which faction and mods?

[caravel]

I would say the Spanish as well. Though I do think that the Egyptians and the Almohads are ok for starting out also.

[Stormcrow]

How about the english?
They're reasonably safe on their island .

[caravel]

How about the english?
They're reasonably safe on their island .

In game terms (unless you've modded it) it's not an island as it's joined to mainland europe via the Wessex/Flanders "landbridge". So it has a chokepoint, though not a particularly good one, but isn't a true island such as Malta, Crete, Rhodes, Cyprus, Ireland or Sardinia/Corsica.

I have modded out all of the landbridges, except Denmark-Sweden from my MTW/VI.

Also the English campaign throws you pretty much straight into war with the French, with all of the hassle from the Pope that comes with it.

• WesW's MedMod v3 or v4 beta: the most challenging M:TW mod available, introduced the homelands concept and has the best A.I. performance.

I need to get around to trying this one.

[DisruptorX]

I found the Egyptians to be a great starting faction. Desert lands are hard for non muslims to invade, and you start off next to two weaker muslim factions that are easy to invade. You get rich mediterean provinces off the bat which will bring you in tons of gold once you set up shipping routes and get access to many great anti-cavalry and anti-armour troops.

[Ciaran]

I agree with Ludens, in the case of MTW I´d start with vanilla. Although, maybe XL would be good for starting as well, since you gain way more income from the lands you hold and have to rely less on the long and difficult trade setup. But it´s also a matter of the faction you choose. I have so far only played with catholic factions, so I don´t know about the muslim or Orthodox ones, but Spain has proved so far a relatively easy one - your provinces are rich in trade goods and farm income, they have iron, you can wage a war against the Almohads without the pope screaming at you and you have easy access to both the Mediterrean and the northern sea regions, which eases trade buildup.

However, as a beginner do NOT, under no circumstances, try and start with the HRE in XL. It´s big, it´s weak and it´s surrounded by factions all too eager to grab your lands. You won´t be able to secure a single alliance at the beginning even if you play on Medium. I´ve managed to finish a XL HRE game - after five tries, and survival was by mere chance. It´s less extreme in vanilla, if I recall correctly, but it´s still a tough nut.

England is pretty easy in vanilla as well as the only non-English provices (Scotland and Wales) on the actual island of Britain are in rebel hands and can be bribed into your realm (Wales should be bribed, anyways - that gives you Longbows in Early, way before they regularly can be trained). In XL it´s a bit more mixed - you get more protection of your English provinces, due to the removed landbridge between Wessex and Flanders (a very rich and therefore tempting province, consider taking it as soon as you can afford to go to war with France) but that also cuts you off your continental holdings unless you can build ships.

And read both the Beginners Guide and the Unit Guide of Frogbeastegg. They´re more than helpful, even for those who have played RTW before trying their hands on MTW (they also contain a lot info that can be put to use in RTW, it´s just a matter of seeing where the similarities lie)

[Deus ret.]

However, as a beginner do NOT, under no circumstances, try and start with the HRE in XL. It´s big, it´s weak and it´s surrounded by factions all too eager to grab your lands. You won´t be able to secure a single alliance at the beginning even if you play on Medium.

To further generalize this: Don't EVER play a HRE game as a beginner. It's labelled as medium difficulty but in fact it's the hardest overall....no-one likes you regardless of what you do and everyone attacks you sooner or later once they get the chance to do so, stripping all their other frontiers bare just to attack YOU. Needless to say, if you don't just play sitting duck it's you who will get excommed quickly....and this applies for all mods I've played so far. Even in Pike&Musket where the HRE doesn't exist as a faction anymore the unlucky faction which got their slot (I think the Hapsburgs) regularly tend to be everyone's scapegoat due to the built-in hostile stance most factions take towards the HRE.

Another good beginner faction in vanilla are the Hungarians. Much land nearby to expand into and pretty good units (that is: Szekely) already in early.

The Danes in vanilla / early are also a viable option. Easily manageable with neighbouring, rich & strategically safe provinces ripe for the taking. Plus, they have truly supreme units (in early that is - there is a reason for the existence of a thread about overpowered Viking units).

edit: typos

[Bombasticus Maximus]

So English or Byzantines.

The English have long bows what do the Byzantines have like an elite unit?

I have shogun total war and you have to buld castles on each region to keep it do you do that in this one?

[Alexios]

I have modded out all of the landbridges, except Denmark-Sweden from my MTW/VI.

Hmmm... interesting. How does one go about modding out all the landbridges? I've considered doing this myself, as the landbridges tend to make the game less realistic in my opinion.

[caravel]

Hmmm... interesting. How does one go about modding out all the landbridges? I've considered doing this myself, as the landbridges tend to make the game less realistic in my opinion.

The landbridges are a personal thing. I prefer the game without them, some people think they're necessary to game balance, except the Sweden/Denmark one. There is also a landbridge that should exist, and that is the Sweden/Finland one. These are joined together off the map, so they should be linked.

The downside of this is that reckless AI crusades headed for norh african provinces will now go via eastern europe, asia minor and the holy land (the long route) instead of hopping across via the cordoba/morocco or granada/morocco landbridges at gibraltar. If this is a problem you may want to leave gibraltar connected, and only disconnect, i.e, wessex/flanders, sicily/naples and sardinia/corsica.

I will post a guide about landbridge removal later today. It's really very simple.

On Topic: Another good faction to play as is the Novgorod. They have to be modded as playable from the early startpos file. They have horse archers, boyars, druzhina cavalry, vikings (+1 valour in norway), rus spearmen (early only), +1 valour woodsmen in lithuania and easy access to steppe cavalry and steppe heavy cavalry. What more could you want? I'm currently on a novgorod campaign myself, and it's so long since I'd played them I'd forgotten just how good they were. It's difficult to get started but if you persist in invading and holding provinces every time an heir matures (boyar's upkeep is expensive and saps your already poor economy) you can pull yourself out of the red and end up as the strong baltic trading faction with a strong economy. So far I've taken all of russia, scandinavia (including denmark) and given the poles a serious kicking and taken poland and moldavia. The Byzantine also broke alliance and invaded khazar but lost badly, but I'm leaving them alone for now, even though I have some particularly legendary generals (ex princes) and enough of a military to take them on and wipe them out. The vikings, boyars, druzhina and steppe cavalry have ensured that I haven't lost a single battle so far. Now I'm going to wait for the GH to arrive, only a about 20 years to go.

[Sensei Warrior]

I just started a Campaign in XL as the Scottish. Its my first time playing a mod. So far its a lot of fun. Its nice to Campaign against a faction the uses more than Peasants, Archers and Spearmen.

I would cast my vote for the removal of land bridges. It took me awhile to realize that my huge army sitting in Wessex was not protecting me from the French in Flanders. Although the one minor downside is it is incredibly hard to get your island faction off of your island.

With all the boats hanging out in my section of the world I might have to contentrate on being an island trading faction for a bit.

I always wondered if when you edited out the land bridge if you had to erase the lines that indicate the landbridge from the map or if it just disapears on its own?

Eagerly waits for Caravel's instructions.

[caravel]

As always back up any changed files before proceeding. If you mess up a file with a syntax error it can be hard to trace the fault.

Ok in the location where you installed MTW/VI go to this path:

\Medieval - Total War\campmap\startpos

You'll see files of this sort:

early.txt
high.txt
late.txt

Personally I only play the early period anyway so I haven't modded the others but it works exactly the same way.

1) Open the early.txt file with the notepad text editor
2) Find the "SetNeighbours" for the region you want to disconnect. Next to this you'll find a list of other provinces e.g.

SetNeighbours:: ID_WESSEX	     ID_FLANDERS        ID_MERCIA	ID_WALES	ID_ENGLISH_CHANNEL	ID_IRISH_SEA

from this line, if you wanted to stop stacks and agents crossing directly to flanders without a port and fleet you would have to change as follows:

SetNeighbours:: ID_WESSEX     ID_MERCIA	ID_WALES	ID_ENGLISH_CHANNEL	ID_IRISH_SEA

After this you would need to find the line:

SetNeighbours:: ID_FLANDERS	ID_WESSEX       ID_NORMANDY	ID_ILE_DE_FRANCE	ID_CHAMPAGNE	ID_LORRAINE	ID_FREISLAND	ID_ENGLISH_CHANNEL

And change it as follows:

SetNeighbours:: ID_FLANDERS       ID_NORMANDY	ID_ILE_DE_FRANCE	ID_CHAMPAGNE	ID_LORRAINE	ID_FREISLAND	ID_ENGLISH_CHANNEL

This stops stacks and agents crossing back in the other direction.

The next thing is to remove the little descriptions you see when you open the info parchment for, in our example, flanders when you have that parchment open and mouse over wessex. You see the "armies meeting here..." terrain type info.

Find:

SetBorderInfo::	ID_FLANDERS	ID_WESSEX	8600	8184	0	LUSH	AT_WESTERN_EUROPEAN	COAST	FLAT	NO_RIVER

Replace with:

//SetBorderInfo::	ID_FLANDERS	ID_WESSEX	8600	8184	0	LUSH	AT_WESTERN_EUROPEAN	COAST	FLAT	NO_RIVER

The two "//" comment out the line so that it is not parsed (read by the compiler) so that border info line won't have effect.

Next you need to do the same for wessex:

SetBorderInfo::	ID_WESSEX	ID_FLANDERS	9208	8568	0	LUSH	AT_WESTERN_EUROPEAN	COAST	PLAINS	NO_RIVER

Change as follows:

//SetBorderInfo::	ID_WESSEX	ID_FLANDERS	9208	8568	0	LUSH	AT_WESTERN_EUROPEAN	COAST	PLAINS	NO_RIVER

Britain is now a four province island.

Other provinces you may wish to disconnect using this method are sardinia/corsica, cordoba/morocco, granada/morocco and sicily/napes. don't forget to comment out the borderinfo for both directions and remove the neighbours for each direction.

-Edit, oh and I almost forgot, the little 'cosmetic' links on the campaign map graphic won't disappear as the whole thing is just one big .tga image. I had photoshopped these out myself a few years back (and did a pretty good job of it if I do say so myself!), and I use this all the time now. The only visual landbridge not erased is the denmark/sweden one, because I don't actually remove that anyway. I would host it but the "MapTex2.tga" file, as it's called, is near 37MB so that's not an option for me.

[Ludens]

Compared to R:TW, M:TW has a rather steep learning curve so I would recommend you to start with the vanilla game, as most modifications increase the difficulty even more. Good factions to learn the game with are the Byzantines (rich, strong generals, initially powerfull units), the Spanish (strong units, potential to become very rich, nearby enemy ripe for crusades) and the English (good position, strong units once you hit high), all three in early. If you also got the expansion, you should try the Vikings: they have very powerful units, can loot-and-run with impunity and are generally a very fun faction to play with.

Once you have gotten the hang of the game, I recommend installing MedMod v2.14: it's a balance patch that improves A.I. performance without changing overmuch. If you are looking for something different but still want to stay in the medieval theme, there are three mods available:

1. VikingHorde's Medieval XL: one of the most popular mods, based on the concept that Land is Power.
2. Blind King of Bohemia's Supermedieval: a more historically-oriented mod, perhaps slightly less popular but generally held to be just as good as Medieval XL.
3. WesW's MedMod v3 or v4 beta: the most challenging M:TW mod available, introduced the homelands concept and has the best A.I. performance.

If you want a different setting, you could have a look at Napoleonic:TW, Shogun for M:TW/VI, Hellenic:TW or Pike & Musket: TW.