M2:TW community is fixing what CA didn't

[Alferd Packer]

Speaking of mods, I'd like to point out that there is a ASOIAF mod in the very early works right now. So, if you're a George R.R. Martin fan and on the fence about this game, here's a reason to get it!

[Master of Cards]

ASOIAF?

[Ace Pace]

ASOIAF?

A song of Ice and Fire.

[Stravo]

Can anyone help a relatively clueless gamer on installing some of these mods? I'm used to downloading a mod and having it self install but some of these mods (in particular the one I really want to add - the cannon tower fix) requires unpacking (huh?) or creating a batch file to get it to run if you want to play vanilla. What exactly is involved in creating a batch file or how do you run the unpacker? Feel free to PM me some instructions if you want or simply reply in the thread.

[Alferd Packer]

C&P'ed from TWCenter:

- The Unpacker should be placed in the 'tools\unpacker' folder of your Medieval II: Total War installation folder

- To unpack all files and place them in your 'data' directory run the batch file 'unpack_all.bat'

NOTE: To use this batch file the Unpacker and the batch file must be in the 'tools\unpacker' folder for Medieval II: Total War

- To create a text file with a list of all files within the packs run the batch file 'list_contents.bat'. This will create a file 'pack_contents.txt' in the 'tools\unpacker' folder;

NOTE: To use this batch file the Unpacker and the batch file must be in the 'tools\unpacker' folder for Medieval II: Total War

And it does take a while to unpack, because you're using 7 extra gigs of disk space. So, don't worry if it takes a while when you run the .bat file.

Further, to get the game to use to the unpacked files, instead of the packed ones:

- To use the modified files create a batch file in your
Medieval II: Total War folder

- In the batch file add the following line

medieval2.exe --io.file_first

- NOTE: Due to a timestamp check, the following unpacked files will
cause the game to crash and must be deleted before the game is
launched:

data\descr_geography_new.txt
data\descr_geography_new.db

- Save the batch file and then launch Medieval II: Total War using the
newly created batch file.

What I did was change the M2:TW shortcut on my desktop to run the batch file instead, and it works fine. You do need to delete those two files first, though, but otherwise it works fine.

So, the short of it is this:

1. Run the unpack_all.bat file.
2. Have a beer or soda, because it's gonna take a while.
3. Create a .bat file with whatever name in the M2 folder with the line above in it. That's all you need in the file.
4. Delete the two files they tell you to.
5. Adjust your shortcuts to run the .bat file you made.
6. Launch the game via the batch file.
7. Profit!

After that, you can apply any and all mods you like by simply overwriting the files that the mod tells you.

[Stravo]

Awesome! Thanks for the assist.

[Alferd Packer]

My turn to ask a question, specifically, to DW!

You mentioned that you like to halve the construction times for buildings. Well, I'd like to do that too. I imagine it's just a simple Find & Replace in one of the .txt files. Questions are, then: what file, and on what string am I searching?

[Darth Wong]

Open the export_descr_buildings.txt file. Replace the string "construction 2" with "construction 1", replace the string "construction 3" with "construction 2", replace the string "construction 4" with "construction 2", etc., starting from 2 and going up to 8. Note that there are always 2 spaces between "construction" and the number.

[Vympel]

My turn to ask a question, specifically, to DW!

You mentioned that you like to halve the construction times for buildings. Well, I'd like to do that too. I imagine it's just a simple Find & Replace in one of the .txt files. Questions are, then: what file, and on what string am I searching?

Hmmm. I never tried it, but I think it'd be more justified for Rome than Medieval, from a "realism" perspective. The building times seem to link up pretty well with the kinds of units you'd expect to see at a given year (give or take). Then again, it's got the 2-year per turn times.

And then again, some factions should have, by the games internal logic, almost fully developed army tech trees from the very start (Byzantines) but they don't- instead you start off with jack crap and the most realistic thing you could do is cheat the game and upgrade your fortresses/ cities to make it happen. Of all the units in the Byzantine tech tree, only Latinikon and possibly Vardariots (will have to check on that) should not be there immediately (Excluding bombards of course).