Medieval mod IV v4 beta: Path to Glory

Just a few quick observations:

The changes to the Sicilians are interesting right off the bat (haven't hit end turn yet). Malta kaput! Interesting. Is this permanent? The compensation for the elimination of Malta is interesting as well. The Sicilians have gone from a dirth of Knights to an abundance. So the necessity to expend precious (initial) Florins to build a Knight, as well as the Cost and Turns to *build-up* to Knight capability has been severely reduced.. This should GREATLY effect the Sicilian game.

So, now we have Provence. Nice surprise, very interesting.

One thing, the Sicilians now open with the *Offices*, "Grand Chancellor of Sicily", and "Grand Senschal of Sicily---only problem, they don't own Sicily, Aragon does. But, that won't be for long.... ;)

Peaked my interest and I haven't even hit End Turn yet.!!!!

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Ok, a couple of things I noted:

a) The Venetian *Stack* color is Gray, rather than the Venetian "blue".

b) Also, I noted that on the Battle Deployment screen there is an inconsistency regarding the Faction shields. I took a screenshot a will email it to you. The Pope has invaded Campania, I am defending, and playing Sicilian. Under "Your Forces", the Pope's shield is displayed. It s/b the Scilian shield. Under "Enemy Forces", it is the Novogrod (or what used to be the Novogrod) shield that is displayed. It s/b the Pope's shield.

In the event that b) isn't clear I'm emailing the screenshot.

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Dude, I think you may have out did yourself in terms of Faction balance in the Eastern Med and Adriatic. With the possible exeption of the Venetians, not sure yet. I will say one thing, the Venetians are stringing their ships in a very intelligent human-like fashion---whatever you did, this *update* is an improvement. Though, they may still be a bit too dominating, the jury is still out on this.

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Going to have some dinner and play some more.

Thank you.

yup. looks like the papacy is the 17th faction declared, so it's using the prebat shield for the 17th faction slot (which is novgorod). the right graphics are there, they're just not being used.

similarly, the venetians are using the italian slot, so their prebat shield is using the old italian one. same for the germans, burgundians, byzantines, turks.. probably others as well. i think there is some hardcode getting in the way here. but it may just be an oversight.

worst comes to worst, i think wes could simply have his installer overwrite the original prebat shields with the new ones, and include the original bifs in the "uninstall" directory.

Some things I've noticed playing as the Byzantines:
The Kataphraktoi sprites are messed up (torsos at 90 degrees from where they should be or something).
It's still possible to recriut mercenary Serpentine crews of 60 and Culverin crews of 120 troops.
The leader of the Outremer States is called
"Master Raymondroman_numerals##-1!!".
The Outremer States' shield as displayed in the Alliances screen and at the top right hand corner of some scrolls is still the old cresent moon one.
On the Alliances screen all factions display:
"The (faction name)of-inline//(faction number)!!This_label_does_not_exist!!" when hovered over.

Also MTW seems to have an infuriating tendency to sometimes crash while finishing the turn after I have just one a tough battle and usually when I have just killed an enemy king in that battle >:( (this has happed after killing the Burgundaian and Turkish Kings for me :( ). I don't know whether this is because of MedMod or just general instablilty in MTW.

Good reports, guys. Keep 'um comming.
Kudos to you guys working on the faction names, heroes, etc. I spent a good deal of time in the heroes text for this past update, and I was struck by the dearth of heroes for some of the major factions. This seems to be another area which was a low priority, or was dropped in the squeeze to get the game finished, since the English and French have long lists, while some others don't have hardly any. It's like they never made a second, more detailed pass at filling out this area of the game.

Btw, the texmap portion is new. It shows the landbridge between Ireland and Scotland, the new partition if the Baltic, and the changes to Gotland, along with a couple of aestetic changes. As noted on the webpage, this is the file used for the lowest resolution setting on the strategic map, so you won't need it if you use a higher setting.

The graphics for the Kats will be fixed in the next update. The last time I changed their texture, I forgot to update the mod file. It looked fine in my games. ~;)
I noticed the alliance error last night while playing, but I don't know what is causing it at the moment.
I too had a glitch when coming out of a battle, where the windows toolbar kept flashing up in the screen. My game didn't crash, however. I pray this isn't something related to the new graphics.
I recently read where some people are having trouble with the new Nvidia drivers, so if you have that card, as I do, you may want to check out the thread in the Main Hall, though this is normally discussed in the Apothecary.
This isn't the first Nvidia update which has caused trouble with Mtw, and I have heard rumors that the Civ IV beta had been having trouble with the Nvidia cards, too. The next time I get a new card, I think I'm going to check out Atp, or whatever that other brand is called.

I went ahead and switched ownership of Provence and Sicily between the Aragonese and Sicilians. IIRC, this is the way it is in the High era. Provence is outside the Aragonese homeland, too, but at least it's closer to their center of power. I moved the Sicilian capital back to Sicily, too. Thanks for the encyclopedia paste, Vespers. That's a complicated history to try and sort out.

Myself, I have been trying to start a new game as the Germans. Gotta love those gang-bangs. I have ended up making several changes to their starting units and buildings, so I guess I need to play a few rounds as the other main factions, too. Since there are so many factions now, there's not much way I can get to all of them, so let me know here of any particular irritations you come across.
Basically, you should have at least one province capable of building any of the Early and High-era units, except perhaps for the smallest factions, and the larger factions should have the abilities spread out, so that you don't have to use your capital to make spearmen, for example.

Wes, if you need more heroes for factions other than the ones you listed back in that post I used as a template, just say the word.

I've been feeding my need to be a masochist by playing the Cumans. I've tried 6 times now, finally giving up and turning the difficulty down each time. My best so far is to last until 1350, at which point the Horde finished off the Lithuanians and the Novgorods and decided I looked juicy. I even managed to take another province and actually keep it for a more than a few turns, but that was on easy setting, and the Hungarians weren't appreciative of losing it and were the culprits in my eventual demise in that game. No one wants to ally with the Cumans, poor buggers. I definitely recommend against playing as the Cumans, unless you're just a glutton for treachery, punishment and misery. ~:)

The Almohads may need to be toned down just a tad, or the rest of Iberia beefed up a bit. In all my games so far on the other side of Europe, like clockwork, I get an announcement first that the Spanish have been destroyed, then the Portuguese, and sometimes right after that, the Aragonese (if the Sicilians have taken out Siciliy). The culprit is always the Almohads. Curious, I decided to try the Almohads on hard setting. With ridiculous ease, I took out Cordoba and Murcia on the third turn after moving some troops up from Africa, while the Spanish and Portuguese went to war. In 10 turns, Iberia was mine. After that it was a breeze to go after Egypt and then the Turks. The world was a foregone conclusion then. It had to be the quickest win I've ever had at hard setting.

Hello guys! The new shields and flags are very goods, especially the almohads and the danish. I would like know how to make these shields and flags, above all the battle flags.
I agree with Wes that some factions have a lot of heroes and others few. This is a factor of imbalance. I think that twenty heroes for major factions and ten for minor factions are good numbers, but in many cases is difficult find information about historical heroes.
I'll try find new heroes for some of these factions. :book:

hi belisario, thanks for the compliments. i use a fairly complex method for making the new graphics. there's probably a much easier way, but i'm new to image editing! ~:handball: i use gimpshop, which is a free image editing program.

generally, this is my method:

1. i need to make a blank greyscale template from the existing graphics. so here's how i do that:

• i use readbif.exe to make a bitmap from an existing bif. IMAGE
• i open the bitmap in gimpshop and convert it to greyscale. IMAGE
• i edit (by hand) the image if needed. for example, if i'm using the english shield for a template, i need to remove the lions from the template. i mostly use the pencil and clone tools for this step. (this took by far the longest time, btw). IMAGE --> IMAGE
• brightness\contrast changes are made to the template as needed. IMAGE --> IMAGE

now i have a general template that i can use to make all the new graphics (for this shield type). i do similar things for all the graphics types (battle flags, castle flags, unit shields, etc).

2. i use the templates to make a new graphics using a new pattern:

• i need to find a new pattern. i used historically accurate flags where i could. IMAGE
• i resize the new pattern to fit the new graphic i'm using. i use irfanview instead of gimpshop for resizing because it has better interpolation options. IMAGE
• i open the appropriate template in gimpshop and i copy/paste the resized image from irfanview into gimpshop. IMAGE
• i overlay the image and edit it to fit the template shape as needed. IMAGE
• i copy the overlayed image, and paste it into a new layer over the original template. IMAGE
• i change the opacity of the overlay so that the shading from the template comes through. then i flatten the image. IMAGE
• i edit the new image in a few different ways. mostly i'm changing the lightness/saturation and/or the brightness/contrast. specifically what is adjusted depends on the specific image. IMAGE
• eventually, i get an image i like. i save the new bitmap. IMAGE

3. the last thing i need to do is turn the new bitmap back into a bif file so the game can use it. i use the dragon editor to do this (i get better results with dragon that with readbif).

• first i need to convert the images to 8-bit color (bifs use 8-bit color). i use irfanview to do this because it has a batch conversion feature. IMAGE
• i open the 8-bit bitmap in the dragon editor and save it as a bif. IMAGE

conversion to 8-bit can lead to some ugliness in the new image, so check for that. other than that, the bif is ready to be implemented in the game. i'm sure i left lots of things out, so feel free to ask questions (however, i don't have a ton of time to devote to answering them).


gimpshop: http://plasticbugs.com/index.php?p=241
irfanview: http://www.irfanview.com/
readbif: http://www.3ddownloads.com/strategy-...readbif23a.zip
dragon editor: https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showt...t=33392&page=1

some flag picture & info websites i used:
http://www.angelfire.com/ak5/alexflags/
http://flagspot.net/flags/index.html
http://www.heraldique-europeenne.org/Accueil.htm
http://perso.modulonet.fr/~earlyblazo/
http://users.panola.com/AAGHS/manluk.html
http://vector-images.com/catalogue.php
http://www.fuenterrebollo.com/index.html
http://freepages.family.rootsweb.com...age_islam.html

Wow. Big John, that is without a doubt the best and easiest explanation of making faction flags that I have ever seen. You need to make a copy of this for the Repository and get Barocca or BKB to sticky it there. Others need this info, man!

oh, you think? ok, i'll PM barocca and bkb.

edit: glad you liked it, btw. :thumbsup:

Oh, man, but I love to watch professionals work. You guys always impress me. I might not have the knowledge & skills to make the mod, but I do have the patience to test it, LOL. Anyway, I had mentioned to Wes in a mail that I've been getting a lot of random crashes with the newest version. I've only been able to pin-point the cause in a couple of instances, ie, the English completing a master merchant will cause a CTD every time. Another I can remember was a Spanish re-emergence in Cordoba against the Venetians. Locked everything up.


So, after reading earlier this afternoon in the forum and getting a mail from Wes on the same subject, I wanted to make sure the problem isn't my machine. First off, my card is an ATI Radeon 9800Pro, 128mb, and I use Omega drivers, because I also use this machine to play FPS games with my Clan. I've never had a problem with any Activision or Creative Assembly program. I figure the problem is with the mod, but where?

I haven't actually been playing campaigns, just testing the mod with auto-run. I generally pick any faction that can be "re-acquired" with IAN, and before the first move, assume the Papacy. Reason for that is the game will generally run uninterupted with me as that faction. No one attacks them. So, I can hit "a" for auto-run, and go watch TV or something for a bit. I'll check every now and then to make sure it hasn't CTD'd. I'll change factions at that time and see what the other blokes are up to. If there is a CTD, I'll reload the auto-save and try to figure the cause. Problem is, if the cause lies with one of the factions we can't access with IAN, then I'll never find the bug. I have not had a campaign go to the finish with the new mod. The longest one has only run to 1387.

My next approach was to assure myself that the basic program is still viable. I loaded some new campaigns using the Late Era instead of MedMod Late. Using the same tactics as with the mod, the campaigns ran smoothly to the end, at which time I receive the message that "while I survived until blah, blah, I have not...." Of course I lost. I was outside in the garden, LOL. Well the regular Late Era is now kinda odd, with some of the mod units, the new map, which isn't all accessable or even used, and some strange re-positioning of factions. Egypt starts out with Sinai in northern Aquitaine. I might play that later. ~D

Now, the point to all this, I feel the CTD's are related to either the new graphics or possibly some text anomalies, such as, the English attempting a Master Merchant, or an un-lockable faction building something it shouldn't. I really don't know; I ran the tests and am passing this on for you guys to figure out. Hopefully, it will give some point of reference. I'll continue to forward anything else I can come up with. Good luck. This mod should be a lot of fun when completed. Thanks to all.

I hadn't tried using -ian and then switching to the Papacy. Great idea.

anyone have a good idea for historical faction graphics for the georgian kingdom?

Best I can find is the info on flags-of-the-world.net for the Georgian flag. Apparently the one in use now, the 5 red crosses on a white background was originally described by a Franciscan monk in the 14th century as being the flag of Georgia. Although there seems to be some argument as to whether this was really a flag of Armenia.

http://www.flags-of-the-world.net/flags/ge.html

I'd suggest couping the main cross though, like the flag of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, since one source suggests that as an origin of the flag as well, and that it was brought back to Georgia in that manner.

"I noticed the alliance error last night while playing, but I don't know what is causing it at the moment."

....

It is because appropriate text data are not incuded in "NAMES.TXT" file. Add this:


// To be concatonated with the above names.
@["of_culture"]
@{""}
@{", a Pagan faction."}
@{", a Catholic faction."}
@{", an Orthodox faction."}
@{", a Muslim faction."}

there and bug is gone.

Hey, WesW!

I sent you mail where I offered to edit "REGOWNER_TABLE" file for your mod. You did not answer, so I offer it again, here ~;)

Thanks for your information Big John! It´s really good.
Would you make new shields and flags for the spanish faction? The current shields are simplistic. It must be similar to the BKBMod, with the arms of Leon and Castile. ~:)

it's already done, i sent a graphics update to wes with new armenian and spanish (ala leon & castile) graphics last night.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by WesW

I went ahead and switched ownership of Provence and Sicily between the Aragonese and Sicilians. IIRC, this is the way it is in the High era. Provence is outside the Aragonese homeland, too, but at least it's closer to their center of power. I moved the Sicilian capital back to Sicily, too. Thanks for the encyclopedia paste, Vespers. That's a complicated history to try and sort out.

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Yes, we have a very complicated history. I probably should have been more clear in the original material I gave you.

The provinces in Italy should line up something like this:

Kingdom of Sicily (Under the Aragonese house):
Sicily
Malta (i know it's not in the game)
Athens

Kingdom of Naples (under Angevin house):
Campania
Apulia
Provence
Achaea (not sure of dates)

Does Sicily still own Apulia and Campania?

Well, it's definitely the first master merchant built causing the CTDs.

I let the game run on auto until the CTD, like Lord Ovaat until a CTD then reload from the last autosave and manually run it back to the year before the CTD. It is always a master merchant that causes it.

In my last set of experiments, the CTD occurred at year 1372. I ran it back to 1371 and searched through the controllable factions looking for the master merchant builder. It's the Venetians, finishing a master merchant in Thrace. I take control of that faction, remove the master merchant from the building queue and run the end turn. No CTD. I was lucky in that only controllable factions using -ian were at the point to build master merchants. The English have a master merchant scheduled for completion in 3 turns in Wessex, and the Turks can build one in Egypt. So I take control of the Turks and start a master merchant in the queue, then switch to the Venetians, run it a turn and start a new master merchant in the queue in Thrace. Then I switch to the English and run it 2 turns. I save the game as the English right before the master merchant is finished in Wessex and then complete the turn. CTD. I load the game back at the save, delete the master merchant from the queue and run the turn. No CTD. Then I switch to the Turks, and wait for their merchant to get 1 turn from finishing. I save it, run the turn. CTD. I reload, delete the merchant form the queue, run the turn. No CTD. I kept this up, next the Venetians then the English then Turks for another 24 turns, alternating who finished the master merchant between the 3 factions. CTDs only after the first master merchant. No CTD if no one builds one.

Thanks for the verification, Aenlic. I knew I wasn't crazy, lol. The master merchant glitch never came up for me until the latest "update". I believe Wes was working on the new trade routes, among other things. Hopefully, it will be easy for him to fix. Wouldn't it be nice if that's the last major bug? One can still play the mod with ugly flags and stuff. ~D

Nice work Aenlic; I wonder if someone who knows more about modding than I do could explain how to remove the Master Merchant from the game (I assume by altering some text file) so that we can carry on testing for any other bugs before Wes gets round to fixing this bug properly.

Thanks, gents.

Well, I'm reasonably certain that it isn't just the master merchant itself that is the behind the scenes cause, but interaction between the master merchant and the game in some complicated way. It's more of a symptom rather than the cause, I think. I suspect that just removing the master merchant will lead to other things or maybe not even fix the problem. Wes is the expert; although I certainly don't envy him the task of tracking the bug down.

Oh, and screwing around this morning, I found that the bug causing the odd graphics for the high end buildings of the pagans is a result of some problem with the default pics in the review_panel icons folder. I'm not sure exactly what though.

I'm with you on the last major bug hope, Lord Ovaat. I'm not a real big fan of the late era. If we can get these bugs nailed enough that Wes can feel confident in a full release, then I can go back to terrorizing the world in my beloved early era.

What about the random rivers? Has anyone else noticed this? In my battles, I see alot of rivers popping up where no river was indicated on the strategic map, and also the random absence of rivers that theoretically should be there.

DA

Quote:

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Wes is the expert; although I certainly don't envy him the task of tracking the bug down.

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I've always suspected the merchant bug is an extension/effect of the new trade routes, particularly since that glitch is relatively new. Wes should be able to get it fairly easily, since he at least has a place to start.

And, no, I haven't noticed the new river disorientations. Haven't been really fighting any battles, just checking to see if they'll load. It would stand to reason there will be some adjustments needed in borders and such with all the new territories. I mean, Switzerland is now over by Constantinople, lol. I don't believe there's much one could change in this game without it affecting something else. That's what makes it so bloody complicated. And interesting. ~;)

I've only found one way to test beyond the master merchant bug that Lord Ovaat discovered. Auto-run the game and step in when needed to take control of those factions which -ian allows to stamp out those factions which you can't control with -ian. It's time consuming to get rid of the non-controllable factions, and rebellions which have them reappear are a pain to stamp out; but the result is that in later years, after 1370-1380 or so, you have complete control of all factions. I haven't yet found any other CTD bugs; but the process is so time-intensive that I haven't gotten beyond 1400 yet.

Well the rivers might be something worth checking out, because I've encountered these weirdnesses regularly. Like one time there was a Polish castle sally in Mazovia, and they brought in troops from Poland, and checking afterwards on the strat map there was NO possible direction they could have invaded from, including internally, that, according to the strat map, should have generated a river. But when they attacked my besieging force, they had to cross a ONE-BRIDGE river.

Come to think of it, it is a specific ONE-BRIDGE river map that is showing up randomly at places where it shouldn't. Also, I specifically remember an instance when that province between Kiev and Crimea (what's it called??) was invaded from Khazar, and there was no river whatsoever (the map clearly indicated there should have been one).

Both the the weird rivers and weird drynesses have happened to me with considerable frequency. If I run into another, I'll try and post screenies.

DA

P.S.: What's the keystroke for screenshots? And what's my best bet for posting them?

Well, I have been updating the rivers as I re-worked the strat map. There should definitely be a river between Khazar and Levidia (Brandenburg). Here is the line in the campaign file:
SetBorderInfo:: ID_KHAZAR ID_BRANDENBURG 25848 10824 0 TEMPERATE AT_EASTERN_EUROPEAN INLAND PLAINS RIVER //Dnieper

I have gone through and noted the rivers themselves in comments I made in the file. As always, the best thing to do is run your cursor over the border and note the info that pops up onscreen.
There are actually only a few of the largest rivers drawn on the map. I'm pretty sure there were some un-drawn river crossings which were present with the original settings. I have thought about trying to draw some of the others in, but it would be hard, time-consuming, and I wanted to be sure nothing else was going to change.
One thing I have done which can be surprising is that some rivers are only in effect in one direction. For instance, since the Danube in within Pannonia, attacking Serbia from there doesn't involve a river crossing, but attacking from Serbia does, since you would have to cross it to get to the heart of Pannonia.
I get caught sometimes, too. For instance, I forgot that there was a river between Valencia and Murcia, and had to call off an attack, and attack from New Castile instead.

Vespers, Sicily still has control of Apulia and Campania. The setup you proposed would add a new faction to the game, the Angevins, and relegate the Sicilians to one province, albeit a powerful one. I think the way I have things now will be the best.

As for the crashes, I still don't know what is going on. I did a test game as the Papacy, and had consistent crashes occuring after endturn in 1332.
I started another game, let it autorun, and it went until I stopped it in 1397 with no problem. Then I started a third game after reading the posts here, as the Venetians, and built a Master Merchant with no problem.
Does the crash only occur if the faction is AI-controlled? This was the circumstance for that awful bug I encountered a couple months ago, which turned out to be related to the heroes text.
The Trade Route and Marketplaces shouldn't have anything to do with it, though I can't be absolutely certain. The Marketplaces are simply a new line of Mines.

I went through the campaign file, and there aren't that many provinces which begin the game with a Merchant's Guild, which is the requirement to get a Master Merchant built by 1333. The only one which was not an -ian faction was Sweden. If you want to change it for testing, it is line 4600 (Merchant3)in the campaign text. The file is beta_MM4.txt, if you want to search for it.
I have scoured the Master Merchant entries and graphics, and there shouldn't be anything amiss, and since it isn't a new building, I wonder what else is going on here.

One odd thing I noticed, in the real game I was playing. I built a Constable's Palace in Leon, but the office flag didn't appear. Anyone else had this happen? I built a couple of others, along with a couple of the other palaces that I had fiddled with, and they appeared correctly.

I have corrected the graphics for the palaces for the pagan factions. This was another CA omission, since the only original pagans were the Horde, so pagans weren't allowed to build palaces except for the Royal.

Revenant, thanks for the culture fix for the foreign relations page. With this last update I grouped all the faction settings to the faction-specific text, whereas they had been spread out over different files. I thought all those other entries were unused pastes made simply so that the programmers wouldn't have to refer to other files while they made related entries. Anyway, I have pasted that section you specified into the faction-specific text. I haven't tested it yet, but it should work there.
Well, unless it's like resource names, that is. I had to include the tooltips file in the mod because the names for resources were hard-coded to it, in order to get the name Trade Route to appear onscreen instead of Forests.

Aenlic, another way I test buildings with unlockable factions is to edit the "Startpos". Save the original somewhere by copying it, then pick a particular faction and chose ONE province. I then start changing the buildings to max (4) and adding new ones that the faction can build. I'll only make a couple of changes at a time, then close, save, and start the game. If the game even loads, you're half way there. I then start a new campaign with that particular faction and make sure the new campaign will load. If it loads, then you can save your file and add new stuff. Once you build all you can build for that faction, it should be safe. It's hard to do with units, however, because the name in the starting positions and in the game can be quite different. Is this time-consuming? Yup. But it seems quicker and surer than randomly just letting the game play forever, and maybe never finding the bug you're looking for. Of course, this would be needless unless you know you have, and are looking for, a specific problem. Those are still easiest to find just by running the game. And we wonder why it took four years to make RTW!

I hate to double post, but Wes, you posted as I was writing. The merchant bug has been pretty consistent for me, but I certainly didn't try all of the factions. I still think it would have to involve the new trade routes, because I never noticed this bug unitl you made those changes. I can't offer any other help, sorry, lol.

I can confirm that I get a CTD when a master merchant is built, either as a player faction or when I let the AI do it.

I'm not sure hw the game coding works, but on the turn when the master merchant completes, playing that faction, I'll get the normal beginning of the turn windows for princesses born, etc. I'll get the window saying that the master merchant was completed and click on the checkmark button t close the window, various other turn windows cycle through. It seems as if the CTD happens right at the end of that portion of the turn cycle, just as or before the game releases the strategic screen to you to begin that turn. It definitely doesn't happen right as the window pops up advising that the building has been built.