Total War Eras 1.5

[uanime5]

This mod allows yout to start your campaign in 1080, 1200, 1300, 1400, or 1500.
http://www.twcenter.net/forums/downl...o=file&id=1671

1080

1) Three new factions; Serbia, Cumans, and Aragon.
2) Most faction start out with more settlements.
3) Yes, the HRE is meant to be that big.

1200

1) Five new factions; Serbia, Cumans, Aragon, Bulgaria, and the Crusader States.
2) Slightly larger starting armies and some settlements are more developed.
3) Fight the Mongols in under 40 turns.

1300

1) Six new factions; Serbia, Golden Horde, Aragon, Bulgaria, Lithuania, and the Teutonic Order.
2) Much larger starting armies and most settlements have been improved.
3) Face the Black Plague, Timurids, and the rise of gunpowder weapons.

1400

1) Seven new factions; Serbia, Golden Horde, Aragon, Bulgaria, Lithuania, the Teutonic Order, and the Timurids. Milan is now playable.
2) Larger starting armies, though the plague has depopulated most cities.
3) Almost every weapon and unit is available (all units become available once America is discovered).
4) This version is the only one that has two turns per year (I felt 100 turns was too short to complete the game).

1500

1) Most of the smaller factions have been absorbed by larger factions.
2) Larger starting armies, mostly gunpowder units and pikemen.
3) All weapons and units are available and most can be recruited.
4) Some new events will occur, though they have no impact on the game.

Conquest vs Achievement

One of the main features of this mod is that the player can choose whether their win conditions will be based on Conquest or Achievment. A Conquest campaigns is won if the player takes a set number of settlements from anywhere on the map, while an Achievement campaign requires the player to defeat certain factions but does not require the player's faction to possess more than one settlement. To access this feature on the campaign screen you need to click where the 'Long / Short' campaign button was.

Total War Eras Installation Guide

1) Go to the Medieval II Total War directory (default is C:\Program Files\SEGA\Medieval II Total War).

2) Paste the eras.bat, eras.cfg, and 'eras' folder into the Medieval II Total War directory. These files form the basics of the game.

3) Paste the vanilla 'data' folder into the Medieval II Total War directory, you will be asked if you wish to overwrite it, click yes. This will install the shared.sd and strategy.sd in the 'data\ui' folder. These files are needed to make the banners work but may prevent other mods from working. If you have a problem with other mods try deleting them (there's a spare copy of them in the 'seasons\data\ui' folder).

4) To play this mod double click on the 'eras.bat' file (you can make this file into a desktop shortcut).

How to Play

0) Download the mod
1) Start up this mod by clicking on the eras.bat.
2) Click on 'Single Player' option in the start menu.
3) Click on 'Custom Campaign' on the next menu.
4) Choose which campaign you want to play.
5) Select a faction and start this mod.

Additional Files

To fully enable the sound copy the 'data/sounds/events.dat' and 'data/sounds/events.idx' files to the 'eras/data' folder.

Other mods
The following mod were added to this mod with the permission of their respective authors.

Ultimate Battle AI 1.2 (GrandViZ): improves AI's fighting ability, conduct during sieges, and unit formation. (http://www.twcenter.net/forums/downl...o=file&id=1602)

Ultimate AI Mod 1.6 (GrandViZ): improves AI's behaviour in campaign mod, diplomacy, and unit's attack. (http://www.twcenter.net/forums/downl...o=file&id=1643)

New Garrison Script (GrnEyedDvl): an AI settlement with a Governor will now recruit mercenaries when it's being sieged. (http://www.twcenter.net/forums/downl...o=file&id=1522)

Byg's Grim Reality 2.0 (Byg): character and supply traits (soldiers may munity if you spend too long in enemy terriory). (http://twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=106060)

Highways mod (selenius4tsd): add highways (http://www.twcenter.net/forums/downl...o=file&id=1125)

Known issues

I am aware of the following problems and I am working on a way to fix them.

1) If you choose one of my Campaigns on the Custom Campaign menu; then go back to the custom campaign menu, rather than selecting a faction and starting this mod then this mod will crash.

2) If you click on several factions, rather than just choosing one and starting the game, the mod will crash (to counter this choose the faction you want to play first, then start the game).

Possible improvements

Other than the issues listed in 'known issues' there are three areas I want to enhance.

1) Improve the start maps: since I had to make nearly 100 maps they're not as good as they could be, so I plan to make better versions at a later date.

2) Add more regions to the map, so that this mod lasts longer and is more challenging.

I'll also try to fix any bugs or glitches anyone find in this mod.

[Chevalier IX]

Great job,always nice to see another mod that gives you a choice of starting era.Look forward to seeing the 1400 start point.Just thought I would mention concerning this that there is actually a way to expand the turns to something like 4 turns per year I do believe,giveing you much more time to play.Worth looking into

[solecist]

the game starts fine, but once in the campaign most of the UI is missing. it's all just white and blank.

one reason this may be happening is because the files supposedly present in data/ui are nowhere to be found. shared.sd and strategy.sd are not present in your archive. anywhere.

i'm assuming this mod is not for kingdoms and is compatible with the 1.2 patch, of course.

anyway, this is unfortunate, as i was looking forward to an expansion of the vanilla game that includes the ultimate AI mod (which i refuse to play without).

[uanime5]

Your right solecist I did forget to put these files in the data/ui, fortunately I put a spare copy in the eras\data\ui so if you copy these to the vanilla data/ui this should fix the problem. I'll upload a version with these files in the data/ui folder as soon as I can.

Ikusa IX though I could change the 1400 version so that you get 2 turns per year (I don't know if 4 turns is possible) this would cause the events to occur at a later date (this is less important in the 1400 mod since their are fewer events that affect unit recruitment). For example 1 turn per year would mean America was discovered after about 50 turns, 2 turn per year would mean America was discovered after about 100 turns, and 4 turn per year would mean America was discovered after about 200 turns. Since I'm unsure how long the average player would need to complete this mod I don't want to increase the number of turns too much.

Also I would like to point out that new faction's won't suddenly emerge or disappear. Certain factions are only playable it you start during certain eras.

[solecist]

ah, ok, i located them. another point of confusion is that the readme says that there are backup copies of the files in seasons\data\ui, which is a folder that does not exist.

anyway, thanks for clearing that up. trying it now.

[uanime5]

Sorry about making reference to the 'seasons' folder. I copied the instructions from my 4 Seasons mod but missed that one when converting the instructions.

[solecist]

some constructive criticisms:

the army upkeep when starting a year 1300 campaign is preposterous. i can last two turns before my income goes under with the three factions i tried. not sure what we're supposed to do in this situation...just start disbanding armies? in this case won't the AI have even more of an advantage? ultimate AI is mostly at fault for this, i believe, but the starting army is really what drags you down. this tends to happen to a lesser degree with the earlier campaigns, too.

some new faction icons would be nice...the rehashed vanilla ones aren't looking so great. maybe borrow from the kings' banner mod?

there are many, many grammatical and spelling mistakes in the new texts. not such a big deal, but it can really distract from the immersion.

anyway, thanks for the mod; i'll probably use this instead of just ultimate AI now.

[uanime5]

Regarding the army sizes for the 1300 version they were large so that a player could blitz the enemy at the start (since they only have 230 turns to win). If you don't plan to blitz then I would recommend disbanding what you don't need and create a defensive army. In any case most countries around this time had to spend a lot of money on their army to protect themselves from invasion.

Regarding the cost and size what sort of army would be better (large but low cost, small elite but high cost, a mixture)?

I made rehashed images because I'm not good at making images but I needed a lot of new images for the new factions. Getting banners from other mods is difficult because you need to a find a mod that has banners that are for your faction or will suit it. New faction symbols are harder to find since there are very few mods that add new faction symbols (most change the existing ones).

Regarding the gramatical and spelling errors where do they occur? I ask because I only made the campaign descriptions and a few descriptions for new units, the new trait descriptions were made by Byg.

[DaLeGiOnArY]

roflmfaowwymdaldtmwlwwmooe

Rollinf on floor laughing my ferrety analhole of while watching your mom do a lap dance to me while laughing while wetting myself ontop of elephants.

The name will get you sued...realy

But you got me interested with the starting times!

[As de coeur]

Hola..

Actually in test of your mod

I saw the problems with Ctd with Custom campaign.

I saw also "Invisible Bodyguards" in Aragon Faction.

If u have two minutes of your precious time .... A city "Palma" in Baleares island could be Greaaaat... ... 4 Aragon Of course.


To be continued........

[solecist]

Regarding the army sizes for the 1300 version they were large so that a player could blitz the enemy at the start (since they only have 230 turns to win). If you don't plan to blitz then I would recommend disbanding what you don't need and create a defensive army. In any case most countries around this time had to spend a lot of money on their army to protect themselves from invasion.

Regarding the cost and size what sort of army would be better (large but low cost, small elite but high cost, a mixture)?

I made rehashed images because I'm not good at making images but I needed a lot of new images for the new factions. Getting banners from other mods is difficult because you need to a find a mod that has banners that are for your faction or will suit it. New faction symbols are harder to find since there are very few mods that add new faction symbols (most change the existing ones).

Regarding the gramatical and spelling errors where do they occur? I ask because I only made the campaign descriptions and a few descriptions for new units, the new trait descriptions were made by Byg.

i'm fine with having large armies in the beginning, but it bankrupts you instantly, which seems a bit silly.

and the grammar/spelling mistakes are in most of the faction descriptions. like i said, not exactly a big deal, but they're certainly there.

[uanime5]

One advantage of having a large army, especially for smaller factions, is that the computer tends to blitz the player early on so factions with only one province need extra soldiers to survive this (especially if next to the HRE).

Regarding my 1400 version I'm thinking of reducing the starting population of all settlements to account for deaths due to the plague. However this reduction means that the player has to rapidly increase the population of their settlements, so they can upgrade them to large or huge cities and gain access to gunpowder units. Does anyone have any opinions on this?

I also plan to make two more existing factions playable in my 1400 version. I won't say which ones just yet.

[uanime5]

I've finished my 1400 update (I was able to do this quickly because the basic mod was already made, so all I needed to do was change the start positions and make about 30 new maps). I plan to post it tomorrow (Saturday 30th) unless there are any serious bugs I need to fix in the original mod (such as missing textures or something that causes a crash during the campaign).

[uanime5]

The 1400 version is available. It has the following benefits:

1) You can now play as Milan and the Timurids.
2) Almost all units are available (you need to wait until America is discovered before you can build all the ships).

Enjoy

[Meriadoc]

So i've done what you said about copying the sound files but still no sound.

[uanime5]

Try copying the entire vanilla sounds folder in the vanilla data folder to the eras data folder (eras/data).

[IRPhydeaux]

Your mod sounds fun, but I think the link is dead.

I even searched the file front directory, but not eras 1.1 file

[loet66]

Yes, the link seems to be dead !


loet66

[uanime5]

I'll reupload my Eras mod as soon as I've finished making the 1.2 version (the Emperor of the HRE needs to have high authority or there will be high unrest in his Empire).

[Icefrisco]

This sounds great!

Also you could add a 1400 start date because medieval warfare with knights continued until ~1600.