Northern Europe?

[The Emperor]

What program can create/edit .BIFs? Secondly, whatexactly are .BIFs used for?

[edyzmedieval]

Also,

About Bif's, you can use the ReadBif22 to view bifs. In the Tools section also.

Bif's are used for small and low resolution images like the images for trade goods and resources.

[Aenlic]

I'm at the very beginning stages of making a 30 Years War campaign. It'll start slightly earlier than the standard 1618, perhaps sometime after the Peace of Augsburg in 1555.

The main map difficulty will be making a completely new map of Northern and Central Europe, which will also have to include areas for the Austrian Hapsburgs and their opponents, mainly the Danes, the Swedes, the Dutch, the Spanish and the French in their various small territories. Even the English King, James i, got involde at one point, allowing his rabidly Protestant subjects to form volunteer armies. These English volunteers even managed to control and hold a fortified town in the Palatinate against Spinola at one point.

The Dutch held most of the lowlands and were in open revolt against their Spanish overlords, but the Spanish still had terrorities in Belgium and Northern Italy at the beginning of the war. The Danes and the Swedes (mainly Magdeburg) had terroritory in Northern Germany as well, at this time. The Bohemians and Moravians were in conflict with their Hapsburg rulers in Austria. The actual 30 Years War period was begun in 1618 by the nearly simultaneous invasion of the Calvinist Lower Palatinate by Spain just as the Protestant Bohemians rose in open revolt against Matthias II, the Hapsburg Holy Roman Emperor in Austria, with Bohemia openly crowning the Calvinist Frederick V of that same Palatinate which Spain had just invaded as their king.

The most severe roadblock is the religions; since it will consist entirely of Catholic, Lutheran and Calvinist. It might be pssible to get away with just Catholic and Calvinist, since they were the two main antagonists in the war; but the Lutherans are important later in the war, as the source of the Lutheran Swedish King Gustav's invasion and the Lutherans in Saxony under the Elector of Saxony. I'm not sure that Orthodox and Pagan can be modded sufficiently to turn them into the appropriate religions with the appropriate fervor. The Catholics with inquisitors will certainly work well enough. Perhaps grand inquisitors can be used as the Calvinist versions.

It's certainly a period perfect for MTW modding, with all of the various small political terroritories torn even smaller by religious divisions. Plenty of interesting heroes as well, such as Wallenstein, Hohenloe, Tilly and Count Thurn.

I also want to include Wes's homelands concept from his MedMod campaigns, as it would be essentially impossible for the Spanish, as an example, to recruit and train their Catholic forces in an entirely Calvinish conquered province like the Palatinate of the Rhine.

I'm experimenting right now with the religions to see if it's possible to remake the Orthodox and Pagans into Calvinists and Lutherans.

[cegorach]

It sounds so similar to Pike & Musket TW to me

[Aenlic]

Well P&M is a bit more expansive than I was wanting, including all of the same areas as the original M:TW map. For a strictly 30 Years War scenario, the Mediterranean and steppes provinces wouldn't be needed, allowing for smaller detail of provinces within the area of Germany itself. In addition, the M:TW version of P&M is in a .rar format which I can't seem to download. When it's in a zip format, I'd love to try it.

[cegorach]

It is sad you can't try it, because you will find a lot of data you need there.

BTW - I remade Orthodoxes to Protestants and it is pretty easy.