Getting Byzantine Crusade special units into the main game

[s0ltan]

The Byzantines should be my favorite faction, but they're not, because there are just too few interesting units, especially in the late game (I mean, surely the Byzantines would have had some gunpowder units if the empire had lasted longer). I'm liking some of the units from the Crusades campaign, like the Greek Firethrower. I'll bet there's a way to edit the regular MTW campaign to allow use of these units from the specialty campaign. Can anybody explain how to do it in very simple steps?

Should I have posted this under Mods?

[Myth]

Download and install the Stainless Steel mod. 6.3 is the latest version up to now, we're waiting on 7.0 to arrive. It really does the ERE justice (and actually makes them overpowered in Early), and it has firethrowers, scholarii, varangian guard and everything else in between.

If you want awesome gunpowder play Leon-Castille, France, HRE or Venice/Genoa or in the east - the Seljuk Sultanate.

[s0ltan]

I installed 6.3 and 6.4 and it crashes to desktop before it even gets me to a start menu -- and this is AFTER I changed security settings as described in the thread about making SS compatible with Windows 7. Any advice?

[Myth]

You should disable UAC first and then install the mod. What I did:

Disable the stupid Win 7 security feature.
Install M2TW
Patch it (It's not necessary due to Kingdoms but I like to be thorough)
Install Kingdoms
Patch it
Install SS 6.3
Install the 6.4 patch
all exe files in the M2TW directory I've set to "Run as Adminstrator"

After that, it's been good to go.

[s0ltan]

Myth, thanks a million for your help. Do I need to uninstall all of these programs or is there a quicker way to do this?

[s0ltan]

Oh, yeah, and what's with having to choose Early Campaign or Late? Can I start Early and play through the Late period?

[s0ltan]

Stainless Steel is now running fine.

[Myth]

Glad to be of help. Early/Late is a prefernce thing. SS is 1 turn per year (TPY) but if you don't turn Rea Recruitment off (which you shouldn't in single player) the better units come at their historical times. So for most factions (but not the ERE) that's 120 turns of mostly spear militia / levy spearmen type units. But yes, if you start Early you will eventually get to the year when the Late campaign begins.

Another difference between Early/Late is the starting positions and factions. In Early you're in for a bit of a surprise with one emerging faction and another huge invasion. In Late, both factions start on the campaign map.

I would recommend to you to play Early with RR on and also Longer Assimilation which will make your expansion slower. Also, don't rush the Fatamids, let them grow to become the Yellow Death and see what happens when a Jihad is called on Constantinople around turn 35-40.