The expansion has me confused

[Forward Observer]

You can only play M2TW with the M2TW disk. Likewise you can only play Kingdoms with the Kingdoms disk.

No Kingdoms features were added to the grand campaign.

Well, at least I after reading your answer, I realize I don't have a problem and am relieved that I don't have to re-install, but it also means that the manual is in error since it clearly states that the Hot Seat mode is available in both the Kingdoms expansion and the grand campaign.

As I mentioned before, at least in my situation, this is not the case for the grand campaign. It's no big deal for me, but it was what led me to thinking I had a problem.

Thanks for the response and clarification.

F.O.

[Bob the Insane]

I find it helps to think the the new campaigns in terms of official mods... Just like another other mod it run is the same application but it need to be started with the extensions relivent to that particular mod...

[Husar]

I think this sounds a bit cheap to be honest, I'd have preferred an in-game menu to choose the campaign you want to play, no matter how it's programmed, just load the sdata you would load at gamestart when the campaign is actually started. I always wondered why some games load a lot of data to show the main menu anyway.

I was actually hoping for a much more integrated concept but guess that was futile, this approach should also make it harder to get addon units into the grand campaign since it sounds like you'll have to copy all the new data dn since the data is compressed into larger files you can't just copy the files etc.

[sapi]

I think this sounds a bit cheap to be honest, I'd have preferred an in-game menu to choose the campaign you want to play, no matter how it's programmed, just load the sdata you would load at gamestart when the campaign is actually started. I always wondered why some games load a lot of data to show the main menu anyway.

Yeah. I suspect that someone did some research from a user's point of view, and found that physiologically, people are more willing to wait for data to load at the beginning as they are when they've just hit the big red play button

I was actually hoping for a much more integrated concept but guess that was futile, this approach should also make it harder to get addon units into the grand campaign since it sounds like you'll have to copy all the new data dn since the data is compressed into larger files you can't just copy the files etc.

I'm pretty sure that Caliban was suggesting that any compilation of the Kingdoms campaigns/grand campaign would require each to be unpacked separately and merged

[Husar]

Well, I was hoping to just be able to add some of the new units to the export_descr_building.txt to be able to build them in the grand campaign. The way they did it now I guess it would require the game to look into all mod folders to find the data it needs. And no, I don't mean load all mod folders before the main menu.

Though it should be possible to add this as an option maybe, if the game can't find a model or texture in the normal folder, it just goes looking through the available mod data in the appropriate mod folders, would make things so much easier and depending on how the game is programmed, shouldn't be too hard to add.

Is there even an unpacker/packer available to merge the data files?

[Ferret]

...it clearly states that the Hot Seat mode is available in both the Kingdoms expansion and the grand campaign.

F.O.

you can do hotseat on the grand campaign, you just need to add two lines to your preference file

[FactionHeir]

you can do hotseat on the grand campaign, you just need to add two lines to your preference file

Its not the same though. The preliminary hotseat that the grand campaign has is not complete and lacks certain functionalities (i.e. fighting defensive battles etc). The kingdoms hotseat alledgely is supposed to be better, although that might just be marketing and not true.