I'm starting a small modding project - my first - involving some reskinnings, and some major campaign changes. I've read over some of the "How To" threads and browsed around, but I'm still left with some questions.

1) Campaign Map
Myrddraal's thread here described how to make a campaign map. However, I want to know if there is an editor for modifying the physical strategy map. Myrddraal's thread discusses manipulations of text files and .tgas, but doesn't mention anything on changing appearences like trees and so on. Some, is there something to do that?

2) Units Question
How would I change the secondary weapon of, say, a [Greek] Heavy Peltast? In vanilla RTW it is a sword. What if I want it to be a spear? Do I need a new model?

3) Culture/Building Question
Can I change the building portraits and icons from one culture to another? Specifically, I want my Armenian faction (Eastern culture) to have buildings identical to the Greek Cities faction (Greek culture). I suspect this is just a matter of changing file names, but I don't know where to do it.

4) Faction Question
I only want to use 9 (10 counting rebels) of the available factions. Can I make the others go away without the annoying "Faction Eliminated!" stuff at the beginning of the campaign?

5) Model/Skinning Question
I know the way textures for shields work is that there is a quarter of the shield in the .tga.dds file and that it is repeated. Is there a way to have a non-symmetrical shield design? Does this require playing with the unit model?

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I think that's all. For now.