Randomly generated scenarios for Medieval 2 (Concentrated Vanilla mod)

[taw]

I wrote random scenario generator for Concentrated Vanilla mod. (screenshots and details over there)

It plan to add a simple GUI so you can build your own campaign, however you want it.

I might need testers for that sometime soon, so volunteers step forward.

[taw]

And 30 more maps with improved algorithm here.

[complete noob:(]

I noticed you said that the AI was too passive. Does this work for hotseats? Because this seems very chaotic, and has really good potential for a hotseat.

[taw]

I've never tried hotseat mode. How does that work?

[complete noob:(]

You insert a tiny bit of text into the config file. Then you go to multiplayer, click on hotseat campaign, and choose various options, and as many factions as you want. Then each player plays their faction, saves the game, and sends the save to the next player. Hotseats can be similar after a lot of time playing them, so I'm thinking this could make it very very interesting.

[taw]

Is hotseat just for Kingdoms, or did it work in pure Medieval 2 as well?

There's nothing stopping Concentrated Vanilla from being ported to some kind of retrofit mod, so it runs on Kingdoms, and can use hotseat mode, but that would take a bit of work. Right now the mod uses vanilla Medieval 2 grand campaign, with medieval2.exe engine (not kingdoms.exe).

[complete noob:(]

I think that it works for vanilla, but I'm not quite sure. I know that all of the hotseats use kingdoms, but that may be because of the mods that use kingdoms, I'm not quite sure, as I am relatively new to hotseats myself. I'm looking forward to its release either way

[taw]

I've seen people claim that hotseat mode can be enabled with vanilla campaign, but I only managed to get it running on Kingdoms.

I don't see any reason not to move it to Kingdoms + retrofit mod eventually, since Kingdoms has a bunch of other features I'd like to use in the mod, and I don't think the switch would lose anything important.

[complete noob:(]

If it worked with vanilla would the scenarios work? (I really don't understand any of this stuff)

[taw]

Yes, it should work just fine if it runs on Medieval 2 vanilla.

Hotseat seems to work fine with Kingdoms retrofit mod too, but Kingdoms port is probably a long time away.

[Withwnar]

Looks interesting taw. +rep

[Gigantus]

That would give a lot of possibilities for hot seat games, I can agree to that.

[Vipman]

Firstly, very interesting script, have some rep

Hotseats can be played on vanilla too, it's needed to add some hotseat settings in medieval2.preferences.cfg

Do you know if your using your mod makes mods for kingdoms (SS for example) not work properly/CTD?

Is it possible to make it more like a relocation, factions having most of its regions near each other, instead of being total random? And will the religion of the regions change according to the owner faction? Like if Spain takes place of Egypt, will those regions be somewhat catholic to not immediately rebel?

[Eothese]

Brilliant concept and it looks to work very well. Put it on kingdoms then you can give control of all the factions to the AI and sit back and let the campaigns develop quickly.

[taw]

Firstly, very interesting script, have some rep

Hotseats can be played on vanilla too, it's needed to add some hotseat settings in medieval2.preferences.cfg

Since this is most requested feature, I'll take a look.

Do you know if your using your mod makes mods for kingdoms (SS for example) not work properly/CTD?

It doesn't mess with any files for kingdoms. All files live in its own directory + cfg/bat to start the mod.

Is it possible to make it more like a relocation, factions having most of its regions near each other, instead of being total random? And will the religion of the regions change according to the owner faction? Like if Spain takes place of Egypt, will those regions be somewhat catholic to not immediately rebel?

It's not actually a huge deal since I lowered distance-to-capital penalty, you have 0 unrest due to conquering settlement since it was always yours, some garrison, and all settlements start small early game.

You might want to take a look at my AAR where I test tat. I played as Portugal and one of settlements I randomly was Alexandria, and even with 20% unrest due to distance to capital unrest was tolerable. I had to build some churches and town hall before I could move my army out to conquer Cairo, but it was fine.

Take a look at map screenshots here. There are balancing parameters for random vs clustered. It would be possible to make them even more clustered than current maximum if that's not enough, but they look like reasonable and fun maps.

As for religion, yes, the script could adjust religions based on factions, or otherwise randomize it. Right now it only changes initial churches to correct religion (so if Egypt gets Rome randomly, it gets Minareted Masjid there, not Catholic Abbey), and religious conversion rate is higher for your convenience (it's easily tweakable setting).

Brilliant concept and it looks to work very well. Put it on kingdoms then you can give control of all the factions to the AI and sit back and let the campaigns develop quickly.

You could probably do that in Medieval 2 if you changed the game to start as Aztecs too, since AI never goes there. I've never actually tried that, but I don't think it's that hard.

[Eothese]

You could probably do that in Medieval 2 if you changed the game to start as Aztecs too, since AI never goes there. I've never actually tried that, but I don't think it's that hard.

You just need the hotseat enabled to do it, then once you've started a campaign you hand your faction over to the AI. From then on the campaign plays itself without you needing to end turn or do anything at all except observe. Of course you can jump back in again by taking control of any faction. Ideal for bug spotting, faction balancing and testing campaign scripts etc.

But I'm sure you were already aware of this.

[taw]

You just need the hotseat enabled to do it, then once you've started a campaign you hand your faction over to the AI. From then on the campaign plays itself without you needing to end turn or do anything at all except observe. Of course you can jump back in again by taking control of any faction. Ideal for bug spotting, faction balancing and testing campaign scripts etc.

But I'm sure you were already aware of this.

I had no idea.

Anyway, here's a screenshot of builder GUI in making. So far it doesn't really do anything and looks somewhat crappy.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

The idea is that it will be a long form with ton of switches and explanations what they do, plus ability to load some present (like vanilla, vanilla with bugfixes, concentrated vanilla, various random scenarios etc.).

Controls for random scenario generator will also be there of course.

[taw]

The GUI actually does something now.

If you care for technical details, they're here.

Otherwise, that's another screenshot.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

There are many pages of settings to fill.

[taw]

OK guys, here's alpha version of the mod builder. It will be polished in due time. If you've never ran any mods, you should probably wait for more user-friendly version, but I need some testers.

Instructions:

• Install Jruby. This is installer you want.
• Unpack attached 7z archive. (get 7zip if you don't have it installed)
• Run start.bat
• Select any options you want. Random scenario only has on/off and random seed selection for now. Just go crazy, it's testing time.
• Select "Build" option from "File" menu. It should take a few seconds to finish. (there should be proper success or error message, but there isn't)
• In output folder there's the mod. Copy that to your game installation directory.
• If you have retail version, run concentrated_vanilla.bat you just copied.
• If you have Steam version, follow these instructions.
• If mod is working, in main menu you'll see yellow "Concentrated Vanilla" just under "Medieval 2 Total War". Otherwise, you're not running the mod.

You can use "File > Open" to load one of two presets: default.txt contains Concentrated Vanilla presets (without random scenarios), minimal.txt disables most of the features so you'll get vanilla with some bug fixes (a bunch of things are not disabled - you'll get new map with extra regions and updated BAI/CAI code for example - I'll add switches later).

You can also use "File > Save" to save your configuration, but there's no guarantee it will still work when I update the builder, especially so early.


The plan is that in proper release some of these steps will be unnecessary, and they'll simply be selectable from various menus, but for now that's what you need to do.

So any volunteer testers?

[complete noob:(]

I'll test it in a few hours