How to play EB 0.8 with the BI.exe

[Cheexsta]

For those who want to try it out, here's a simple way of playing EB with the Barbarian Invasion executable file (RomeTW-BI.exe). Why would you want to do this? From experimenting with RTRPE and hearing feedback from people who have done the same, the AI is slightly better and naval invasions work better than in 1.5. It also enables a few other little features that can always be worked in with minimods and so on. Here is the method I used:

1. Install a fresh copy of RTW and BI, patch it to 1.6. This will be your backup folder - don't make any changes to it.
2. Select all of the contents except for the BI subfolder, right click and select Copy (or press Ctrl+C).
3. Create a new folder wherever you want, this will be the folder over which you install EB. I named mine EB 0.8. Right click anywhere in the folder and select Paste (or press Ctrl+V).
4. Install EB into this new folder as normal.
5. On the desktop, there should be an icon created by the EB installer called EB08. Right click this and select Properties. In the Target field, you will see the following:

"...\RomeTW.exe" -mod:eb -nm -show_err

The "..." is the directory where you installed the mod (it'll be different for most people). Change RomeTW.exe to RomeTW-BI.exe. Click OK to save the changes and close the Properties window.
6. Run the shortcut and start a new game as normal, except you will need to select Provincial Campaign from the Single Player menu rather than Imperial Campaign.

Voila, you're now running EB using the BI engine. It's savegame compatible, too, so don't worry about having to start a new campaign after doing this. It's a slightly longer method than for RTRPE because of the -mod: switch, but it still works fine.

Edited because I'm an idiot You need a fresh install of BI1.6 in order for this to work.