Sometimes online campaigns can be plagued with issues like people dropping from your game or forgetting their passwords. To avoid hang ups like these that can slow down or even ruin the game you will need to set yourself as an Administrator. Being an Admin allows you to change player passwords and even resign factions.
1. Go to the Medieval II root directory.
2. Find medieval2.preference.cfg
3. Right click on it and select properties.
4. If you have the attribute Read Only selected from the earlier instructions then De-select it now so that you will be able to make these necessary changes (you can always go back and reselect later.)
5. Click Apply & Close the Window.
6. Now open your medieval2.preference.cfg with notepad.
7. Locate: [hotseat]
8. Below the hotseat entry add admin_password = your_password (your_password is where you will type whatever admin password you would like to have such as "ABC123" for example.
9. Save & Close the CFG file.
10. Right click on the CFG file again and select properties to re-enable the Read-Only attribute. (as noted in step 5)
13. Start your hotseat game as according to the instructions in this guide.
14. Go into the first player's login screen.
15. Check to see if the console window opens by pressing: ~
16. Type in the console window "logon your_password" (the password you entered in the config file) then and hit enter.
17. If you receive an error message make sure the ` is not in the field like it is when I first open the console.
18. If you do not receive an error type "logoff" and hit enter. Save and the game.
You will then have admin access to your hotseat game. Just enter in your admin password at any player login screen. Even with console disabled, you can still access the console in there.
To reset someone's password:
Load the campaign sav and open the console by pressing ~ now login with your admin password and then type:
clear_password <faction_label>
The password will then be removed and the player can now load their turn and set a new one.
If a player drops, and you can't find a replacement, you can set their faction as AI controlled:
It also allows to change control to the AI (so 1 inactive player? => set faction to AI control and move on). Type control <factionlabel>
To preset passwords:
There are also functions to set the passwords. To do this type:
set_password <faction_label> <password>
The console also allows cheats so to be fair it is best to decide on what cheats will be allowed before the game has begun. To do otherwise is to cheat and no one wants to play with a cheater.
Helpful Information:
M2TW faction labels
Faction labels including non playable are :
Crusades
egypt turks antioch jerusalem byzantium slave venice mongols
Americas
spain aztecs chichimeca tlaxcalans tarascans apachean mayans slave england
Britannia
france norway scotland england ireland wales
Teutonic
teutonic_order lithuania hre denmark poland novgorod slave venice
M2TW
sicily milan denmark egypt scotland aztecs turks france hre england portugal poland byzantium moors russia spain hungary papal_states slave