Lands to Conquer v2.3

[Lusted]

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Mod Overview

Lands to Conquer is a mod aimed at improving the gameplay and balance of Medieval II Total War. It does this through extensively rebalanced unit stats; changed unit costs; longer, slower paced campaign; more difficult to maintain larger empires; and various other things.

A major feature of the mod is it's extensive rebalancing, for which i've had the unofficial help of Jason Turnbull aka Palamedes, a Creative Assembly Australia developer.

Installation Instructions

This is a standalone version of the mod, you do not need any previous versions to play it.

You must a new campaign with 2.3

It installs to its own folder so it does not affect the default game. Just use the Lands to Conquer icon on the desktop to launch this mod, or the M2TW icon to launch M2TW.

To install the mod simply point the installed to your Medieval II Total War installation, which by default is installed to:

C:\Program Files\SEGA\Medieval II Total War

You must have the Official Update 2 patch for Medieval II Total War in order to install LTC 2.3.

Once installed you should use the new Lands to Conquer desktop shortcut to run the game.

The changes Lands to Conquer 2.3 makes to Medieval II Total War are listed below:

Battlemap
-Drastically improved balance of units done by me and Palamedes. Battles feel much more like battles in the original Medieval: Total War now.
-Improved balance of missile units through their accuracy.
-Cavalry units made smaller and so are now more manouverable.
-Cavalry less effective in woods.
-Increased effect of heat on western units.
-Battles are slightly slower paced.
-13 new custom battle maps. http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=76887

Campaign map
-1.5 Year per turn, and dates shown on campaign map again
-Building construction times and cost increased so as to fit in best with 1.5 year per turn campaign.
-Unit recruitment changed. Units now replenish slower and elite units have smaller recruitment pools. Also units no longer recruited from walls or from castle upgrade buildings.
-Character Names Project included that adds accurate character names to many factions.
-English Armoured Sergeants, Dismounted Broken Lances, Dismounted Gothic Knights and Dismounted Mongol cavalry units added into the campaign
-Ai recruits better armies. They are more balanced and have more higher tier units in them.
-More variance in the date at which the Mongols and Timurids appear
-Merchants make more money.
-Inquisitors made less powerful.
-Increased movement distance for armies and agents.
-More recruitment slots in castles.
-More free upkeep slots in cities.
-Recruitable generals(including dismounted generals for some western factions).
-Pirate and Rebel spawn rates reduced.
-New population levels required for each level of settlement, but lowered slightly from 1.21.
-Distance to captial penalty increased, but not as severe as in 1.21.
-Religious Unrest increased.
-Corruption increased.
-Income from trade increased, and population growth from trade decreased.
-Population growth from farms increased.

Graphical
-New loading screens and splash screens.
-New textures for the Byzantines using a mix of mine and Whitewolfs work.

Credits

A big thanks to the following modders who's work i have used in this mod with their permission.

Jason Turnbull aka Palamedes - for his great help with unit rebalancing.
Whitewolf - for the use of some of his Byzantine skins
DeRougemonnt - for the use of the CNP
lawngnome - for helping with the edits to unit recruitmnt and settlement mechanics.

[vixtro]

Nice one! Downloading this as I type

[RickooClan]

The content sounds very promising!

If there are any balancing on pike issue and how was that be done? ( I remembered in an other thread you state you will remove their sword + reduce their mass? )

[manhole]

I've just installed the new 1.2 patch and then installed the 2.3 LTC mod but for some reason when I try to run LTC by clicking on the shortcut, nothing happens. MTW2 itself seems to be working fine after applying the 1.2 patch.

I've been playing the previous version of LTC with no problems and love the mod. This has only happened now with the latest version.

[Lusted]

If there are any balancing on pike issue and how was that be done? ( I remembered in an other thread you state you will remove their sword + reduce their mass? )

Haven't removed sword, just increased pike mass to 4, and increased their primary and secondary attacks.

[fenir]

very nice lusted,

I have always been a fan on your work. But you have done a nice job of this one, i must say.

I usually, only use my own mods, (tho i do use bits of others), and your work seems to always find a place in my own mods.
Anyway, just wanted to thank you for some very nice work, and thank you for some added bits for my personal mod. it certainly saves me time.


PS: still waiting for someone to do a full work up of byzantine gun powder units if anyone has them?


Anyway thank you lusted and team.


fenir

[Kobal2fr]

I noticed you include ancillaries and traits files in your mod folder, would you care to detail what changes you made to them, if any ?

[Lusted]

None atm that's just to replace the one i had in previous versions of the mod because of the changes 1.2 makes. In future versions there will be changes to the turns required for certain ancilliaries given the change in timescale.

[The Spartan (Returns)]

wow Lusted the content sounds great!! ill get it as soon my friends gets me the 1.2 patch. (takes too long for me) i promise helpful feedback!

[Kobal2fr]

None atm that's just to replace the one i had in previous versions of the mod because of the changes 1.2 makes. In future versions there will be changes to the turns required for certain ancilliaries given the change in timescale.

Then you'll probably also have to tweak most of the "settement building completed" triggers to make up for the increased building times as well, methinks.

I'd been working on a 1.2 CherryVanilla traits file for the vanilla game before trying out your mod, and I really like the changes you've made both on and off the battlefield, so I'll probably end up working on them in the context of your mod to try and balance them to the new settings anyway, I'll send you the files and changelog once I'm satisfied with them if you want.

[Kobal2fr]

Some feedback :

- I really looooove the increased movement for agents and generals. Makes it far easier to use them, and in the case of governors to train them. Plus it's obviously historical/realistic as a lone rider is much faster than a whole army of them. The only thing is that it makes it quite harder to track down princesses to marry, but that's inevitable I guess.

- When he says that "archers have been toned up", he's not kidding. Even mere peasant archers, and even if they fire in an arc over buildings will devastate soft targets, killing up to 10 militia per volley on even ground. I swear, it's bloody murder. Longbowmen must be death incarnate :). On the down side, it means that archer duels are usually decided by who gets to shoot first, all other things being equal.

- I don't know what or how you did it, but the spacing of melee fighters is much, much less of a problem than it was in vanilla. Except in cramped streets, I've yet to witness the "everybody 5 meters apart, 3 people slugging it out in the middle" thing. Hurray !

- battle fatigue is perhaps a tad overdone. Soldiers didn't tire enough in vanilla, but now I think they tire a bit too fast and especially when they're fighting - but maybe it's done to slow down the pace of battles ?

- City and castle towers are fricking deadly as well. A mere wooden wall type 2 (the one you can use siege towers on) torched no less than 4 rams in a row, with only the two towers on each side of the gate firing at them. Which means that attacking without siege engines is a desperate move usually. Me likes.

- I liked them at first, but now I don't and use a modified version of your buildings.txt file : increased building times and costs. I can see what the intent behind them is, but I don't really like being only able to build in 1 or 2 cities in my empire at a given time. Plus a side effect of the longer build times is that it plays merry hell with both traits and ancillaries balance.

What I did was keep the walls and castles at their current costs and build times (which, combined with the upper pop thresholds, slows down tech levels enough, which I assume was the point of upping all values and durations), same for military buildings and armorers, but give "civilian" ones their original costs and build times back (or maybe 1.5x the cost, to account for the increased cash flow. But 1000 for dirt roads is definitely too much.).
This should keep technology levels at their current slow pace, but allow your cities and gov to do something with their time. I just switched over to this so further testing is needed on my part obviously.

- Unrest is maybe a tad too high. Dunno if it's religious unrest or distance to capital, but unless you slaughter the target city, crusade conquests are almost impossible to hold and revolt instantly unless you make them your capital (and then it's your homelands that revolt :) ).

- Love the rebalanced economic model.

[phunkbot]

hey,

again great work Lusted, you deliver as expected

i love archers its just so much better right now, if only there was a way to get them to shoot at the peeps i want them to without that much hassle it would be awesome.... man if the timing gets going for you that last crossbow volley can decimate any charge coming at you

I am also getting nameless princesses and family members, i also got this wierd wierd thing about Manage all cities getting suddenly turned off after 20-30 turns into a camplaign, happened with Scotts and Portugal already.... meh, i can live with that

also, i had a couple of merchants just dissapear, they just vanished from timbuktu with no reason whatsoever... reloaded a slightly earlier save and they are there and some 10 turns or so after that .... i turned fow off and saw no assassins or anything, not sure what happened there

i dont know if i got a bad installation or anything, should i unpack my game?

[Lusted]

- When he says that "archers have been toned up", he's not kidding. Even mere peasant archers, and even if they fire in an arc over buildings will devastate soft targets, killing up to 10 militia per volley on even ground. I swear, it's bloody murder. Longbowmen must be death incarnate :). On the down side, it means that archer duels are usually decided by who gets to shoot first, all other things being equal.

They're being toned down in the next version.

- battle fatigue is perhaps a tad overdone. Soldiers didn't tire enough in vanilla, but now I think they tire a bit too fast and especially when they're fighting - but maybe it's done to slow down the pace of battles ?

It's just cause movement speed over all terrain types has been reduced slightly.

- City and castle towers are fricking deadly as well. A mere wooden wall type 2 (the one you can use siege towers on) torched no less than 4 rams in a row, with only the two towers on each side of the gate firing at them. Which means that attacking without siege engines is a desperate move usually. Me likes.

That's because of the improved arrows.

- I liked them at first, but now I don't and use a modified version of your buildings.txt file : increased building times and costs. I can see what the intent behind them is, but I don't really like being only able to build in 1 or 2 cities in my empire at a given time. Plus a side effect of the longer build times is that it plays merry hell with both traits and ancillaries balance.

What im aiming for the next version is more of an emphasis on the differences between cities and castles. So castle military buildings will be much cheaper than their city counterparts, and the low level barracks/stables/ranges in castles will be quick to produce. Also tax income is being redone a bit so the market line of buildings is more valuable.

Also expect to see an announcement relating to the next LTC in a few days or so.

[Kobal2fr]

Agreed, archers need toning down. I tried a campaign as the English, just for kicks and giggles. Can anyone say "machinegun of cheese" ? Even firing at inf hidden behind their crenels are doomed when facing these lads.

On an odd note, crossbows don't seem to be affected by this, or much less. Could be because of their slower shooting ?

What im aiming for the next version is more of an emphasis on the differences between cities and castles. So castle military buildings will be much cheaper than their city counterparts, and the low level barracks/stables/ranges in castles will be quick to produce. Also tax income is being redone a bit so the market line of buildings is more valuable.

Also expect to see an announcement relating to the next LTC in a few days or so.

Won't that make distance to capital/unrest even more of a problem ? Correct me if I'm wrong but from what I understand of your work, you've considerably toned up the law bonus given by walls, barracks, and most importantly town halls, and made those more expensive as well (well, except for barracks, but you've already adressed that), which coupled with the increased unrest, corruption etc... leads me to assume you want to make conquests very costly affairs, rather than the pushover they are in vanilla ; and only profitable on a mid-term basis because you have to finish all those order buildings before you start thinking about the cash boosting ones.

Yet with even the most basic town hall taking 4 turns to build, it's impossible to build them on a crusade before the city revolts, and that's even with 80% order from the army, and the chiv/loyalty bonus from a Grand Crusader gov. If you make barracks take longer to build as well...
Unless the whole point is to "force" crusaders to exterminate in the Middle East, in which case I'll stand corrected.

I think a good balance for town halls would be 2 turns (as in vanilla) and same 4000 price, making those far flung conquests just as costly yet manageable. The increased barrack build time will offset the difference.

I have the same problem with the market line, more specifically the grain exchange : as of now, it's a must-have building if you ever intend to put a governor in, since without it they get huge penalties to trade over time. But if it takes 3 turns to build + 2000 florins, it's problematic in the early stages of the campaign when 2000 is a whole lot and you *need* those Good Taxmen to get a fledgling economy going.

Of course, deleting the bad taxman trigger (or making it 5/10% instead of 100%) would solve that problem, but that's only the visible part of the iceberg : longer build times across the board mean good traits/ancils triggers happen a lot less often as 80% of them check for building completion, while most bad traits are triggered every turn. Balancing all that tripe would be a lot of work, and I find my edited version of your buildings.txt works well enough that I don't need to rewrite the whole vnv code from scratch .

[Lusted]

Yet with even the most basic town hall taking 4 turns to build, it's impossible to build them on a crusade before the city revolts, and that's even with 80% order from the army, and the chiv/loyalty bonus from a Grand Crusader gov. If you make barracks take longer to build as well...

City barrack construction times won't be effected, just castle barracks low level ones will take less time to build, and higher level ones slightly longer so the entire line of barracks takes the same amount of time to build as in 2.3.

I have the same problem with the market line, more specifically the grain exchange : as of now, it's a must-have building if you ever intend to put a governor in, since without it they get huge penalties to trade over time. But if it takes 3 turns to build + 2000 florins, it's problematic in the early stages of the campaign when 2000 is a whole lot and you *need* those Good Taxmen to get a fledgling economy going.

The market line is going to get a boost to its trade income so to make the outlay more reasonable.

[CrownOfSwords]

I like the mod but im sufferring numerous CTD's always in battle also. Its a clean install patched to 1.2 so I can't blame myself for a faulty install. It just says Medieval total war has encountered an unspecified error and will now quit. Idk sad i really want to play this mod!