So...how easy is it to fiddle with the Campaign map these days?

[Lvondas]

I've been away a while, I just want someone to fill me in.

Just little stuff like; changing city names, changing faction starting terretory, making the map smaller, or changing its shape a bit.

How easy would it be to make a brand new world map that was just a generic flat square of land with just green plains as its enviroment?

Thanks for your time. I'm not asking for full on tutorials, I just want to know how much time and effort I would have to put into changing little things like that on the campaign map now that RTW has been out for 4 years.

[Charge]

Look here :)
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=50437
I think all answers are present there;

about effort, for 'flat square with green plains' not many - hour or so..
for real quality map - months..

[Red Spot]

Basic changes to "decr_strat" (starting terf./ staring armies) and things like that are rather easy once you've done 2 or 3 times and you may be able to make a game that feel completelly different in literally a few minutes of modding. (Just think about playing a Julii-campaign after you changed the Gauls to have twice the starting forces, or twice the income, or ... )

Like Charge mentioned a flat map can be made very easilly once you know where to go/what to do, however do note that afaik a flat map has its side-effects as well ..
I've spend weeks to get a certain "play with heights" on my map and this very clearly shows on a the battle-map, at least thats the impression I've got from it, where my map has nice curvings though relativly flat battle-terrain when generated from the campaign-map, without modding the look of the battle-field, and hardly any unbalancing height-diffences ....
Though you can always go for a relativly flat map and augment the battlemap generation to realize a similair feel, the bonus is that making a campaign wich plays a bit with heights looks nice in both parts of the game where augmenting the battlemap-generation still leaves you with a very unpleasing campaign-map ...


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[Herennius Volsinius]

You also need to make sure that the amount of water on the map isn't too much or too little or the game won't load.

[Makanyane]

You also need to make sure that the amount of water on the map isn't too much or too little or the game won't load.

good point about too much water (its large open areas of sea it doesn't like, especially on larger maps) - you can actually have an all land map if you want though, just remember not to try and place ports!

Only thing to watch out for on all land map is placing very large blocks of impassible forest or mountains - that has exactly the same effect as too much sea......

[Red Spot]

now that we're hinting stuff about map-making I think pointing out that you shouldnt forget the AI couldnt hurt .. :)

to show you what I mean I'll use my own map, where my first map was nice but had a rather poor performing AI;


so I changed it and ended up with a rather aggressive AI, at least now they "mass attack" (eg; 2-3 stacks attacking your forts/settlements, etc etc);


AI behaviour in respect to naval invasions hasnt changed, they do them, the mayor difference between the 2 maps is that the AI now has an option to "walk" to some point, where it first would just aimlessly wander around or stand on a beach waiting for a ship that would never arrive ....


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[Eufarius]

Hey is that up for download?

[Red Spot]

Here you have the base files;

-map_heights
-map_regions
-map_features
-map_groundtypes
-map_climates

and 3 of the "development" maps (photoshop project with stuff still in layers)

-map_heights
-map_climates
-map_groundtypes

the rest of the map/campaign files or are no use to you as they are based on my own work/modding ..




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