New to all this..but keen to learn

[alpaca]

I don't know, I'm not a newbie ;)
My general policy about tutorials is to ask myself how much I'd have liked a text to be available when I started out with the topic, and how much I feel like writing one. I think almost any well-written tutorial is useful for somebody so if you want to document your steps, I'm sure you'll find an audience. There's also been some demand for a kind of "meta-tutorial" that takes people by the hand from the start until they're able to do some task by themselves so if you want to do that I'm sure people would be grateful (although my personal opinion on that is: if somebody doesn't have the perseverance to learn modding with what's available right now, they won't produce a worthwhile mod anyways)

[CMOT Dibbler]

The first few steps have gone well and simply. The unpacker tool works exactly like it says it should, and all you have to do is click on the batch file, and M2TW turns from a large install to an absolutely huge install!!!! I wonder how many people are put of modding by pure lack of disc space... thsi thing BLOATS!

There are existing tutorials that cover setting up a mod folder and a batch file to run the mod folder from, and I am pretty sure I have done that correctly. I made a few detail changes to the cfg file that proved I HAD created a mod folder, and that it was reading the cfg file I wanted, not the stock one. Again, this is a well documented process, and there was plenty of good info available by searching here or at TWCenter.net in tutorial and help sections.

There is a mass of text type files that I want to edit ( though it seems to be not quite as simple as text files....but, again, there are tutorials, so I should be OK reading these. I want to start with the process for recruitment of a unit, and how that can be controlled and managed. I never liked the standard approach to recruitment. If you conquer a city, why shoiuld it suddenly start making troops of your sort... This fits even worse for any fantasy type mod too. Why should a Dwarf City suddenly start producing trolls or orcs!
When the city is taken, the troops generated may serve you instead, but they would be 'local' troops for a 'local garrison'. I would prefer a core of units buildable from any given territory, bolstered with mercenaries. There would then be other conditional 'special' units requiring certain mutually exclusive buildings etc. This would force a new city owner to tear down some buildings to put up a new one.
I don;t know how possible all this is, or how ( if at all ) it would affect the way the computer gets troops or builds armies up. I assume it is bound by the same rules, and just tries to build hte best troops it can in the city. This would ( I guess ) rule out any kind of approach that restricted building of your units to your home territory. I can foresee the computer having strong armies at home, and all its conquered territories being stuffed with peasants! Not good for an enjoyable game!

I also want..VERY MUCH... to remove the Pope and leave just the 'council of nobles' type of missions.

Once I have this all sorted out, I will move onto the world itself...mapping! I figure it is possible to make new models etc. from Alletun's tome of knowledge, so I will get to that later. Of more interest to me is how to get those units functional in a mod. no point in just sittiung around making stacks of new soldiers if they never get to be used in anything other than custom battles!

[CavalryCmdr]

I also want..VERY MUCH... to remove the Pope and leave just the 'council of nobles' type of missions.

As far as I know that cant be done completely, however I know you can remove all the Popes influence and missions.