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Thanks to all the excellent guides, advice and inspiration available here at the Org, I am pleased to announce the Beta release of my own personal handiwork: Chaos Total War.
This mod is an addon/expansion to the regular and does not overwrite or alter the original game in any way. (Well, one small way, but I'll get to that in a second.) And by original game, I mean MTW:VI 2.01.
The premise of my mod is to increase both the difficulty and randomness of the original game to improve enjoyment and replayability. I've added many new factions, altered the pre-existing factions and the economic lay of the land. Also, I've brought several units and a couple buildings in from VI in support of a few of the new factions I've created/edited.
I've strived to make the individual factions/cultures more unique, largely by making many of the location-specific units faction-specific, altering tech trees and creating whole new cultures.
Also, to make things a bit more chaotic (hence the mod's name), I've strengthened some of the smaller factions and weakened some of the larger ones (including splitting a couple in half). Also, EVERYBODY is now expansionistic. Or barbarian raiders. >;)
I started this mod after getting mildly irritated with seeing the fact that EVERYBODY and their dog was allied with everybody else and their dog after the first few turns. Now, alliances tend to be more localisized, and lest lasting. In my experience thus far, local alliances are actually to be avoided as most factions must go through 're-unification' movements before they have a good, solid homeland built up.
You may notice that this mod is not the mostly hugely historically accurate, but I made the decision to go for gameplay over accuracy. But suggestions in the accuracy department are more than welcome. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cg...ns/biggrin.gif
On to the specifics...
The Faction list:
The Catholics
The Aragonese (now start with Navarre as well, buildable Almughavars)
The Brittanians (continental English, now control Brittany)
The Burgundians (now playable)
The Danes (no changes, but have some highly hostile neighbours)
The English (reduced to Wessex, Northumbria and Mercia)
The French (gained control of Provence)
The Germans (reduced starting provinces)
The Italians (no changes)
The Papacy (Now playable)
The Portugese (control Portugal. Imagine that.)
The Sicilians (no changes)
The Valencians (playable El Cid. Hurrah)
Orthodoxy
The Byzantines (reduced starting provinces)
The Greeks (control the Balkans)
The Hungarians (no changes)
The Kievians (Control the north coast of the Black Sea)
The Moldavians (eastern border of Poland and Hungary)
The People of Novgorod (expanded starting position)
The Polish (no changes)
The Irish (very, very dangerous pirate-types. Can't trust 'em, unique techtree, lots of unique units)
The Russians (control the north-east corner of the campmap)
The Swiss (now playable)
The Pagan Barbarians
The Lithuanians (control the east coast of the Baltic)
The Norse (Norway, Viking raider types. Mostly-new techtree)
The Saxons (control northern Germany, exclusive units)
The Scots (unique techtree)
The Swedes (same as the Norse, but in Sweden)
The Welsh (immedeate and exclusive access to the Longbowman)
As I'm sure you've noted, I've removed the Muslim factions from the game, and turned them into new European factions. Why? Because I needed to fill in Europe with lots of factions without expanding too many of them. Instead the entirety of N.Africa and the Middle East is now one vast rebel-held, Islamic land that should be tough to conquer and harder to hold for any length of time. Once it's been playtested by people other than myself, I'll consider adding the Sahara in as a 'dummy' faction to give the rebels a bigger income, if they require it.
The new units and buildings are mostly just Celtic/Viking units imported from VI, along with a few rebel/merc-only units now made playable.
Since this is the Beta release, and since my higher priority is to get it better balanced, it's currently missing period/faction descriptions, and I've no doubt there are problems with the various new/altered techtrees. Also, the new factions shields are either ripped directly from VI or are (rather amateurish) recolours. I'm working on that for v2.0.
So, without further ado, here's the d/l link.
http://www.totalwar.org/Downloa....End.rar
http://www.totalwar.org/Downloa....ain.rar
They're .rar files, so you'll need WinRar, which is available at www.rarlabs.com.
INSTALLATION INSTRUCTIONS
These are a bit lengthy, since I had to be wary of filesizes for uploads to the Org's server.
1. Fresh install of VI 2.01 needed. It won't alter your original game in any way and (should) leave you still able to play MP. I haven't tested MP yet... It'll probably conflict with any other mods you have installed...
2. BACK UP Early.txt, High.txt and Late.txt in campmap/startpos. These are the only original files that get overwritten during the install, and only to allow for the new factions. Overwriting them might not be necessary, so if anyone tests that, let me know and I'll alter the files...
3. Unpack TEST_CTW_Main.rar in your main Medieval - Total War directory. Unpack TEST_CTW_GameEnd.rar in /campmap
4. Go to /Textures/campmap/Castleflags and copy ALL the .bifs there into /Textures/campmap/Castleflags
5. This is the arduous bit. I'd have spared you this part if I could, filesizes allowing. When I find somewhere that'll host 10mb files, I'll remove this step...
Do the following: (taken from Starkhorn's excellent guide)
Go into the /Textures/Men directory.
Copy and paste the Peasant directory. Renamed the copied directory to Custom0.
Go into Custom0 directory and rename the .bif files with custom0, i.e.(Peasant_H.bif should be renamed to Custom0_H.bif, Peasant.LBM to Custom0.LBM, etc).
Repeast this for the below directories (Peasant directory is listed below for reference only) whilst renaming them to Custom1, Custom2, etc, etc. The .bif and .LBM files in each of the renamed Custom directories will also need to be changed.
Peasant :- Custom0
ChainHlm :- Custom1
HlPlArSH :- Custom2
LArmWCav :- Custom3
MKnight :- Custom4
MSHelm :- Custom5
PlateS :- Custom6
And that should be it for the install. Once that's been done, you should have a new entry in your Campaign Selection screen called Chaos Period. GA mode MIGHT be playable IF you play one of the original factions, and IF you don't click one of the new faction's shields. MIGHT.
To uninstall the mod just delete CHAOS.txt in campmap/startpos and restore your backups of Early.txt, High.txt and Late.txt.
There is currently only an Early starting point for CTW, but I plan to make High and Late campaigns as well, once the mod is more developed.
All that said, I hope you give this a try and, most especially, if you do, please give me all the feedback you can, especially about bugs and balance issues.
Cheers,
Bacchon
PS--Don't trust the Irish. Especially if you're anywhere near the North Sea. I mean it. They're scary. They've made me cry.
PPS--I've posted this here since I can't yet create topics in the Dungeons.
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I'm moving this to The Engineers Guild forum Bacchon. I believe that is the correct destination since this mod is still under development. If not, LOS or DJ will put it in the right place.
