Our men are under attack, we must act now!!

[zbrenhz]

Medieval 2: Total War 1.2. patch introduced a new feature: an assistant captain, who yells stuff like the topic of this thread every 20 seconds or so. Which I think everyone finds annoying. :)


I was a bit surprised to see that I couldn't find any fix for this problem on any forums. Maybe there is, but in that case, here we go again:



1) Download from http://www.twcenter.net/wiki/Sound_text_files the .rar -file that can be found at the top of the page. (The page also has the instructions based on which I worked this solution.) The .rar -file contains .txt -files.

2) Unpack the .txt files to /data/ -folder.

3) Rename event.dat and event.idx -files from /data/sound/ -directory to something else, so the game doesn't find them.

4)* Change the .txt files as you want. (More later) These files are read-only, so you have to change that first in order to edit them.

5) Start the game normally. The game creates new event.data and event.idx files automatically. Changes you made should be working.


* Well then the changes we want to make:

The most easiest way to silence the Captain Obvious is to change from descr_sounds_battle_events.txt -file "probability 1" to value "probability 0". This means that there will be 0% probability that a battle event sound will be played.

This worked for me, and I did not test any further.


However, if you want to try making some other adjustments, maybe you might want to try change from that same file "repeat_timeout" -value to a higher number, which would mean that the guy doesn't repeat the same lines so often. Or you could look into export_descr_sounds_units_battle_events.txt and remove(?) the events that you do not want to hear.



Should be easy -- I hope it works for everyone.


----


Then couple other fixes, which I'm sure most of you already know:

In game's main folder there is medieval2.preference.cfg -file. From it you might want to change the following:


advisor_verbosity = 0
blind_advisor = 1
mute_advisor = 1


This gets rid of rest of the advice. (But doesn't work on v1.2. assistant captain).

Other things which you might want to try out are:

disable_arrow_markers = 1
show_banners = 0 ([video]-section)


It's probably best to change this file to read-only after the changes, as the game has a habit of changing the values back. (But if you do this, you have to remember to remove the read-only flag if you want to make some changes using the game options menu.)

----

Then there is descr_strat.txt -file in \data\world\maps\campaign\imperial_campaign\ -folder.

From here you can for example change all factions playable by moving them from unlockable -section to playable -section.

The file also has timescale -value, which tells how many years one turn takes.
You can also comment out
;show_date_as_turns
to get year shown instead of turn number.


Nice values to make large empires easier to manage are
brigand_spawn_value 200
pirate_spawn_value 60

These effect on how many brigands and pirates appear on the map. (This is random, and happens even if you have all provinces at 200% loyalty.) Large numbers mean less rebels, small mean more. I found 200 and 60 good values.

This also effects on old savegames, so no need to start a new campaign.

[Zajuts149]

Nice input! Personally, I must admit that I kinda like the captains comments. They remind me of the Movie Firefox with Clint Eastwood. As the Russians sit dumbfounded after realising that their high-tech fighter is stolen, the General exclaims: You must act, first Secretary!

[RabidGibbon]

"Think in Russian..." could be another helpful comment the computer screams at us!

[Dead Guy]

I must say I'm annoyed by speeches of every kind in this game. I find it mindboggling that they actually keep adding more and more useless speeches so you can't even check an enemy army out by double clicking it without it saying "heh, was that an attack?" or "That won't hurt me dumbkopf". Sometimes I wonder how my girlfriend puts up with the constant stream of "Sultan? I can't do that sultan. That's not possible sultan. Do you see a path here? I do not master. Finding the path. Master? Orders? Leaving the army! Splitting the troops! You should be tried for heresy!" But then again i like the silent stacks that move one region per turn of MTW better too :p mostly because the AI can't seem to handle the free movement of the new campaign map.

[homefry]

Nice values to make large empires easier to manage are
brigand_spawn_value 200
pirate_spawn_value 60

These effect on how many brigands and pirates appear on the map. (This is random, and happens even if you have all provinces at 200% loyalty.) Large numbers mean less rebels, small mean more. I found 200 and 60 good values.

This also effects on old savegames, so no need to start a new campaign.

I don't think it effects old save games. You have to change this value before the start of a game.

[Old Geezer]

It's the lame accents bother me more than what they say. I am so tired of hearing the drunken Danish sea captain and the Count Dracula voiced Conquistator, I have to turn the sound down!

[Slug For A Butt]

It's more anoying to me that they waste time thinking up superfluous additions like this instead of using that time thinking up ways to make the game work correctly. Kind of sums up CA's approach to the game now.
Cheap thrills at the expense of depth.

[Ed TW]

Thank you!!!!!!
Annoying is an understatement.

[FactionHeir]

Please do not necromance without a good reason.

Locked.