The Caravel Mod

[gollum]

Dear all,
Stazi kindly did some playtesting and also helped me out to add historical characters to the G. Horde.

He got some interesting fndings that may prove helpful to others for their mods;

These are:

What I've found:
- King/Khan parameters are hardcoded. Engine ignores all except name - 1st from the list is taken. I assume the other famous kings are used in case of faction reemerging. It's how it works normally, right?
- Heroes work as predicted - no problems.

Minor issue - I found the original game bug. Mongols' Khan has christian campmap piece. I've checked the first MTW/VI and gold ed. It's cause by a small typo in file name. Check campmap\pieces\Units\Pagan. File is named "army_leader_waiting.bif" but it should be "army_leader_awaiting.bif". Engine can't find the right file so the default christian is shown.

So because of the Khans being hardcoded, i was left with adding G.Horde historical characters (3) that particiapted in the invasion of Russia and of Eastern Europe.

In short the new characters are:
*Batu* - gandson of Genghis Khan, and Patriarch of the Golden Horde. He crushed the Cumans, Alans and Pechenegs, and then the Russians, Hungarians, Germans, Poles and Lithuanians. He asked from the HREmperor to "detrone himself" in favor of him (Batu). He was planning to attack Europe all the way to "the great sea (Atlantic)" when the Great Khan died in Mongolia and had to return as he was eligible for the position.

*Subudai* - Genghis Khan's greatest general; served in all Mongol campaigns with distinction; Genghis called him one of his "dogs of war". He used imaginatively logistics, intelligence and combined arms including artillery to defeat his opponents. He always put the enemy into a very weak position before commiting to battle.

*Jebe* - Genghis Khan's 2nd best general; served in nearly all Mongol Campaigns with distinction. Early on his tribe and that of Genghis fought and he personally wounded the Khan. After the battle Genghis khan said "who was he that wounded my horse?" in trying to conceal that he got wounded. Jebe responded that it was him that had wounded the Khan. Genghis that valued valor and honesty forgave him and took him in his service to which end he fought many campaigns and was the equal of Subudai.

These folk will now ride with the Horde and make your MTW lives a bit more interesting :)

Thanks to Stazi for suggesting this, for doing the playtesting and for pushing me to include it

Another interesting point Stazi found is the graphical glitch/bug of the Mongol action's leader piece in the camp map turnign catholic. This is (as he says) because there is a missing letter in the description of teh piece in motion. Correcting this will make the Mongol faction leader have always his Mongol piece :)

Again thank you Stazi