The Medieval Mod IV 2.0: No Units version

[WesW]

I have uploaded the No Units version of the mod to the Org. (I still don't have access to my webpage.) Hopefully Barocca will get it posted soon.

Transposing the 1.84 version to the Viking files turned out to be much harder than I anticipated. I have probably spent close to 24hrs on this project.

Anyway, the good news is that I managed to get all of the files working with only three original files overwritten, and, should you choose to stop using the mod, there should be no reason for you to have to manually replace any of them.

Basically, this mod contains almost all of the 1.84 changes to the starting position and building files, plus the changes to Crusades and Crusader units in the units file.
I did not add the six Crusader unit versions from the 1.84 file, nor I did not make all of the changes to provincial starting units.
Finally, I did not include my changes to ships, either, since I have read that the AI does a better job with them in VI.

As a note, I have brought back the Almohads to the Late era, plus I have made the Swiss playable in the Late era.

I have updated the spreadsheet to reflect the changes, which mainly meant deleting all the pages devoted to units.
The Readme has also been updated, and again this mainly meant deleting all passages related to units.

Note: I have found a mistake in the formation file I uploaded, which will mess up the placement of cavalry. It will be corrected in future versions. It will not mess up the game or anything.

[A_B]

Exellent news Wes.

I've been playing the regular version of the campaign with the expansion. I must say it is the hardest campaign i've played to date. I don't know if it my position (Hungarians), or AI changes.

I do know i love the fact that you protect a territries wealth and upgrades as long as you remain in the castle. That has changed the game significantly - from how you garrison your kingdom, to limiting the financial rewards of raiding (especially since you can modify the benifits of raiding per faction).

[solops]

I do not see a link here or on Wes' page for the VTW mod.

[dunno]

It's right over here:

http://www.totalwar.org/Downloads/MTW/Stats.shtml

[Sir Robin]

Yeah, I can post in this thread.

Thank you WesW for an incredible mod.

I will download it and see what happens.

Thank you again for all of your efforts.

MTW is a great game and it is so much more, with those far more skilled than I tweaking it.

[WesW]

I have been alerted to the presence of a few bugs over on the .com site. Below are quick fixes for two of them.
The bugs related to the misplacement of the Byzantine king in the Early era, the unavailability of the Swiss, and a weird map bug. When attacking from Trebizond to Constantinople.

I don't know what would be causing the bug on the Constan map. I checked, and the settings are exactly the same as with the 1.1 version.

I have not gotten a reply from the admins at Apolyton, so I have posted fixes to the other two bugs you found below.

As for the Byzant king, I had made the change to give the Turks Anatolia so long ago that I had forgotten about it.
The king placement is on line 2490 of the MM_Early.txt. Just change Anatolia to Constantinople for the Byzantine king.

I swore I had made the change enabling the Swiss to be played, but things got so bad trying to debug that there is no telling what happened.
Anyway, about lines 1850-1900 of the MM_Late.txt is where you set the available factions. Just set the Swiss from Minor to Major.

[sprucemoose]

excellent Wes

i enjoyed playing your last version,things can only get better.

[A_B]

Wes,

What about adding in the following;

1. An earlier version of the fort (aka Viking) Stockade, Fortified Village. This would be added to the existing forts. With more levels, the amount of time to build each fortification type could be reduced, and the effects of a fort being reduced one level (by assault) would be reduced.

2. Add additional levels of farming (you could go up to six if you use the icons from VI). With 6 instead of 4 levels of farming tech, the turns for each could be reduced, but the jump could go from 20% to 15% (for a total increase of 90% vs. 80%). The main reason for this would be to reduce the effects of Pillaging (you don't go back as far). A lot of the Mediterranean territories could start at farming level 2 or 3, whereas the step areas would start at zero. My though would be to reduce the income from all territories slightly if this were done.

3. Add the MUSTER_FIELD requirement to build Peasants. Give it a low enough priority that the AI doesn't build that many. This may help reduce the amount of Peasants the AI builds (I don't see as many peasants in Viking age - usually less than 1/3 the enemy army).

4. Add PAGAN_SHRINE level 1 & 2 - to make the pagan factions more playable.

For all of the above, the graphics are in place.

5. Start the Early campaign in 1060 AD or even earlier;
with the higher amount of available factions, it would be nice to start with Britain as a faction, the Normans (under William the Bastard) as a faction, the Norwegians as a faction (under Herald Hadradda), the Cumans, etc. Playable factions could replace a lot of the rebels. This would not only allow more variation in who to play (and fight), but would mean that there would be more reemerging factions - making rebellions much harder to deal with (which i imagine they really were back in the day).

With the additional levels of early forts and farms, as well as pagan shrines, the early campaign could extend backwards to cover the end of the dark ages - 900ad or thereabouts. It would be especially nice to be able to play one of several Pagan factions. I believe they'd be harder, since pagans don't seem to convert the populace as quickly as Christian or Muslims (the golden horde never seem to convert provinces over to paganism very quickly anyway). Just one more way to make the end game more challenging. Beside, i hate playing Christian factions (living under the popes thumb), or Muslim (they bugger little boys), and i've played the Byzantines to death.

[WesW]

In reply to A_B's post above:

I am pretty set with the No Units version of the mod, and I don't think that many players who requested this version will desire new buildings, either. So, my comments are in relation to the full version of the mod.

1) I don't really see a big need for this. It can be quite annoying when a Citadel or Fortress goes down a level, but with the new unit system you have been working on with me, I don't think it will be a big deal if one of the conquered provinces loses a castle level.

2) Again, I think the present setup for land improvements is not in much need of additions. And from what I can tell, land improvements are not damaged nearly as often as buildings.
I have stated in the past that I feel that this situation is the reverse of what it should be, i.e. buildings and castles should only see minimal damage, while damage to the income-producers, land and merchants, should be heavy. This is what would make provinces less attractive for conquering, imo, and would produce a financial drain on the conqueror, how would be required to have a large garrison for loyalty and/or war, since newly conquered provinces are normally front-line provinces as well.

3)This is a great idea, and I plan on trying it out.

4) Another great idea, as rebellions normally cripple the Mongols after their initial conquest spree.

5)The current eras last plenty long enough for me, so I don't want to extend the length of one of them by a few hundred turns.
You should be able to declare a new startpos file, and append it to the existing ones, so you would have, in effect, 4 eras. I don't know how this would work for the units, though, since their era restictions are most likely hardcoded to the present 4 options. Well, thinking about it, you could use the ALL_PERIODS flag for the Dark Age units, and use the other three for the standard units.

If you want to try this concept out, I would be very interested in the results. If the concept works, then you could set about adding new factions. This could turn out to be very popular, and the things you could do with it may be enormous.

Myself, I spent about 3 hours a day all last week getting the No Units finished, and since then I have been spending a lot of time on some financial stuff, so I don't know how much experimenting I will be able to do on my own. I have only played the game for a couple of nights in the last two weeks, so my availability to work on mod stuff may be quite limited in the short run.

This isn't much of a problem, since I was going to see what people were saying about the game after a few weeks of playing before I put my thoughts together for the mod.

I have told A_B this in private, but for everyone else, what I want now are ideas like A_B just posted, and opinions on my unit restriction proposals. I know a lot of you have ideas and/or opinions forming, and I would like to hear them.