A standalone mod for Empire Total War

The Reflecting History & Improving Gameplay Project

Empire Realism





Short name: ER

( former name: Darthmod Empire Realism+ ; short: DER+ )

Current version: ER 0.73

Team members: DaVinci, JaM, Naimad, Shaggy1973, Lord Zimoa, vonPeretz.

Searching for a skinner to join our team - the main task would be to provide early Line Infantry for every faction.

Pre-remark: What means here "standalone mod"? It means as well a standalone-installation. In example: Although, ER was entirely based on Darthmod Empire in its early stages (while ER has added quite a few more modified db files to the basic Darth mod.pack), ER was never a submod technically. ER is technically a major mod. If you wanna play other mod contents with ER, then take a lot care that those mods can work with ER. Those are actually only certain skin mods, graphic-reworks (ui changes), and such similar contents. In the moment where you apply mods that change db files or even need its own text (loc file), you might have a messed up ER game - exceptions can be, if those mods have assigned their own db file names.
On the other side, you can have that much mods in your ETW data folder as you want. Important is only that you apply the user-script or your modmanager accordingly (what determines the active mod stuff).

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Purpose, Goals & Design Summery and Development Parameters

Check this out to get an idea about this mod.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Purpose, Goals

Adding tweaks and providing changes which shall enhance the realism and challenge in the campaign mode,
altogether realising some significant gameplay changes with Empire TW towards realism and historical accuracy.

In the first place the initial motivation for this modification was, that i actually was annoyed by the design of the american theater,
and some too unrealistic contents in the technology/building tree of Empire TW ... i fixed them. But it is much more now, it's a major fix
for a lot game aspects of the ETW vanilla design that shows so much weaknesses in realism and historical accuracy respects.

Design Summery

In the whole the speed of the development and the conquests will be decreased.
The timeline 1700 - 1800 will be much more used, and most likely won't be completely exhausted already towards the midst of the 18th century.
The design will render the gameplay for example in the american theater more realistic: the Cherokee tribe won't be a steam roller anymore.
All the realism and balance changes are work in progress, though the player will instantly notice some significant changes
for several aspects like the economy, research, construction, naval and land recruitment, naval and land combat and AI abilities.

The main features are, rough described: (some details are in our changelogs)
* A very special feature is a whole new historical based approach to the naval warfare aspects.
* This goal extends as well to the land warfare - recruitment and combat system.
* The campaign gameplay is changed quite a lot to support an historical-realism design.
* AI and diplo behaviour is altered for the campaign aspects.
* AI combat behaviour is tweaked.
* Some unit skins incl. some unit additions, graphics, animations and sound aspects are changed.

Development Parameters

The mod is developed (balanced) on the following parameters:
# Difficulty setting - Hard / Hard
# Unit size - Large
# Long Campaign
# Main playtesting faction is England (with a quite historical play style)


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List of Changes

First of all note, that the changes are targeting on the Grand Campaign mode (ie. not the episodic stuff or any custom battle modes).

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Former list removed.
Go the the sticky changelog thread.


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Third Party Content

The basic mod and implemented mods. Third party contents are partly modified to match them into the project design.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

0) Basic mod: The source-base for the mod was the entire Darthmod Empire pack version 2.1/2.2.

Diverse contained mods (implemented into the ER mod pack file, no separate mod files):

Category / Mod Name (Link) ; (implemented with version)

1) Unit Equipment / Equipment Tweak Mod (implemented with internal 0.6x)

2) Unit Additions / Ornamentum Skinpack 1.1 (implemented with internal 0.6x)

3) Unit Reskin / Proper Militia Mod (implemented with internal 0.6x)

4) Graphics / Realistic Flag Set (implemented with internal 0.6x)

5) Battle Sounds / Atmospheric Battle Sounds (implemented with internal 0.6x)

6) Graphic-Effects / Blood and Smoke mod (implemented with internal 0.6x)

7) Battle Sounds / GeraldDuval's Realism Soundpack (implemented with internal 0.6x)

8) Unit Additions / Ornamentum Skinpack 1.2 (implemented with internal 0.70)

9) Unit Heads / Hat + Headwear Mod 1.1 (implemented with internal 0.72)


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Installation

In every case take care of the following instructions.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

The extracted mod.pack has nearly 300 MB (increases with every new release).
Take care - a lot known mods are implemented in this pack - that you have not the same single mods active with your user-script file or the Modmanager (check the third party mods listed above).

Mod files:

# ermod.pack
# ermod_text.pack
# user.empire_script.txt

( With this installation no files of Empire TW or else will be changed or damaged; never touch any of the original Empire TW files by yourself, unless you know exactly what you are doing )

Extract the files with software like winzip, winrar or 7zip.

1) Installation of the mod files

Copy/paiste the two extracted pack files into the Empire data folder. Ready.

Install path: C:\Program Files\Steam\SteamApps\common\empire total war\data

Attention: Make sure, that you have only o n e text.pack from any mods in the data folder. To view all unit names from ER, you'll need to choose ermod_text.pack as the text.pack.

2.) Mod activation

Put the file user.empire_script.txt into

XP: C:\Documents and Settings\(Your User Name Here)\Application Data\The Creative Assembly\Empire\scripts
Vista: C:\Users\(Your User Name Here)\AppData\Roaming\The Creative Assembly\Empire\scripts

Run the game as usually with the Empire-exe.

-> Start a new campaign!

Some game settings recommendations/considerations:
# Battle time limit - off
# AI turn display - off
# All graphic-settings are dependent on your video-card and cpu
# The audio settings are dependent on your sound card etc.

Additional hints:
- It is highly recommended to start a new campaign with ER and also with every ER update.
- If you'll update a former ER version, remove first these former used ER mod files (means: delete them or move them out of the data folder, install fresh).
- Just in case you have other mods running, check out our implemented third party mods. Avoid it to have them twice (means: disable the separate mods).

Further remarks: -> when CA has released a patch on 1.x, and you are gonna update your EmpireTW to that latest official version
a. Move out all mod files from the data folder
b. Disable the user-script file (or you apply your modmanager accordingly)
c. Remove all saved games if you have recently applied mods
d. Remove eventually the fx_cache files or the entire folder (where your user-script file lives)
e. Start a new campaign with the patched EmpireTW vanilla, check if it works properly
-> First then install our mod (process probably/almost valid for every mod installation).

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Mod deinstallation: Apply the above steps a. and b. (as minimum) - then you can play the Empire TW vanilla again or you can manage the play of other mods.
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Download: (zip or rar compression)

Open beta release, 0.73 (.rar): - works properly/compatible with ETW patched to 1.5 (file created/uploaded by JaM)

Mirror 1, filefront.com: http://www.filefront.com/14757865/ER%20-0.73.rar



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Credits

The people behind the ER modification.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 
***
Tools
# LtChambers and alpaca for their awesome PFM tool.
***
Mod base (especially v0.1-0.60)
# Credits for the base mod files Darthmod Empire 2.2 belong Darth Vader and all the contributing guys for his project.
Latest since version 0.60 every basic DM Empire modfile is altered, exceptions are in the changelogs (ie. the use of two DM v2.4 files).
***
ER Team
# DaVinci (founder) - Department: coding / general development; project director.
# JaM (since post v0.56) - Department: coding / general development, specials: naval aspects, chief warfare historian; project co director.
# Naimad (since post v0.6x) - Parttime: naval discussion, general advice.
# Shaggy1973 (since post v0.66) - Department: testing, discussion / advice, maybe coding in future.
# Lord Zimoa (since post 0.72) - Department: testing, discussion / advice.
# vonPeretz (since post 0.72) - Department: new units, skinning/modelling units, coding, historian for certain factions.
***
Misc
# Amroth for providing us a subforum on the ModRealms site.
***
Third Party Content
# Naimad for his NavalWarfareMod 0.1 (Darthmod Empire submod), implemented with internal 0.56 pack.
# erasmus777 for his Equipment Tweak Mod 1.3. Implemented with internal 0.6x pack.
# Darth Vader for Darthmod Empire 2.4 files: battle_entities, battle_movement_modifiers. Implemented with internal 0.6x pack.
# daNova, Ahiga, Johan217 for their Ornamentum Skinpack 1.1. Implemented with internal 0.6x pack.
# Spanky for his Proper Militia Mod v1.3. Implemented with internal 0.6x pack.
# Spanky, Neofit, Solo for their Realistic Flag Set v1.2. Implemented with internal 0.6x pack.
# pisoiasul for his Atmospheric battle sound effects mod v1.2a. Implemented with internal 0.6x pack.
# Mech_Donald for his Smoke and Blood Mod BSM 4.0. Implemented with internal 0.6x pack.
# GeraldDuval for his Realism Soundpack 1.5. Implemented with internal 0.6x pack.
# daNova, Ahiga, Johan217 for their Ornamentum Skinpack 1.2. Implemented with internal 0.70 pack.
# Ahiga, for his Headwear Mod 1.1. Implemented with internal 0.72 pack.
***
And, of course, thanks to the community-people who leave senseful comments in our threads.

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Support

# Our TWC thread: http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=275256

or

# our MR forum: Empire Realism on the ModRealms site
Check it out, it contains threads with content descriptions/previews/separate changelogs (frequently updated), and other threads.
Also we are searching there for team members.
Besides this, ModRealms (MR) is a very well-made site.

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Extras
Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 


Atm. none


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Mod History and Approach

The mod project started on 1st of July 2009 as a merely small sitemod to Darthmod Empire, thread: Darthmod Empire Campaign Tweaks - and became a dynamic movement especially since JaM joined the project while v0.5x to create vast enhancements for the naval part of the game plus providing a lot of warfare expertise.

The approach is to create a version 1.0 as a major mod project with historical reflected realism for all game aspects and an unique improved gameplay besides some AI support, plus implementations of excellent third party contents by the community to second the goals.

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End Thread