The importance of one Word

"YYY needs to be unlocked before you can play as them. To do this you can either complete a campaign (on any difficutly, long or short setting) with one of the five starting factions,..."

In this manner begin most of guides about the playable factions not starting. I should say, some people can understand "finish" the campaign, like me, and not winning the campaign like say here http://shoguntotalwar.yuku.com/forum/viewtopic/id/629 The problem here is that i finished my campaign without win (because i didn't want conquer Jerusalem...) and don't appear the other factions, so i think that the correct answer is win and not only complete the campaign. I don't like to mod the game so i prefer the usual way, but my last save game is 50 turns before :wall:

yes, unfortunately it means "meet the victory conditions" rather than "continue playing until 1630AD"

if you don't want to mod the file (which is extremely easy even for a n00b like me, check the FAQ), your best bet is to blitz on a short campaign, maybe as england....just use crusades and you can be done in a few turns...

Or you can load up your game you had and take jerusalem by force real quick (that is if your capable of doing so and meet the other requirements)

There's a VERY easy way to get all of the factions unlocked without having to mod your game at all!

Simply open up the "medieval2.preference.cfg" file in your Medieval II directory, and add the following two lines:

[misc]
unlock_campaign = true

The next time you play the game, all of the playable factions will be unlocked, the two lines you added will be automatically removed from the file, and nothing else about the game will change.

Easy!