Many thanks for taking the trouble to reply. You explained something which would not have occurred to me, otherwise. Namely, interest in RTW/BI having drawn the modders of old away from MTW. I own neither of the newer programs and not sure I have any interest in them either. Whilst one might glean subtle clues from reading the threads about it, I should imagine the differences in game architecture would make a fair bit of it inapplicalbe, or inappropriate, to try similar things in the older program.

Incidentally, the Modding Guide thread you linked to is merely a single post, containing an index of a guide Duke John was working on at the time (2004). Not only did he never get around to writing the chapters this was going to provide links to, the links in this post (only two of those) give "404 error" because the URLs are still set to a previous incarnation of the org's forum software and the thread id numbers are no longer valid.

Duke John is still an active member but I suspect he is one of those who was drawn away to the RTW engine.

Like you say, it is down to us 'noobs' to start working things out for ourselves and sharing ideas and solutions. I'm prepared to do this, it's just it wasn't what I originally came to this forum area for. I'll get over it.