Update on 22 March 2016: ALL MODS IN THE SERIES NOW ONLY AVAILABLE IN THE DOWNLOAD SECTION OF THE SITE HERE!
Update on 7 December 2009: New option including the Colonies available in post #5!
Update on 12 December 2009: New options covering the rest of the world available in post #11!
Final update on 20 December 2009: Region-based options available in post #12!
Hi everybody,
I originally posted this little mod of mine as a response (helped by info from RO Citizen, thank you very much) to a question tucked away in the Workshop forum, but since Julius Isidrus is not updating his "Custom Battle - All Faction Unlocker" mod anymore, and other dedicated solutions seem rather hard to find, I thought that maybe I should make my solution that works with the 1.5 patch more available. If you use the attached file, you can play any of the following factions in custom battles:
Austria
Bavaria
Britain
Cherokee
Courland
Denmark
France
Genoa
Georgia
Hannover
Huron Confederacy
Iroquois
Maratha
Morocco
Mughal
Mysore
Netherlands
Ottomans
Piedmont-Savoy
Plains Nations
Poland-Lithuania
Portugal
Prussia
Russia
Safavid Persia
Saxony
Spain
Sweden
United States
Venice
Westphalia
Württemberg
These factions represent perhaps the most important nations which you can enter into diplomatic negotiations with at the start of the campaign, with the notable exception of the Colonies (Thirteen Colonies, Louisiana and New Spain). There is room for only 32 factions on the selection screen for custom battles, so if one wants an other faction than the 32 listed here, one of these 32 has to be removed. I made my choice ruling out rebel factions, emergent factions, factions with few units available in custom battles (Barbary States, Crimean Khanate, and Pirates), fringe factions (Chechenya-Dagestan, Inuit, Knights St. John, etc), and factions that might unite with their mother nations soon enough during the campaign (those colonies of Britain, France and Spain). Anyone satisfied with this choice can do the following:
1. Download the attached file
2. Extract the downloaded file to your desktop (for example)
3. Put the extracted "32_factions_in_custom_battles.pack" file in, if on a XP computer, the C:\Program Files\Steam\steamapps\common\empire total war\data folder (or wherever you have ETW installed)
4. Then enable the little mod by either:
a) Open or create the "user.empire_script" text file in the C:\Documents and Settings\[Your Account On the Computer]\Application Data\The Creative Assembly\Empire\scripts folder (visible only if the setting for showing hidden folders and files on your computer is enabled), and write...
mod "32_factions_in_custom_battles.pack";
...on a line there, save, and exit the text file, and then start up ETW; or...
b) Use the Mod Manager to tick the box for enabling this mod in that program, and start ETW from there.
You can find the Mod Manager available for download here:
http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=240335
If you want to edit the above list of playable factions you need the DB Editor found here:
http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=280329
There may be different and simpler ways of how to edit the above list, but the following method worked for me:
1. Place the DB Editor and accompanying files in a separate folder created for the job together with the "32_factions_in_custom_battles.pack" file.
2. Open the DB Editor, and tick the box for said file there
3. Scroll down to the line named "Factions Tables" in bold text on the list that appears, and select "Factions"
4. Edit the columns named "early availability" and "late availability" for the appropriate factions to "True" or "False" depending on whether you want to see them in custom battles or not - max 32 set to "True"
5. Save the changes, and exit the DB Editor
6. Put the edited pack file back in the data folder of ETW
7. Start up ETW to see your changes applied in game - Voilà!
Edit note - COMPATIBILITY with other mods: so far, I've discovered that these custom battles tweaks of mine interfere with at least one other mod out there and that's the Ottoman Realism Mod. Using my tweaks in combination with ORM may cause the new faction colour for the Ottomans which ORM introduces to revert back to the vanilla green colour. if you get this problem, try husserlTW's solution of changing ORM to movie format, so that it always loads last. There's another way around this problem, but I'd need the ORM-developpers permission to use one of their files before I can post it here. If someone is in need of such a workaround, I'll contact the ORM team to request the permission.
D