How to make factions playable?

[Pikenier]

I´m sure this had been asked often enough, but can´t find a related thread ...

How can you make faction in MTW (without Viking Invasion) playable? I want to play the Aragonese and the Swiss in the late era.
When making the Aragonese playable can you start a Glorious Achievements campaign? Or is only conquest mode possible?

[gollum]

You need to check the startpos text file pikenier,
in there iirc, you can set any faction you wish to playable. There are three starting position files one for each era.

You can set the Aragonese to play a GA campaign as i recall, but you have to adjust the GA file, whose format is really messy. I would have thought it far easier to buy VI for your MTW, that makes Aragon playable and even provides special GA goals like the Sicilian VEspers. It has the VI campaign, fixes many things in the main MTW campaign and several bugs and also most mods are made for VI, so it gives you access to these.

[drone]

To make a faction playable. look in the era's startpos file. So, for what you want to do, edit the LATE.TXT file (make a backup first). Look for the group of lines that start with "SetActiveFaction::". To change a non-playable to a playable faction, change the "FT_MINOR" to "FT_MAJOR" at the end of the SetActiveFaction line. I think the titles for the Swiss and Aragonese are correct (they are in VI anyway), for some unplayable factions they need to added. Not sure about GA goals for the Swiss/Aragonese.

The Swiss campaign is a tough one, you will have no money and no real cavalry for quite some time. I had to use Mounted Sergeants to run off missile troops and take prisoners, not something you really want to do in Late.