MTW Pocket Mod: General

[caravel]

Hi Caravel! I've detected a minor error in the mod. Some region titles does not correspond with the province, for instance "Duke of Serbia" in Greece, "Duke of Edessa" in Trebisond or "Duke of Trebisond" in Nicaea (I can't deny I enjoy playing the Byzantines, above all in the High era ).

Hi Belisario,

I cannot reproduce the error during any era. I've checked all of the provinces you've listed. Nor have any others reported it as yet. Did you start a new campaign or did you load a campaign they you were playing before you installed the mod?

On the topic raised in the other thread: Yes, a "season" system" would be rather nice (In fact, when I bought the game it´s the one thing that I missed from Shogun). Is there any prospect of that coming around?

Unfortunately the years/turns can't be modded.

[caravel]

- Notes on crusades 1.3: Not my imagination. More crusades going on at once, from more factions than usual (It´s rare to see Italian crusaders), and at strange places (Algeria, Armenia, even Constantinople! I spotted Spanish crusades travelling around Africa too

More on this point: The increase in Italian crusaders was possibly due to them being better protected from the Sicillians by the lack of the landbridge. This has now been restored of course.

You are probably noticing more crusades because they are all taking the same route, this is why the Morocco -> Granada and Cordoba landbridge has to be there, to allow crusades from western europe to the maghreb to take a more direct route. The AI is not capable enough to send ships first to secure the crossing. Most, though not all, of the crusades declared in western Europe heading for any provinces south of Syria should now take the route across the straits of gibraltar.

I had to join both Cordoba and Granada to Morroco as anything else looks ridiculous. La Punta Tarifa is actually in Cordoba province in the game, so that province has to be landbridged to Morocco. The problem is that not landbridging Granada also just doesn't look right.

Sweet, Caravel. And just in time for the weekend, too! I'll let you know if I run into anything -- assuming I'm not too busy kicking the Byz' and Seljuks' rear ends, that is.

[caravel]

Gah... I've been having PC problems (CPU getting too hot), luckily it's all sorted now, though it's taken half the night. So it'll be tomorrow before I get back to this.

[caravel]

Update:

I may have introduced something into 1.0.6 that is causing a crash. So I'll need to try and trace that next before I can do anything else. It could be related to graphics card drivers though of course, but somehow I seriously doubt it.

[naut]

Does the campaign start loading, hang, flash black and then crash?

[caravel]

Does the campaign start loading, hang, flash black and then crash?

Basically I can start the game fine, start a battle with no problems. The problem appears to be campaign map. Sometimes it can keep going for ten game turns, other times it crashes after the first few seconds. On other occasions it the load screen flashes off and the screen goes black. There is a delay of about 10 seconds then the error message appears.

I've just tested now with a clean install of vanilla MTW/VI 2.01 and the same thing happens, so that rules out modding being the cause. It looks like it may be the graphics card drivers. I had just reinstalled XP and the Omega 7.1 drivers for my Radeon 9800 a few days ago. I was playing Rome last night to give it a good testing, and it was rock solid. It appears to be the new graphics card drivers + MTW problem. Instead of installing older drivers there's got to be some settings I can play about with, so I'll try that now.

Event Type: Error
Event Source: Application Error
Event Category: None
Event ID: 1000
Date: 02/02/2007
Time: 11:38:26
User: N/A
Computer:
Description:
Faulting application medieval_tw.exe, version 1.0.0.0, faulting module medieval_tw.exe, version 1.0.0.0, fault address 0x0033d54d.

Data:
0000: 41 70 70 6c 69 63 61 74 Applicat
0008: 69 6f 6e 20 46 61 69 6c ion Fail
0010: 75 72 65 20 20 6d 65 64 ure med
0018: 69 65 76 61 6c 5f 74 77 ieval_tw
0020: 2e 65 78 65 20 31 2e 30 .exe 1.0
0028: 2e 30 2e 30 20 69 6e 20 .0.0 in
0030: 6d 65 64 69 65 76 61 6c medieval
0038: 5f 74 77 2e 65 78 65 20 _tw.exe
0040: 31 2e 30 2e 30 2e 30 20 1.0.0.0
0048: 61 74 20 6f 66 66 73 65 at offse
0050: 74 20 30 30 33 33 64 35 t 0033d5
0058: 34 64 0d 0a 4d..

-Edit: I almost forgot. I'm also getting the problem where the game doesn't exit. I have to do ctrl+alt+del and kill the process.

[naut]

Hmmm.

The campaign start loading, hang, flash black and then crash. Usually refers to unit and/or map problems. So yes it's not modding as you already figured out.

I'm not to good with the graphics driver problems. Geyser57 would probably know.

[caravel]

Well I've stopped the crash when exit problem, but not the other problem. The crash on exit, on this card and with these drivers appears to be caused by AA. Disabling AA eliminates the problem. I'm still working on the other issue. It is extremely erratic and random, which makes it hard to pin down.

-Edit: No, the problem is still there. It occurs when loading a savegame every time. If I make a save then exit, load up again and then load the savegame. It crashes every time now. The crash on exit occurs after you've played a few turns and a battle, then try to exit I think.

[Geezer57]

Caravel, I've found that for MTW and older Radeon cards (anything pre X1xxx series), that the Omega 2.6.53 drivers (based on Catalyst 5.7) are the most compatible. And, as you've found, don't enable AA - for some reason the game engine doesn't like it. These have worked great with soft-modded 9500 non-Pros, 9700/9800 cards, x800GTO2/x800XL/x850XT cards in my machines.

You can find the drivers in the archive here: http://www.omegadrivers.net/archive.php

Good luck!

P.S. Strongly recommend the use of Driver Cleaner Pro v1.5 (the free version) when changing drivers. It's available here: http://www.softpedia.com/get/Tweak/U...essional.shtml
http://downloads.guru3d.com/download.php?det=745
http://www.overclock.net/downloads/1...pro-1-5-a.html

[caravel]

Many thanks Geezer57, I will look into that. At present I seem to have got it working again. The problem was that my Medieval_TW.exe file had become corrupted, this was causing the errors and *cough*I now have the CD in the drive constantly*cough*. Anyway the mod is ok, which is the main thing. The crash on exit is still there. I've got AA and AF set to application preference and that has fixed the slow menu performance. I will probably downgrade to the drivers you've suggested though. You often find that newer drivers contain a lot of code relevant to later generation cards, so they're often not worth having. I also detest the newer catalysts that ship with that vile control centre that depends on the .net framework. Luckily the Omega drivers don't seem to have that.

[caravel]

Some ideas for the next release. Keep the bug reports and feedback for 1.0.6 coming though.

With some changes to the unit roster done, and various other changes, The building tech tree looks like the next area I will be looking at. What I dislike about it is the extreme amount of redundancy. IMHO it is poor. The STW tech tree had meaningful buildings that fulfil a purpose. Every level produced a new unit, gave a valour bonus, upgraded a weapon, farming upgrades went up to 100%, etc etc. MTW changed all that, with certain factions having a whole tech tree load of militia buildings that do nothing, a royal court that does nothing, and higher level civil buildings that give nothing more than titles. Then there are the horse farmers that depend on the 20% farmland, that once built do nothing whatsoever, and require you to upgrade to the horse breeders.

Another building I've been looking into is the border forts and watchtowers. I find that I can play a campaign not using any border forts. I do build watchtowers though. As to why I build them, mainly for the loyalty bonus. I don't really care that much what the AI is doing to be honest, I will always build watchtower, town watch, church, brothel etc, to boost loyalty. The spying on my neighbours bit is a secondary. I tend to use my watchtowers for most spying, as well as my ships fopr spying on coastal provinces further afield.

In view of this, I plan to do some testing soon with border forts and watchtowers totally removed. This will force me to put the, now much more readily available, spies and assassins out into the field doing some real work. The AI border forts ruined this in the past as they were always killing the majority of my agents off. Now my men will have a sporting chance against the AI agents in their provinces. If my men are lost the AI agents will gain valour. The AI may then send these agents on foreign missions. It will be an incentive for me to place my spies in the rival factions provinces and for the AI to place their spies and assassins in mine and each other's. A whole new dynamic.

Another factor is the inbalance of the Spearmaker/Bowyer and Swordsmith/Armour. I can see no reason why the Swordsmith should depend on the Spearmaker, nor why the Armourer depends on either (IIRC) the Bowyer or Spearmaker. It may have some kind of game balancing behind it all, but it is highly illogical. The dependence of those two on the town watch is also an annoyance. Also, why should horse breeders be upgradeable with no restriction? To cut a long story short I would readjust the tech as follows:

Fort: (this would only allow the garrison of troops and the production of farmland upgrades, construction of a port etc, with no troop training facilities, except for those troops which only depend on a fort or town watch etc.)

Keep: Horse Farmer, Bower, Spearmaker, Swordsmith, Armourer, Siege Engineer, Gunsmith.

Castle: Horse Breeder, Bowers' Workshop, Spearmakers' Workshop, Swordsmiths' Workshop, Armourers' Workshop, Siege Engineers' Workshop, Gunsmiths' Workshop.

Citadel: Horse Breeder's Guild, Bower's Guild, Spearmaker's Guild, Swordsmith's Guild, Armourer's Guild, Siege Engineer's Guild, Gunsmiths' Guild.

Fortress: Master Horse Breeder, Master Bower, Master Spearmaker, Master Swordsmith, Master Armourer, Master Siege Engineer, Master Gunsmith.

Costs would be adjusted accordingly, as would the startpos files.

[Deus ret.]

In view of this, I plan to do some testing soon with border forts and watchtowers totally removed. This will force me to put the, now much more readily available, spies and assassins out into the field doing some real work. The AI border forts ruined this in the past as they were always killing the majority of my agents off. Now my men will have a sporting chance against the AI agents in their provinces. If my men are lost the AI agents will gain valour. The AI may then send these agents on foreign missions. It will be an incentive for me to place my spies in the rival factions provinces and for the AI to place their spies and assassins in mine and each other's. A whole new dynamic.

good point and interesting to try out (particularly because of provinces being 'blind') but it will likely result in you being far superior in espionage/counter-espionage. the main reason is that the AI can't handle its agents properly, especially defensively, and won't maintain one or two defensive spies/assassins in their provinces whereas you are free to do so. actually I don't use border forts anymore because those defensive spies will valour up quickly while catching enemy agents. the border forts do exactly this and 'override' your agents' ability to do so.

besides, having a significantly increased number of agents on the map will also slow down the game considerably....

[caravel]

Sorry Deus ret, missed your post yesterday when replying.

good point and interesting to try out (particularly because of provinces being 'blind') but it will likely result in you being far superior in espionage/counter-espionage. the main reason is that the AI can't handle its agents properly, especially defensively, and won't maintain one or two defensive spies/assassins in their provinces whereas you are free to do so.

Very true, I've posted about this before.

actually I don't use border forts anymore because those defensive spies will valour up quickly while catching enemy agents. the border forts do exactly this and 'override' your agents' ability to do so.

besides, having a significantly increased number of agents on the map will also slow down the game considerably....

The problem is that the border forts make subterfuge both boring and redundant. The only targets I can go after are those provinces where the AI has neglected to upgrade to a border fort. I'm convinced that they were included by the devs because subterfuge was basically broken, and to clean up the agents that the AI will spam to prevent them slowing down the game. The AI is useless at it. It counterspies badly and cannot use half of the functions. The AI cannot conduct treason trials or reveal vices AFAIK, but I may be wrong about this. What it can do is send spies to rival enemy provinces to lower the loyalty there (perhaps the spies reveal vices also?). The AI will train assassins and send them after targets and that's about it. It would be great if rival factions spies and assassins could be made visible so that you can see what they're doing and better analyse their behaviour? Does -ian mode allow this (anyone)?

[Deus ret.]

Very true, I've posted about this before.

so it's you I got all this from! man, the world is small ... *cough* ok back to businness...

The AI cannot conduct treason trials or reveal vices AFAIK, but I may be wrong about this.

I'm pretty sure it can't, for the sole reasons that your generals would get valour bonus vs. spies as time goes by like the AI ones do (those who resisted the attmept) -- you can only be successful in so many espionage missions.

It would be great if rival factions spies and assassins could be made visible so that you can see what they're doing and better analyse their behaviour? Does -ian mode allow this (anyone)?

it does ....well, in a way, and in a cumbersome one. with -ian you can switch control between factions with the keys 1-10 and [shift-]1-10. while controlling a faction you can at least see the current position and mission (if any) of its agents. thus, -ian doesn't really allow to (of course you can check every turn and see what has changed...), and only for the first 20 faction slots. beware if you play a faction outside that range, you'll never get back to it again....

I'm afraid I know of no other method to do that. maybe it's better that way, because if we knew we might be so horrified about the AI's inablility (which you presume probably rightly) that leaving spies and assassins entirely out of the game would be the only option left for reasons of fair-play ....

[naut]

Cambyses II, brilliant. I'm really enjoying playing as the Byz. The new unit roster adds flavour and dynamics to the original stale one. One thing though, Psiloi have a support of 52 and Skutatoi have on of 37, its a little odd that light infantry cost more to support than main infantry.

[caravel]

Cambyses II, brilliant. I'm really enjoying playing as the Byz. The new unit roster adds flavour and dynamics to the original stale one. One thing though, Psiloi have a support of 52 and Skutatoi have on of 37, its a little odd that light infantry cost more to support than main infantry.

I'll have a look at that, next.

I've found a bug already, or at least I think I have. Siege engine crews on the battlefield without their equipment, in every battle, as Innocentius said in an earlier post. I'm wondering what's causing this as I haven't changed anything relating to them in either the projectile stats or the unit stats?



Edit: Regarding the subterfuge and watch towers / border forts issue. I have been watching the AI controlled Byzantine so far in this test campaign I'm running as the English. I've got to 1120 so far and have never seen the AI send a spy on a mission. Assassins yes, spies no. The AI seems to be incapable of having it's spies carry out treason trials, reveal vices or gate opening during a siege. Also the AI spies were very immobile. I had watched them for ten years and they never moved. There were three in Serbia, two in Bulgaria and one in Nicaea, none at all in the other Byzantine provinces. Of the assassins I monitored, nothing new. Just the same random assassinations at any target it feels like going after (the AI can always see all of the map).

[naut]

I've found a bug already, or at least I think I have. Siege engine crews on the battlefield without their equipment, in every battle, as Innocentius said in an earlier post. I'm wondering what's causing this as I haven't changed anything relating to them in either the projectile stats or the unit stats?

I've had that before. And asked it in a thread. If I find the answer I will post it up.

[Deus ret.]

Also the AI spies were very immobile. I had watched them for ten years and they never moved. There were three in Serbia, two in Bulgaria and one in Nicaea, none at all in the other Byzantine provinces.

now that's good news in favour of a removal of border forts! if the AI doesn't move those spies, they'll automatically act defensively, evening out the balance somewhat.

...although I have to admit that my defensive agents quite often catch enemy spies. no idea if they were on a mission or not, but in any case there seems to be some movement (perhaps it's random?).

[caravel]

now that's good news in favour of a removal of border forts! if the AI doesn't move those spies, they'll automatically act defensively, evening out the balance somewhat.

...although I have to admit that my defensive agents quite often catch enemy spies. no idea if they were on a mission or not, but in any case there seems to be some movement (perhaps it's random?).

It may be an idea edit the startpos files to place spies in the factions' "capitals", this would guarantee some level of protection. My concern is that though the AI may train spies they may not move them to where they're needed. I had noticed that spies In Serbia must have come from Greece where there was a Brothel. There was no Brothel in Serbia. So the AI moved those spies there for whatever reason, but didn't move them again. Movement occurs but it is limited, the majority of foreign agents caught are assassins. The assassins I had observed only moved when on missions. I had not observed any that were simply moving around. Their targets were extremely random. A general of mine in Scotland was hit the year after he was trained, by a Byzantine Assassin moving in from Constantinople. There had been no Byzantine Spies there, nor any of their Princesses or agents. The AI simply selected the target at random as it can see all of the map, all of the time. When I first started playing MTW (que jerky black and white silent movie covered in lines and scratches of me playing MTW v1.0 as the English) I remember assuming that if a rival faction discovered that I was trying to assassinate their generals/emissaries/royalty, that there would be some kind of international incident. After discovering pretty quickly that this was not the case I was rather disappointed. I had also assumed that your enemies would go all out trying to bump off your generals, and was similarly disillusioned on discovering that this was also fiction. Overall diplomacy is poor, and RTW hasn't done a whole lot to improve it, except add more features that the AI really can't use.

[Innocentius]

Sorry about the use of the Pictish Crossbowmen info pic. I fully understand the difference, but there is no other info pic I can use at present. That one is a placeholder until I can find something more suitable. I am no artist myself so I will need to find something I can use (such as the funny image for the harem women). If you can find a better name, and write a description for their info pic, as well as actually finding an image for conversion into an info pic that would be great.

The name is a bit tricky but I really think Swedish Peasant or Swedish Peasantry is the best, since that is what they were refered to as (bondesoldater literally: peasant soldiers).
I could write a short description of them, won't take too long. But I'm not sure how the info-pics work? Can you simply convert a suitable picture into the game?

[Belisario]

Hi Innocentius
If you have a nice picture for the Swedish Peasants I could try to make an infopic.

[Deus ret.]

It may be an idea edit the startpos files to place spies in the factions' "capitals", this would guarantee some level of protection.

given your observations on the AI handling of spies, this really sounds like the best solution. ....if the AI employed defensive spies in every province there wouldn't be much difference to border forts anyway

Overall diplomacy is poor, and RTW hasn't done a whole lot to improve it, except add more features that the AI really can't use.

nor can the player, or have you ever tried reaching an at least somewhat reasonable agreement with the AI after the 1.5 patch (which eliminated save/load and simultaneously the easy way to e.g. a fair protectorate deal)? it's plainly impossible, and if a cease-fire is only accepted after you pay ridiculous amounts of money (to the losing side of the war of course, and they won't stick to it for more than a few turns!) it probably had better been left out entirely.

Trust me, MTW:VI really shines on the diplomatic side of things when compared to RTW.

[Innocentius]

Hi Innocentius
If you have a nice picture for the Swedish Peasants I could try to make an infopic.

That depends...Is there some sort of conversion program for this or do you mean drawing one by hand with the inspiration from other pictures?

[caravel]

That depends...Is there some sort of conversion program for this or do you mean drawing one by hand with the inspiration from other pictures?

You just need to find a picture, either off the net or scanned. The format should be a 256 colour bitmap for best results though other formats can be utilised anyway. Jpegs usually have artifacts though and are not really suitable, unless they're good quality and low compression.

I was reading some Osprey books in a bookshop yesterday afternoon. Particularly one about the Moors. I noticed that some of their infantry and cavalry were holding that funny shaped shield that the Ghazi Infantry carry.

I still haven't found out what is causing the siege equipment bug.

I've begun to test without border forts and watch towers, but I'm running low on available time lately. I am finding myself thinking about modding pretty much every hour of the day! It's pretty hard work, and to be honest there's not a whole lot of interest, as most are clickfesting their way through M2TW rather than playing yet another mod for this old game. The problem with this mod is that there is no real "candy" as there is with others, that offer many new factions and units and a new or redesigned map, and there never will be as I don't have the time or expertise to devote to such a venture. In the ideal world I would love to produce a realism mod for MTW with all of the historical factions in place, with their proper units types and stats balanced to somewhat recapture the battles of Shogun.

I'm not 100% sure on this yet, but 1.0.6 may be the last version of this mod. I may release a bug fix version and with any new info pics added, but I'm not sure about new features/units etc. Anyone that wishes to, would be free to take up the reins and continue of course.

[naut]

This is BKB's would it be suitable.

[Martok]

I'm not 100% sure on this yet, but 1.0.6 may be the last version of this mod. I may release a bug fix version and with any new info pics added, but I'm not sure about new features/units etc.

That sounds good, man. When you first talked about creating this mod, my impression is that it was always with the understanding that it was going to be limited in scope anyway (and therefore contain only a finite number of changes). Aside from any possible bug fixes, I agree that 1.06 is as good a stopping point as any.

You're to be commended, Cambyses. While I know that modding is often its own reward, it's also hard work. So I thank you for your efforts, my friend -- as well as congratulations on a job well done.

[caravel]

Well, I've simply spent far too much time on it lately. A few nights ago I was working on the removal of border forts and watch towers. I had eventually removed both, though I had kept getting errors . In the end I made Border forts Pagan and Golden Horde only, which means that you'd rarely see them. I had also modified the tech tree to that which was in my example above. After this I had altered the standard fort to cost 50 florins only and take 1 year, with the fort and motte, and the fort, motte and bailey the same. I wanted these as temporary defensive structures. During that period a stone keep only really counted as a defensive structure for a county town, not a wooden fort. Those were mainly for border defense, not troop training or housing. I had passed on the happiness bonuses from the watch towers and border fort to the fort and keep. I had then reduced the build time for the keep to 6 years and it was all going well. It was at this point that I realised that I had exhausted what I could do with the game, without going into much more extensive modding. I also realised that such changes would perhaps be less popular than some of the previous ones. Adding new new units is a chore, adding new factions must be tortuous. To do that I would probably need to get a divorce and live as a recluse. Anothr annoyance is the bugs that keep cropping up. This damnable siege equipment bug especially. It must have something to do with the projectile stats file, as that's the only file I had edited to add the compound bow. I will probably run a clean install of MTW/VI tonight in order to run a test install of the mod on it. This should expose some of the problems that Innocentius reported with the Swedish Peasants.

All in all though I'm done here, and if I can't find/solve any more errors it will be up to any players to find solutions and post them up themsevles.

[EatYerGreens]

Hi CambysesII,

It's a good-sounding mod you've got there, so congratulations on a job well done!

It took me a fair while to read the whole thread and I spent a lot of time nodding and thinking "durn, that's exactly what I'd want to do: How do I do one now, without it looking like a complete rip-off?" LOL

I'll need to backtrack to find pieces I wanted to quote, which would lead to a series of 'bitty' replies so, instead of that, I'll do what I can from memory.


You came to the right conlusion about the dismount issue, in the end, but I still can't resist pointing out that, cranes being a myth or not, it's solved by realising that the knights simply don't mount their horses on the day of the battle.

- - - - -
I was glad that Geezer57 pointed out the YouTube demonstration of armour-clad agility (although I don't know what era that type of armour belongs to: I'd be slightly more sceptical if it turned out to be 15th c.) because it feeds into a concept that I've raised in threads before and would like to incorporate into any modding I did myself.

Namely: (and this is personal belief and preconceptions, not facts) early armour was closer to iron than to steel, crudely shaped, thick pieces of plate, heavy and exhausting if you had a lot of moving around to do (penalty to a marching attacker, not so bad for a near-static defender). Later armour used compound curvature to achieve equivalent protection, or better, from progressively thinner pieces of plate and using steel of close-to-modern quality.

In the vanilla game, each higher level of armour-boost gives increasing protection but penalises you by causing progressively higher rates of fatigue and becomes practically fatal, in the desert regions.

I would favour a system where 'armour is armour' and the protection is either the same across the board or else +1 for metal, bronze and silver and +2 for gold BUT the fatigue factor is +4 for metal, +3 for bronze, +2 for silver, +1 for gold (so unarmoured troops still fatigue the least). That's a lot steeper a gradient than I'd like but I doubt it allows decimal points.
- - - - -
I like the idea of the 50% import rate. It's not often that the AI gets its routes right so it would probably be rare for the player to benefit substantially from this. At the same time, it means you can elect to give financial aid to factions who can help keep your biggest foe at bay and help stop the Danes, or factions trapped on an island, from going broke.

(I might nick this idea...) ;)
- - - - -

Getting the Byzantine's troop mix right and giving them their historical names looks to have turned into something of a labour of love. If I was building a 'lite' mod, I wouldn't have gone to that level of depth. I accept the CA names and I know exactly what I'm up against when I'm on the battlefield with them. Inaccurate, merely descriptive, unit names are also exactly what I'd expect to hear back from my agents abroad, so that is kind of 'in-character'. Obviously, being aimed primarily at the US/UK market, the unit names were all Anglicised, first of all and, presumably, the language-localised versions suffer from this. At least least, with your mod, all except Greek players will be mystified by the unit names in equal measure. ;)

- - - - -

Dispersed throughout the thread are a few mentions of minor bugs in the original program, which you've fixed. It would be handy to have these summarized in a single message although, in most cases, you only say 'fixed' but not precisely how.

I'd similarly like to know what exactly caused the siege equipment fault. I was on the point of posting to suggest a possible link with where you stopped them from appearing in rebellions but then reached the end of the thread and you'd already solved it. I'm none the wiser though.

[caravel]

I like the idea of the 50% import rate. It's not often that the AI gets its routes right so it would probably be rare for the player to benefit substantially from this. At the same time, it means you can elect to give financial aid to factions who can help keep your biggest foe at bay and help stop the Danes, or factions trapped on an island, from going broke.

That was the main thrust of the idea: to give income to the AI factions from the player's bloated trade network.

Getting the Byzantine's troop mix right and giving them their historical names looks to have turned into something of a labour of love. If I was building a 'lite' mod, I wouldn't have gone to that level of depth. I accept the CA names and I know exactly what I'm up against when I'm on the battlefield with them. Inaccurate, merely descriptive, unit names are also exactly what I'd expect to hear back from my agents abroad, so that is kind of 'in-character'. Obviously, being aimed primarily at the US/UK market, the unit names were all Anglicised, first of all and, presumably, the language-localised versions suffer from this. At least least, with your mod, all except Greek players will be mystified by the unit names in equal measure. ;)

Well I'm not sure I agree with that at all. The Byzantine units were not only renamed in a greek fashion, they were redesigned, resized, many stats were changed and a new unit was added. I feel now, that they are better than they were. Many will no doubt disagree, but that's personal choice. I haven't personalised them in any way. Instead I've filled in the gaps and tried to give them more historically accurate names.

Dispersed throughout the thread are a few mentions of minor bugs in the original program, which you've fixed. It would be handy to have these summarized in a single message although, in most cases, you only say 'fixed' but not precisely how.

Well, I've fixed these bugs as I've been going along. I'm quite sure that I'm not the first person to have fixed these. The Sicilians names have been fixed before I'm sure, though I have no idea by whom or when they were fixed (it's very easy). The faction mix ups in the marriage proposal parchments I've never seen referred to anywhere else, but I've no doubt they've also been fixed before. The golden Horde Faction leader's campaign map piece is messed up because it's misspelt. If you go to: X:\...\Medieval - Total War\campmap\pieces\Units\Pagan and find the file "army_leader_waiting.Buf" and rename it to "army_leader_awaiting.Buf" - problem solved.

The reason why you don't see any step by step guides, is because this was a mod thread, and not a modding guide thread. Have you searched through the alchemists lab and repositary? If you find nothing in there I can probably knock you up a guide as to how to fix a few of those other things.

I'd similarly like to know what exactly caused the siege equipment fault. I was on the point of posting to suggest a possible link with where you stopped them from appearing in rebellions but then reached the end of the thread and you'd already solved it. I'm none the wiser though.

My thread about this is in the alchemists lab. The problem is the gnome editor, if you avoid using that when editing the projectilestats file you won't have any problems.

Good luck with your modding.

[The Unknown Guy]

Well I'm not sure I agree with that at all. The Byzantine units were not only renamed in a greek fashion, they were redesigned, resized, many stats were changed and a new unit was added. I feel now, that they are better than they were. Many will no doubt disagree, but that's personal choice. I haven't personalised them in any way. Instead I've filled in the gaps and tried to give them more historically accurate names.

As a grain of support, I like the stuff you do with Byzantium (althrough I don´t agree with all changes, and I add some of my own -such as lowering the Toxatoi, or however they are called now, support to 37, and removing the province restriction-). I think they were supposed to be a singular faction, different from all others, to begin with, and your modifications further enhace this feeling.


Oh, and, as for adding new factions: I was going to suggest making kingdoms that weren´t too big yet were historically important (Portugal, Navarre, for instance) unplayable factions, with standard catholic units (or standard Iberian units in the case of these two). It can´t be utterly impossible, if only because BKB and XL did it, and thus it can be looked up...