Medieval: Total War XL

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Originally Posted by bretwalda

Hi VikingHorde!

I love your mod, it is so much tougher, yet manageable and winable, which is great. Still sometimes it gives a hanging on the edge feeling. I played two campaigns yet and I even managed to lose one of them with the Irish!!!

I wonder if you mind if I mod further two things (if I can do these ... :wink: )

a) Make all Catholic nations to be able to crusade.
b) Put back some region discounts (I mean +1 valour) for troops and add some more, even the way that every province will have a bonus to at least one troops. I wonder why you took out some (e.g. Lithuania +1 Woodsmen, Venice +1 Galleys, etc)? Is it balancing issue?

And I bow to this magnificient work of yours!
:bow:

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Im glad you like the mod :bow: . I might add crusades to most Catholic factions, but building time and cost of crusades has to be increased. There are sometimes 2-3 crusades moving around in the campaign, too many IMO, so some changes are needed. Crusades will however not be added to the Orders (crusaders, teutonic order, hospitallers).
I will maybe add the valor bonuses again, but we will see. They can lock factions like the danes, so that the AI gets passive, but maybe I can find a solution to the problem.

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Originally Posted by VikingHorde

Im glad you like the mod :bow: . I might add crusades to most Catholic factions, but building time and cost of crusades has to be increased. There are sometimes 2-3 crusades moving around in the campaign, too many IMO, so some changes are needed. Crusades will however not be added to the Orders (crusaders, teutonic order, hospitallers).
I will maybe add the valor bonuses again, but we will see. They can lock factions like the danes, so that the AI gets passive, but maybe I can find a solution to the problem.

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Your mod is especially awesome because you actually have to keep your empire together and battle disloyalty and medieval chaos. So far I am doing well as the Hungarians and I realized that it is still a long way to go until the Horde arrives so you actually have to fight every year.

Why do valour bonuses lock factions? I believe extra valour does not increase cost, nor upkeep...

Actually the Danes were doing reasonably fine - only the Irish seem to be stuck. So far I have only in-game experience but I will check the prod files soon. Gosh I love this mod...

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Why do valour bonuses lock factions? I believe extra valour does not increase cost, nor upkeep...

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If I may so bold as to suggest that the AI then gives precedence to building those troops whether it's a smart thing or not. I'm just taking a stab here to see if I'm right.

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Originally Posted by Eternal Champion

If I may so bold as to suggest that the AI then gives precedence to building those troops whether it's a smart thing or not. I'm just taking a stab here to see if I'm right.

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Something like that. Removing the valor bonus for longboats seems to make the danish faction more active, but I could maybe just give them a shipbuilder from the start to solve it.

@bretwalda
The Irish problem is proberly because of lack of funds and boats. I will check it out.

I just got a CTD after winning a battle and going back to the strategic map. I was playing the Danes, and it was my very first battle. Is this on my side or the Mod side, and how can I fix it?

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Originally Posted by Shottie

I just got a CTD after winning a battle and going back to the strategic map. I was playing the Danes, and it was my very first battle. Is this on my side or the Mod side, and how can I fix it?

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Shottie, I encounter a CTD every once in a while. It's just something that can happen to a modded game. If it happens repeatedly, make note of exactly how and when it occurs and try to duplicate the CTD and let Viking Horde know the conditions which cause it, so can investigate. If it isn't doesn't happen when you play again, using a saved game, then it's likely just a fluke.

Viking Horde, we've been discussing things like the Irish in the MedMod topic.

I think the tendency of the Irish to just sit there is related to one of two things. They are usually made a Catholic_Defender faction type in mods, and they only have one island province. I suspect it has more to do with only having the one island province than with the faction type; but changing that to Catholic_Expansionist might help. However, if you've noticed, whenever a faction gets reduced to just one island, as can happen to the Byzantines or the Sicilians, they also tend to just sit there after that. This leads me to believe that land bridges can be necessary for islands. Even if it's only a one way land bridge from the island, to prevent it being used as an invasion pathway to the island. I think creating a one way land bridge from Ireland to Wales or Scotland, from Malta to Sicily, from Crete to Greece, from Rhodes to Nicaea and from Cyprus to one of the Anatolian provinces or perhaps to the Levant, would solve this.

Viking Horde,

On the issue of the Irish, I think it's related to having just one island province. You'll notice that whenever a faction ends up reduced to just one island province, they also behave the same as the Irish - non-aggressive and just sitting there doing nothing. It happens to the Sicilians if they are left with just Malta, the Byzantines if they end up on just one of their islands and also to the Crusader States if they are reduced to just Cyprus, or to any faction trapped on one island, even if they have ships. I don't know what the solution might be, perhaps one-way land bridges from these islands to encourage expansion but discourage invasion without ships.

I have to add my two bits and say that the Irish really don't add anything to the campaign as a faction. I have yet to see them do anything other than sit and control Ireland. I think that a Rebel controlled province with a high rebelliousness would be perfectly justified in Ireland. Eliminating the Irish would free up a slot for another, possibly more interesting faction, elsewhere.

I might say the same thing for the Norwegians in Early. While they are more active, they usually take a single province in the Baltic or somesuch and fade into inactivity.

Another faction in Spain might be useful in Early. The Almoravids (ala BKB's Early) come to mind.

More originally, an additional Islamic power in Mesopotamia would spice things up in the Holy Land (also Early). The Islamic situation was more fragmented prior to the First Crusade than is currently simulated. I think that a Fatimid Egyptian dynasty in Egypt and Palestine, a Rum/Danishmend Turkish faction in Anatolia, and a Seljukid/Zangid faction in Mosul would more accurately reflect the situation. The Armenians might be too strong in such a setup though and might have to be removed. A few rebel-controlled provinces could represent the independent atabegs in Aleppo, Damascus, etc... and would provide some early expansion room.

By the way, the Byzantines shouldn't be in control of Southern Italy in Early. They lost their last foothold sometime in the 1070's, I believe.

Again, just my two cents if you feel up to playing with your mod some more. ~D

In the beta thread for Wes's MedMod IV v4, Ireland has come up as well. One idea that Wes had is to combine Scotland, Wales and Ireland into a single Celtic Confederacy faction. While not historically correct, it would certainly add to the gameplay and make things less of a cakewalk for the English faction in the isles.

I mentioned in that thread when discussing possibilites for a flag for such a faction, that had the Synod of Whitby in 664 gone the other way, then the Celtic rite of the Catholic Church might have prevailed in the British Isles. Such a thing could certainly have given rise to such a confederacy, had king Oswy of Northumbria chosen the Irish church over the Roman rite. With Scotland, Ireland, Wales, Northumbria and the Isle of Man firmly in the grip of the Irish Catholic Church, there would have been more unity against both the romanized south and the coming invasions of the vikings. Add in the common language (for the most part, although there are great differences between p-celtic and q-celtic) and the case becomes stronger.

If, however, Ireland were removed, then I also would like to see the inclusion of another Islamic faction, such as the Almoravids or more diversity in either the Egyptian or Turk factions, as Aurelian has suggested.

Im currently a new setup of the factions that might solve the "small faction problem", but if it does not solve the problem then I might start removing some factions. I will not add the landbriges, but maybe making a celtic "confederation" would be a good idea. It seems that factions with 2-3 provinces behave better, but I will try out some stuff. I think the inactivety is maybe because of lack of funds too. If there will be added new fations to the mod, then it will be released as a version 3 because of the high number of changes being done to the mod. I have already made some changes to province ownership and most fations live more than 30 years now (including the HRE, Turks, Armenians). Higher trade income will also be added in the patch.

@Shottie
If you are using new drivers from nvidia, then MTW will crash often. I have a Nvidia GeForce 6600GT card and it sadly can't use older drivers, so my MTW is sadly unstable (also without the mods!). Next time I will properly buy my self an ATI card insted. Your problem could also be a bad savefile, corrupted install or maybe a bug in the mod.

Well, I didn't save that game so it wasn't a saved game. I have old drivers in because some of the other games I use are unstable with new drivers. I did start an English game today and I saved it and when I come back to load it my game crashes. Is this another problem?

-EDIT- I got another after I re-started my English campaign and beat the scots.

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Originally Posted by Shottie

Well, I didn't save that game so it wasn't a saved game. I have old drivers in because some of the other games I use are unstable with new drivers. I did start an English game today and I saved it and when I come back to load it my game crashes. Is this another problem?

-EDIT- I got another after I re-started my English campaign and beat the scots.

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Hmmm.. I don't know, maybe reinstalling the game + mod will solve the problem, it has help me when I had the problem. The mod should not make the game CTD, have done a huge amount of testing of all units and the factions. The bugs I have found in the mod will not make the game CTD, so can't say what it could be ~:confused:

It might also be an antivirus program, if you have one running in the background such as Norton Antivirus.

Try various video and sound settings one at a time in the options for the game. Try setting the resolutions for your strategic map and battlemap to something else and see if that helps. Try setting your music audio to zero. Try setting the music audio to mute. Try turning off the battle log if it's set to on. Try turning the hardware sound option on or off. CTD's might be caused by a conflict between your system and one of these video or sound card options.

So if I shut down my Norton Firewall then that might help? Also messing around with my audio/video settings may help? How so? ~:cheers:


-EDIT- This might be a problem solver. A while back I DLed and installed the BKB mod. It didn't work at all so I uninstalled it and then later uninstalled MTW. Now I reinstalled MTW:VI and the XL mod, but when I go to pick a time period to start in I have the BKB and XL and vanilla starting periods. How do I get ride of the BKB stuff, it doesn't work so it is just wasting space, and could be the problem.

That having both XL and BKB installed could very well be the problem, I guess. It sounds like the uninstall didn't work. The only way that BKB early, high and late choices can be seen is if the BKB files called Super Early.txt, Super High.txt and Super Late.txt are still in your campaign/startpos folder.

The best solution is to start fresh. Uninstall MTW altogether. When that's done, you aren't yet done. Find the Total War folder and delete it manually. Then empty your recycle bin so it's gone forever.

Do a fresh install of MTW, then MTW:Viking Invasion and then the 2.01 patch for MTW:VI. When you're done, make a new folder in your program files directory and call it something like MTW Original. Then locate your Total War folder. Open it and select (don't open, just highlight) the Medieval Total War folder and then choose "edit" and then "copy". Now go back to your newly created MTW Original folder and open it. It should be empty. Select edit and then paste. This will take a few minutes, since you're bascically copying the entire game into a second location. When done, you'll now have two identical copies of the game, one in the folder called Total War and another in the folder called MTW Original (or whatever you named it). Now when you install a mod, you can just use the default path and let it install into Total War, and you still have a pristine unmodded copy in the other folder. If something happens later, you can just copy the MTW Original folder over the top of the modded Total War folder and it'll be back to unmodded state. Useful. You can also make additional copies of the game on your hard drive now, using the MTW Original folder as the starting file and repeating the above. That way you can have multiple mods on your system at the same time.


CTD's can often be the result of a conflict when something occurs that requires a change in the video or graphics. This is why drivers have such an effect. The game was written when older drivers were out for older cards. Newer cards with newer drivers can result in a conflict. Especially when big changes are made to the video or audio during a program. When you exit the strategic map to enter the pre-battle screen, when you exit the pre-battle screen to enter battle, and when you exit battle to go back to the strategic map are when the biggest changes happen in the game program that require action on the part of your video and music cards. Changing the settings might help.

It won't likely be your Norton Firewall that is causing a problem, unless Norton Antivirus is part of that package. MTW opens various files constantly, especially the unit_prod file and the building_prod file. If you have Norton Antivirus running in automatic mode in the background, then it could be trying to check the file being opened everytime the MTW engine opens it. This can possibly cause a CTD. I was having CTD's while testing Wes' MedMod IV v4. When I turned off my Norton Antivirus while playing, no more CTD's, with no changes to the mod at all.

Thank you very much Aenlic! I have what you said and I'am trying it out. :bow: :medievalcheers:

Good luck!

Okay I did everything you told me and I played my campaign. I saved it because I got pretty far and when I clicked the button to go back to the game it crashed. I reload the game and load the game, it crashed. I tried turning off Norton and it still crashed. So now I have to do what? Try a new driver? and mess with the music/video? Now with this, what do I change?

If it's crashing from the saved game then it's probably a driver problem. Other than trying different video and audio settings in the game, that's about all I can think of to help.

So I should get the newest driver or a certain one?



Thank you for all your help Aenlic you are a live saver! I bow to you :bow: ~:cheers: ~:cheers: ~:cheers: ~:cheers: ~:cheers: ~:cheers: ~:cheers:

I have all the latest drivers and it doesn't crash on me. Then again, I'm using an ATI Radeon 9800 XP pro, not a GeForce card.

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Originally Posted by Aenlic

I have all the latest drivers and it doesn't crash on me. Then again, I'm using an ATI Radeon 9800 XP pro, not a GeForce card.

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I sadly replaced my ATI Radeon 9600 XT with a GeForce 6600 GT and now I can't run my MTW flawless, sucks. I just hope Nvidia would send out some better drivers soon, or I'll get myself an Ati card again, no problems with them.

Can all Catholic factions crusade in XL?

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Originally Posted by Graphic

Can all Catholic factions crusade in XL?

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No, just the following factions. (I just cut and pasted this from the build_prod files showing which factions can build a chapter house)

FN_ENGLISH, FN_FRENCH, FN_GERMAN_HRE, FN_ITALIAN, FN_SPANISH, FN_ARAGONESE, FN_SICILIAN, FN_PORTUGAL, FN_GENOANS

does there happen to be a version of XL for 1.1 I don't have VI yet, but I would love to play this.

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Originally Posted by Aenlic

No, just the following factions. (I just cut and pasted this from the build_prod files showing which factions can build a chapter house)

FN_ENGLISH, FN_FRENCH, FN_GERMAN_HRE, FN_ITALIAN, FN_SPANISH, FN_ARAGONESE, FN_SICILIAN, FN_PORTUGAL, FN_GENOANS

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Ah sweet, thank you. I was just wondering about the Genoese and Sicilians because I wanted to start a new game with one of them. I went with the Genoese, partly because the sweet burgundy color ~D

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Originally Posted by Emerald Wolf

does there happen to be a version of XL for 1.1 I don't have VI yet, but I would love to play this.

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All versions of the XL mod (1.1, 1.2 and 2.0) need Viking Invasion like most mods here at the Org. MedMod (version 1.85 i think) can be played without Viking Invasion.

I definitely recommend getting VI, if only to play the mods found here.

Without Viking Invasion you can't load up XL mod and have grand adventures. Taking over the world as the Armenians or the Bohemians is one the great pleasures of this mod. Just surviving as one of those factions can be a challenge!

By all means get the VI expansion... it adds a lot to the game and you need it to play all these great mods...

You won't regret it...