene on their behalf.

my alliance with the egyptians was the only thing really keeping me alive and if they backstabbed me i was a goner. i was now into deficit spending and in the red on actual money held. i still had a few ships in the north and had managed to get a toehold in scotland. by using my norwegian port and doing an end-around with shipping to the north of england, i managed to transfer a large number of mercenaries from sweden and norway to scotland, but the lane was soon cut off. it was time to cut my losses, and get out of the red.

just about that time, the nov's invaded norway and took it. sweden was going to fall, there was no way to get support to it and i couldnt buy any more mercenaries, being in the red. it was then i decided to cut my losses, consolidate my forces and retreat.

the first thing i did was begin raiding the novs along the coast with my forces in finland and livonia. i had to cut off their ship building capability and gain some money from the raids. i also decided to abandon all holdings in finland and livonia, sell back the buildings for money and continue raiding the novs inland. i had two good stacks and could cause a lot of damage to the poorly supplied inland nov territories.

after selling everything off, i moved my armies, one from finland to novgorod and one from livonia to novgorod. their king was there with a very small army and retreated to muscovy. perfect. meanwhile, i was slowly taking over england and finally pushed the english completely out, but, the novs had also made a road into wales and had a nice half stack with a 6 star general. that would have to wait.

meanwhile, sweden also fell to the novs. this pushed my deficit spending into even worse shape and i was no 10,000 florins in the hole, with a 1500 per year deficit. not good. by continuing to push deeper into nov territory i was able to gain some pillage money and decided that i could take muscovy and hold it long enough to sell off the buildings and gain some money from that as well. not a good idea. by delaying that one extra year to take the castle, the nov's launched a full scale attack on me and i was sent packing with little to show for it. the only up side to this was that it had killed off quite a few mercenaries which i no longer had to pay for.

the english finally sued for peace and i gladly took it. one less naval power attacking my meager northern shipping. the novs, though now out of shipyards still had quite a few ships in the area and were making it tough for me to get any support up to my new english provinces. loyalty was running low. they were cut off from my king and provinces were showing signs of uprisings. i did manage, however, to send up a large group of spies i had been using to harrass the english in aquitaine. i used these to create havoc on the nov 6 star general. i finally invaded wales and won. i had all of england and ireland, but loyalty was severely low and i needed troops to bolster the rank and file and keep the peasants believing they were happy, by force.

i finally decided i had to sacrifice scotland and use the troops there to bolster the rest of the provinces. no doubt the scottish would raise a large army and i would be able to go back later, thinking nobody else would bother with such a difficult province.

the extra troops did the trick and i was able to secure the lands without incident. money was starting to rise and to help this out i began disbanding other mercenaries where i could afford to.

spain, however, was still blocking my shipping and now threatening provence and toulouse, which i had bought from rebels. the italians, on the other side, were constantly now invading me there as well. these provinces changed hands several times, first the italians, then me, then the spanish, then me, then...well, you get the picture. i finally managed a peace with spain, thank god and egypt was harrassing the italians and i had re-secured the two provinces with troops from sicily, malta, crete, and rhodes.

i was still a bit in debt, but coming out now...slowly. i had mostly turned my deficit spending into a positive cash flow, but not enough yet to get me out of debt. with the spanish war now over, i was able to disband some more mercenaries and as the loyalty came up in england, i could disband some there as well. things were looking up.

the danes finally sued for peace and i gladly accepted that as well. and for some odd reason, the turks, whom i had zero contact with, declared war on me. the novs were still pissed and now the english were back in it. d'oh

finally, i managed to get into the black on money i could start building ships again i immediately set every shipyard in the north to building again. i also moved my spy horde over to norway. hehe, norway didnt last very long. so, i moved the horde to sweden. sweden also experienced a nice loyalist uprise...and guess who the loyalists were :) (norway also fell to my loyalists)

with the re-capture of sweden, my income zoomed and my shipping began to flourish once again. the turks simply never fought and so a quiet peace simply took over there. the spanish have been too busy with the egyptians and the almo's to bother me any more. the nov ships are falling one by one and the english will soon once again feel my spy horde, if i can just get another port built in sweden so i can move the horde again ;)

so, i'm now gaining spanish trade again. even the italians have made peace and are trading with me again. the byzantines never quit nor did the egyptians. thus, when i've wiped the english and novs from the seas, i'll have again a dominant trade empire with which to back my coups, rebellions and small invasions.

this has been a most interesting game. i thought for sure the germans would dominate europe, but the french were merciless and along with some swiss help, pushed the germans steadily back to where they now sit in poland the 'most content' faction in the game...one province. they only hold the one.

the french, who were just a steamroller in the early game, must have had a massive revolution, for they somehow got completely wiped out. they've now re-emerged but in slightly less territory and slightly different.

the pope finally died. oh, and yes, i was excommunicated back about when my money was at the worst point. i think the danes must have attacked my ship and the pope blamed me lol. well, he's dead now, so i'm back in good standing. thankfully nobody raised a crusade against me, nor did the pope go so far as to call upon others to do so.

the burgundians also did well for a while and were instrumental in erasing the aragonese, but later fell themselves. they've tried to re-emerge twice now and failed miserably the first timee and are barely hanging on in their second attempt.

the turks also got pinched between the byz's, the egyptians and the russians and fell out for a while. they've now come back and hold a few provinces in the east. the russians fell, as well, pinched by the nov's and the byz's.

the almo's have had a rough time of it, being harrassed by both egypt and spain, but have hung on and continue to manage somehow. the english are also holding on along the western and nothern coastal areas of the continent.

the egyptian alliance saved my butt several times, mostly through shipping. the egyptians are currently the strongest sea power and have interceded several times in fighting ships that were in my way. they've also kept the italians off my back by simply giving them too much to handle to worry about me, very much.

this game just continues to amaze me in its depth and interaction. the year is 1204 and normally there would be a BIG power out there by now, usually me. the egyptians were getting pretty big, but spain, the almo's, the turks and they byz's have kept them contained and even caused the one massive civil war within egypt. my expansion attepts did gain me the british isles and norway and sweden, but i was also forced into debt and forced to give up holdings and lost a lot of my sea power. quite amazing.

ok, i know i'm tooting my own horn here, but you shld really try this mod and play it as the sicilians. it seems fairly easy at first, but be careful, it can crack your back in a hurry ;)

K.

[+DOC+]

Wow that sounds really cool, i must give your mod a try Does the AI build a ton of ships now with the mods you've made to shipping in general?

How did you eventually calculate all the new values for building ships, merchants, ports and shipyards?

x1.5, x2, x2.5, +50, +100?

I think for most of mine i added +50 to the building of improvements and boosted the building of ships by +30-50.

[+DOC+]

i also started getting crashes in my mod around the 1200-1230 mark, sometimes earlier. So i've essentially had to go back and re-do the whole thing. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/frown.gif

i think crusades can occasionally cause crashing. In one situation my crusade plus a friendly power attacked a Byz province and when i autocalculated the battle my crusade took more casualties than it had men.... booom http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/frown.gif

[Kraellin]

hi doc,

good to see you back again :)

um, i wouldnt say the ai builds a ton of ships, but it is more than the default. the egyptians do indeed have a ton of ships, but they tend to stay at war with a lot of factions, so, if anyone else is building ships, they are getting wiped out pretty quickly by the egyptians. lol. or by me ;) it's really hard to tell, doc. i did use your info about the combo stuff. i just doubled the default stats. as for the other stuff, the buildings, i just went a bit crazy and added what i thought would be very highly exaggerated numbers to the various appropriate faction types. i say appropriate because i didnt alter ones like 'desparate defense' at all.

i work on the basis of 'exaggerate the heck out of it to see if ANYTHING changes, and then cut it back if need be'. so, for some of those numbers you might find i input a number like 400 or something, instead of the default of 19.2 or whatever. there was no calculation done at all. i simply looked at the maximum values i could find anywhere and said 'ok, i can see a 650 being used as the highest value around....let's try 2/3 of that and see what happens if i plug that in here'. hehe. real scientific, eh? ;) now, i did do a LOT of testing and observation after plugging those values in and simply found that the ai still wasnt building as many ships as i wanted them to, so i just left the numbers in place rather than needing to tweak them downwards.

btw, why are some of those numbers in decimals? that made very little sense to me and i suspect i'm missing something important here. with the range of numbers being at least 0 - 670 (and i suspect the max is something like 1000), it seems very odd to have to use a decimal figure like 19.2. why not just make it 19 or 20; that seems a bit odd to me, but also makes me suspicious that there's something more to this than i thought, perhaps.

doc, in my current game, i've seen the egyptians, the byz, the italians, the novs, the english, the danes, the spanish, the turks, the french, the almo's, the germans, and even the papacy build at least one ship. the current leaders are the egyptians but that could also be cause they are the most powerful faction and can afford to do so. the byz tend to build well also, but oddly, 'orthodox_stagnant' wasnt one i pumped up specifically. the novs do pretty well when i'm not sinking them. the english and danes are moderate ship builders, but tend to stay in northern waters. the spanish are perhaps the most interesting in this. they build and defend. i've even seen them build in leon and blockade the port defensively, but send one ship down to take out the almo ships in the straits.

a lot of the ship building seems to be based on the faction's economic abilities. ship building still seems to be secondary to land units and that's prolly just as well.

hmmm, crashes around 1200 - 1230... is that around when the era changes to high? and isnt that also around the time the golden horde invades? i'm at about year 1204 myself, so i'll watch for that. you may also be getting the 'str 0 unit' bug. check your retraining units and remove all units from the queues and see if it still crashes. this is a known bug and may not have anything to do with your mod.

i'm currently a bit worried about my own mod crashing when the era changes. i dont recall when the novs turn into russians in the normal game, but i'm real curious as to what's going to happen with me already having russians and novs in the game. and what about the swiss and burgundians who also show up later. they already exist, so now what? shld be interesting and i wouldnt be surprised if a catostrophic error occurs. that's why i stuck a note in my readme in the mod telling folks that i had no idea if this would crash things or not. i'll try and play some more today and see what happens.

hmm, never seen a crusade crash the game. no idea what that one's about. lemme know what you find out.

i've also got a new mod started, but this one is a lot more elaborate and involved and i may well have to call in the troops for help on this one. i'm going to need new units, shields, banners and most likely some very serious help. i'll let everyone in on it after i've tried out a few things. shld be fun though, if it works :)

K.

[+DOC+]

Just been looking through your mod especially the changes you've made to the tradable goods and resources. How does that now seem to play out, is it balanced Med to the Baltic/North Sea??

By giving Rhodes and Crete Oliveoil and Malta and Corsica Fish, do they compete for their tradable goods. I'm not sure how the game plays when the goods are the same and different factions are trading them to the same provinces? Maybe you have a better idea? It certainly gives those otherwise useless islands some degree of worth now.

I see many of these changes as many beneficial to the AI since before the human player would never attempt to upgrade the island provinces as they were so poor there was no point whatsoever. The AI always seems to try to develop every province no matter what the province's potential for earning is Therefore i'm adopting some of you implementations. :P

Oh, btw Scotland would really be a fishing province, not one for hides. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif

[Kraellin]

doc,

we already talked about this on icq after you posted, but i'll post a reply for anyone else interested.

as far as i can tell, two different factions will trade the same goods to each other. so if the english have wool and the french have wool and they both have trade routes to each other, they will still trade wool to each other...who knows, maybe one is brown wool and the other white.

my best guess is that CA may have been going to do this in a more involved way but simply ran out of time or something. i dont know. and perhaps they'll add some stuff to this in later editions.

but the bottom line seems to be that it doesnt really matter much at the moment. i never directly tested for this, so maybe there are some differences, but just on the casual observation, it doesnt seem to matter.

as far as the islands now having tradables, i reasoned that anyone and everyone can scrape up at least something to trade or, that they are getting trade from those areas off the map, like the silk trade routes and spice trade routes and for africa i gave them ivory, coming up from the south.

and yes, i think it helps the ai. of course it can also help the player. my current egyptians are rolling in money. they have now broken out of the medit and have ships going up by spain and even a few random ones in the english seas. they are getting so large now that i'm having to backstab them with spies to cause revolts, even though i'm still allied with them. they're starting to scare me ;)

i've now restored my sea lanes and am raking in over 20k profit a turn myself. the novs finally quit fighting me and i'm only now at war with the english, but they are currently a pretty minor faction so not much worry there.

i've also made the turn into the high period and nothing adverse occurred regarding the added factions, so that was good.

i did run into the princess bug, however. this is a fairly easy one to spot. if you look at your heir's list and see a princess has come of age and then click on her name to find her, the game can crash. this ONLY occurs if that same princess isnt actually showing on the campaign map and in the agent's list. and if you wait a couple turns, she will show up. so, if you ever see a princess in the heir's list but she isnt listed in the agent's list....dont click on her you'll get a ctd. i noticed this before the change from early to high. in fact, it was sitting there when i loaded my year 1204 game. i clicked on her and ctd. ran the game again and tried it again and ctd. if i waited until she showed up on the map and in the agent's list and then clicked on her, no ctd. it just worked normally then.

i dont know if that's a bug that's always been there or if it's something i screwed up in the mod. maybe i'll run a normal campaign and check it out.

back to the egyptians... they are fighting 3 separate factions currently, the italians, the french and the spanish. this is mostly due to crusades launced by those factions. i had to move my spy horde into italy to keep italy from being wiped out. by putting the spies into egyptians held provinces and causing revolts, the loyalists that would rise up gave the italians a nice boost in armies. this is a very cute way of keeping the egyptians allied to me while stabbing them in the back and keeping them from taking over everything. i've now moved the spy horde over to tunisia, which is also held by the yellow horde and am working on them there now.

hehe, i love the variables in this game and the options for handling enemies and even friends. i maintain the peace while yet killing off my enemies and meanwhile i'm beefing myself up nicely...fun stuff :)

K.

[Alrowan]

well i started my campagin of this today, im taking note on all the progress and major events to do with my faction, so i can write up a history of it then post it

[+DOC+]

Kraellin, have you ever thought of making the ships cheaper to build or cheaper to support in your mods?

Just crossed my mind that this might be an interesting implementation, then I wouldn't feel so guilty when the AI decides to stockpile 30 ships in Wessex or Morocco for instance? It must cost the AI a fortune to build and then support that mutitude of ships which aren't actually being used to further their trade empire and bring in more income.

[+DOC+]

When the AI builds ships they build far more than the human you see. We might have around 2 in our home province and then have a stretch of single ships in connecting sea zones bringing in the trade income. Teh AI can have as many as 30+ in one sea zone (e.g. Wessex, Sicily or Morocco) and then 2 or more in adjacent zones tapering down to a few often unconnected singleton ships further away.

[Kraellin]

alrowan,

i'll be interested in seeing your reports. always good to have others looking at things.

doc,

no, hadnt thought of lowering ship cost or support cost and dont think i want to either. where this might help the ai a bit, it's also going to make it too easy for the human. i like your other idea better, increasing the expansionist_crusader guys in their ship building. i may re-work my campaign a bit along those lines after i've tested the current game some more.

what i'm currently wondering, is if i can pump the numbers up so high on the ai stuff that they just build hordes of ships. i mean, really exaggerate it to see if i can find the threshholds for where and when the ai will actually build ships over any other preference, even to where it completely ignores building land based stuff, just to see if i can override the preferences of how and why they build what and when. you often find out more by breaking things than in simply tweaking them ;)

K.