Selecting Begining Factions

[Voivode of Romania]

I've reinstalled M2TW, and am playing the Grand Campain. I can only choose 5 factions to start off as, and have to beat 1 of them to play as the other factions. Is there a shortcut or something I can do to skip beating one of the campains?

[Hoplite7]

This is copy-pasted from the guides to factions. It's taken from Russian faction guide but works for all factions.

Russia needs to be unlocked before you can play as them. To do this you can either complete a campaign (on any difficutly, long or short setting) with one of the five starting factions, or you can edit the preferences file. To do this open your Sega/M2TW folder/data\world\maps\campaign\imperial_campaign, find the file called "descr_strat" and open it with wordpad. Now find the section which says

campaign      imperial_campaign
playable
   england
   france
   hre
   spain
   venice
end
unlockable
   sicily
   milan
   scotland
   byzantium
   russia
   moors
   turks
   egypt
   denmark
   portugal
   poland
   hungary
end
nonplayable
   papal_states
   aztecs
   mongols
   timurids
   slave
end

Change it so it reads

campaign      imperial_campaign
playable
   england
   france
   hre
   spain
   venice
   sicily
   milan
   scotland
   byzantium
   russia
   moors
   turks
   egypt
   denmark
   portugal
   poland
   hungary
end
nonplayable
   papal_states
   aztecs
   mongols
   timurids
   slave
end

[Paradox]

Is it possible to edit the desc_strat file so you can play as the Mongols or Aztecs?

[Hoplite7]

Is it possible to edit the desc_strat file so you can play as the Mongols or Aztecs?

There's a very tricky way of doing it with the ingame console, but I forget how. Try searching "Mongol" for the thread, it has Mongol in the title.

Although playing as the Aztecs was totally buggy and you can't do anything, because they have no ships.

[FactionHeir]

There is an aztec mod out there. Not sure if its 1.2/1.3 compatible though.

As for the Mongol thread, Epistolary Richard created it. That should narrow it down a lot.