General Questions

[Vipman]

Ok thanks for the info. Unfortunately I couldn't find any unofcial patch floating around anywhere or even a list of bugs . The princess traits issue I read here:

http://forums.totalwar.com/showthrea...me-Fixes/page2
I believe it's question #22

It's not actually a bug. Just that the vanilla has to few princess traits and/or triggers for these traits, so almost all princesses have between 0 and 5 charm points, very hard to reach more than 6 I think.

quick question regarding this link:
http://t-a-w.blogspot.mx/2009/11/why...edieval-2.html
do i need to have the game unpacked to get the fix working? or can i just place it in the directory?

It should work if you just place it in m2tw\data and put this line in medieval2.preferences.cfg (open with notepad) and mark it as read only.
[io]
file_first=true

[Vampiresbane]

It should work if you just place it in m2tw\data and put this line in medieval2.preferences.cfg (open with notepad) and mark it as read only.
[io]
file_first=true

Yup Giumbix is right. All you have to do is just place it in the folder. Once there, that file will just override the unpacked file it replaces.

[Maklodes]

On the other hand, according to this logic, if I fight against 9:20 army-strength ods (I won enough victories like that, or 300 vs. 1200) the Chivalry skill should increase, but I never noticed that.

There is such a trigger, although it's easier if you're both outnumbered and fighting defensively. Also, the gain BattleDread trigger for overwhelming the enemy with numbers ("battle3Dread_PickingOnWeak") only applies if you're the attacker. If some idiot enemy captain decides to attack your mighty army with two units of spear militia, you don't gain dread for repulsing his ill-advised attack.

For more detailed information about the triggers of BattleDread and BattleChivalry...

The relevant section of export_descr_character_traits.txt

;------------------------------------------ Trigger battle3_Dread_fighting WhenToTest PostBattle Condition GeneralNumKillsInBattle > 8 and not Trait BattleChivalry > 0 Affects BattleDread 1 Chance 50 Affects Bloodthirsty 1 Chance 10 ;------------------------------------------ Trigger battle3_Chivalry_fighting WhenToTest PostBattle Condition GeneralNumKillsInBattle > 8 and not Trait BattleDread > 0 Affects BattleChivalry 1 Chance 50 ;------------------------------------------ Trigger battle3Chivalry1_defensivewin WhenToTest PostBattle Condition not WasAttacker and IsGeneral and BattleOdds < 0.8 and GeneralFoughtInCombat and not Trait BattleDread > 0 Affects BattleChivalry 1 Chance 100 ;------------------------------------------ Trigger battle3Chivalry_hardoddswin WhenToTest PostBattle Condition IsGeneral and WonBattle and BattleOdds <= 0.5 and not Trait BattleDread > 0 and GeneralFoughtInCombat Affects BattleChivalry 1 Chance 66 ;------------------------------------------ Trigger battle3Chivalry_religioncatholic WhenToTest GeneralAssaultsGeneral Condition CharacterReligion catholic and TargetReligion islam and not Trait BattleDread > 0 Affects BattleChivalry 1 Chance 33 ;------------------------------------------ Trigger battle3Chivalry_religionorthodox WhenToTest GeneralAssaultsGeneral Condition CharacterReligion orthodox and TargetReligion islam and not Trait BattleDread > 0 Affects BattleChivalry 1 Chance 33 ;------------------------------------------ Trigger battle3Chivalry_religionislam WhenToTest GeneralAssaultsGeneral Condition CharacterReligion islam and TargetReligion catholic and not Trait BattleDread > 0 Affects BattleChivalry 1 Chance 66 ;------------------------------------------ Trigger battle3Chivalry1_notchaserouters WhenToTest PostBattle Condition WonBattle and BattleSuccess >= average and PercentageEnemyKilled < 20 and IsGeneral and BattleOdds < 0.95 and not Trait BattleDread > 0 Affects BattleChivalry 1 Chance 33 ;------------------------------------------ Trigger battle3Chivalry_Dread_Not_fighting WhenToTest PostBattle Condition not WonBattle and not GeneralFoughtInCombat and PercentageEnemyKilled < 10 Affects BattleChivalry -1 Chance 100 Affects BattleDread -1 Chance 100 ;------------------------------------------ Trigger battle3Chivalry_Dread_Routing WhenToTest PostBattle Condition Routs and PercentageEnemyKilled < 33 and GeneralNumKillsInBattle < 8 Affects BattleChivalry -2 Chance 100 Affects BattleDread -2 Chance 100 ;------------------------------------------ Trigger battle3Chivalry_Dread_Routing2 WhenToTest PostBattle Condition Routs and PercentageEnemyKilled >= 33 and PercentageEnemyKilled <= 66 and GeneralNumKillsInBattle < 8 and BattleOdds > 0.75 Affects BattleChivalry -1 Chance 100 Affects BattleDread -1 Chance 100 ;------------------------------------------ Trigger battle3Dread_PickingOnWeak WhenToTest PostBattle Condition WasAttacker and WonBattle and BattleOdds > 1.5 and PercentageEnemyKilled > 50 and not Trait BattleChivalry > 0 Affects BattleDread 1 Chance 100 ;------------------------------------------ Trigger battle3Dread_TotalAnnihilation WhenToTest PostBattle Condition WonBattle and BattleSuccess >= crushing and PercentageEnemyKilled > 70 and GeneralFoughtInCombat and IsGeneral and BattleOdds < 0.95 and not Trait BattleChivalry > 0 Affects BattleDread 2 Chance 100 ;------------------------------------------ Trigger battle3Dread_Let_Them_Go WhenToTest PostBattle Condition IsGeneral and WonBattle and BattleSuccess >= average and PercentageEnemyKilled < 20 and not GeneralFoughtInCombat and IsGeneral and BattleOdds < 0.95 and not Trait BattleChivalry > 0 Affects BattleDread -1 Chance 100

Overall, I think it's kind of a mess. I think that battle3_dread_fighting and battle3_chivalry_fighting were intended to be like "your general has a 50% chance of gaining battle chivalry, and a 50% chance of gaining battle dread, if he kills 9+ people in battle," but in practice it's more like a 50% chance of dread, and then, since any battle dread excludes the possibility of gaining chivalry, you get a 25% chance of battle chivalry and a 25% chance of nothing (since dread is checked first). However, the whole idea is rather silly, IMHO: your general displays prowess in battle by personally killing folks, so this randomly makes him stronger or weaker? (If you already have dread and your dread goes up, or you already have chivalry and your chivalry goes up, your general gets stronger. On the other hand, it's just as likely that your general's display of battlefield prowess will make him weaker, by reducing his dread or chivalry closer to zero.)

Personally, I think it should be modified to be something like this:

Trigger battle3_Dread_fighting
WhenToTest PostBattle


Condition GeneralNumKillsInBattle > 8
and not Trait BattleChivalry > 0
and Attribute Chivalry < 0

Affects BattleDread 1 Chance 50 
Affects Bloodthirsty 1 Chance 10 


;------------------------------------------
Trigger battle3_Chivalry_fighting
WhenToTest PostBattle


Condition GeneralNumKillsInBattle > 8
and not Trait BattleDread > 0
and Attribute Chivalry > 0

Affects BattleChivalry 1 Chance 50

Underlined changes. Although sometimes I think it might be better just to get rid of the BattleChiv/BattleDread traits entirely.

[Vlad Dracul]

Thanks to all who answered my questions.

Regardin' M II TW's failures (and you guys know damn well there are plenty of them), it's a shame that after more than 6 years since game's release CA couldn't be bothered to make an official patch that would fix all known bugs.
It's not like the players (aka paying customers) would ask for the cure of cancer...

I'm seriously disapointed because this game has/had a huge potential, but that potential wasn't fully exploited (by the company that made the game), not by far.

I just hope that 2 or 4 years ahead from now a brilliant mind would be in charge of the Medieval III Total War-project and that game will take its place in history of gaming as "one of the best TBS & medieval games ever made, if not the very best"

Gettin' back to my last unanswered problem, the one about gifting attacks against the rebels to a faction, how exactly can you do that?
I mean, ofc you send a diplomat and start negotiations, but how it works?
Rebels must be on that factions territory (maybe even in the same province where your diplomat is negotiating) or you can attack any pack of rebels anywhere on the map? And if you don’t have military access to that faction, how can you fight rebels on their lands without jeopardising relations?

[Vipman]

gifting attacks against the rebels to a faction,

Formally, there is no such thing. Closest thing would be sending a diplomat and offer to attack a faction, but rebels is not on the list, or at least it shouldn't be.

Wherever you saw this expression, he must have simply meant he just sends an army to kill some rebels on their territory and considers it as a gift, for role-playing purposes.

Military access is the only way to not lower relations with another faction when passing an army through their territory, even if it's an ally.

[Earl of_Duke]

Formally, there is no such thing. Closest thing would be sending a diplomat and offer to attack a faction, but rebels is not on the list, or at least it shouldn't be.Wherever you saw this expression, he must have simply meant he just sends an army to kill some rebels on their territory and considers it as a gift, for role-playing purposes.Military access is the only way to not lower relations with another faction when passing an army through their territory, even if it's an ally.

There certainly is an option to do this: I do it about every 15 turns to allies & sometimes other friendly factions. I don't think it matters where the rebels you fight are located, but I'm not certain about that.

[Vipman]

I don't understand, what option? Could you elaborate?

You mean it's possible to offer to attack the rebel faction and gift it?

[Vlad Dracul]

I finally found the topic I was talkin' about earlier, it's the Vampiresbane Art of Diplomacy Guide where Footsoldier says the following:

Relations

- gifting attacks on an enemy. Everyone hates the rebels at the start, so they're an easy attack to gift. Later that may change.

I'm very curious how exactly does it work.

[Earl of_Duke]

Enter diplomatic negotiations with a faction. If your relations are lower than "Amiable", raise them to at least this status by gifting other junk, like money, otherwise the "Attack Faction X" will not be accepted as a gift. Then offer to attack rebels, and gift it. Simple.

[Vlad Dracul]

Another question:
How can you provoke a war without being considered the aggressor (without being excommunicated, losing rep, spoiling relations with others - except your enemy's allies, that's inevitable -etc.)?

And how much of a rep hit (if any) you take as a catholic faction if you start a war with an excommunicated faction (in the situation you don't have any agreements to that faction, no alliance, no trade, no nothing)?

[Vissewalde rex de Gerzika]

And how much of a rep hit (if any) you take as a catholic faction if you start a war with an excommunicated faction (in the situation you don't have any agreements to that faction, no alliance, no trade, no nothing)?

I think that there will be no rep lost from starting a war like that.

[Vampiresbane]

Another question:
How can you provoke a war without being considered the aggressor (without being excommunicated, losing rep, spoiling relations with others - except your enemy's allies, that's inevitable -etc.)?

Depends on whether it's early or late game you're talking about. Early on, by far the easiest way to start a war with a neighboring target faction is take any and all rebel cities that lay between you and them. For this reason alone, Milan often finds itself at war with so many other factions.

Late game if you have high reputation, it can actually be fairly hard to provoke a faction into attacking you (factions with higher reputation get a boost to relations each turn and the AI is programmed to attack factions with lower relations AND lower reputation FIRST). You have to go out of your way to piss the target faction off by lowering relations either by moving an army around in their lands or by offering outright terrible agreements in diplomacy (like 10,000 gold for map information). The good news is even if none of these work, with high reputation, you typically don't have to worry about a bunch of different factions joining in the war against you if you decide to aggressively declare war. With low reputation however (ie negative rep), factions will go out of their way to go to war with you or betray you.

And how much of a rep hit (if any) you take as a catholic faction if you start a war with an excommunicated faction (in the situation you don't have any agreements to that faction, no alliance, no trade, no nothing)?

All wars with any faction, regardless of the excommunication status, hurt reputation of both factions that are at war with each other. The penalty to reputation grows smaller over time however and is about half in magnitude as the bonus for having a single alliance is. The good news is about going to war with an excommunicated faction is that almost no other faction will bother going to war against you for doing so, unless they were REAAALLY good buddies with the excommunicated faction in the first place (this rarely happens though, more than likely factions will break alliances with factions that are excommunicated-especially if a crusade is called again the excom faction).

[Lord Jake]

If you can convince the Pope to call a crusade against that faction you actually gain favor with the Pope for joining the Crusade immediately. Position your troops so that they are ready to attack, get the crusade declared, join it, and use the extra movement and troops to your advantage. Others joining will just put additional pressure on your opponent, both offensively and financially.

[Vampiresbane]

Excuse the double post. My internet is being a royal pain today.

[Incredible Bulk]

Is there a simple file edit that will allow you to transfer any character Ancillaries between generals?

[Vampiresbane]

Is there a simple file edit that will allow you to transfer any character Ancillaries between generals?

It's simple in that it's not C/C+++.

But it fairly tedious. I forget the exact details, but it does involve uncompacting all the M2tw files, finding the file that contains the Ancillaries, and changing the part of each Ancillary from transferable "false" to "true." Let me see if I can't find the exact instructions.

The good news is that religous relics are ALL transferable. There's also a few others and I'll find those for you as well I can find where I put that info.

UPDATE1: The name of the unpacked file you're looking for is "Export descr ancillaries.txt". The code you'll be changing is: "Transferable 0" to "Transferable 1" where 0 means false and 1 means true.

UPDATE2: Current transferable ancillaries besides the religious relics are: academic_advisor, alchemist, apothecary, bard, treasurer, tutor. Be aware generals can only have a limit of 7 or 8 ancillaries total (limitless traits as far as I know). trusty_steed, black_stallion, and bodyguard are reportedly transferrable, but I've never been able to get them to work.

[Incredible Bulk]

Thank you kindly

[Vlad Dracul]

Thanks all for answers, really appreciate it, guys. Here come even more questions:

What’s the Explorer Guilds good for and where its best to be placed? A city or a castle or another specific location?

Can you increase the charm of a princess (don't think so, but still)? If yes, how?

And why my allies simply deny map-info exchanges, even if our relations are very good, my diplomats highly skilled and my offer is considered at least generous?!

Here are a couple of exemples:





Both denied, WTF indeed.

[Vissewalde rex de Gerzika]

What’s the Explorer Guilds good for and where its best to be placed? A city or a castle or another specific location?

It gives agents and generals movement traits and ancillaries. You should best build it in a city where you know you'll be passing trough with lots of different agents and generals. Be sure to let them hang around for a bit and they'll have some extra movement.

Can you increase the charm of a princess (don't think so, but still)? If yes, how?

Trough successful diplomatic deals.

And why my allies simply deny map-info exchanges, even if our relations are very good, my diplomats highly skilled and my offer is considered at least generous?!

You might be asking for map information too often, AI declines offers for it automatically. Once every 20 should be enough.

[Vipman]

In vanilla explorer's guild is not available in castles and it doesn't give any trait, only some ancillaries (retinue): 1 for new trained admirals, generals all of them except the one for admirals, and agents are able to get only 2 of them, Amerigo Vespucci and Marco Polo

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Trigger intrepid_explorer_vnv_trigger WhenToTest CharacterTurnEnd
Condition EndedInSettlement
and SettlementBuildingExists >= explorers_guild
and IsGeneral

AcquireAncillary intrepid_explorer chance 5

Every end of turn a general stays in a city with explorer's guild, there's a 5% chance he'll get an Intreprid explorer that gives 15% more movement points to him and his whole army as long as he's on the field and not in a settlement, and he is he main commander of the army (his name is shown when you hover the cursor over the army)

Trigger naval_navigator_vnv_trigger
WhenToTest AgentCreated
Condition IsAdmiral
and SettlementBuildingExists >= explorers_guild

AcquireAncillary naval_navigator chance 33

When you recruit a navy and it creates a new admiral (the port was empty previously) there's a 33% chance to get the Naval navigator which gives +1 command

The rest are unique retinue, only 1 can be obtained the whole game and only in certain turns:

Trigger amerigo_vespucci_anc_trigger
WhenToTest GovernorBuildingCompleted
Condition SettlementBuildingFinished >= explorers_guild (so not given on turn end, only when you accept to build any
and I_TurnNumber >= 208 ------------------------------------- level of explorer's guild)
and I_TurnNumber <= 225

AcquireAncillary amerigo_vespucci chance 100

Trigger marco_polo_anc_trigger
WhenToTest CharacterTurnEnd
Condition FactionBuildingExists >= explorers_guild (it needs an explorer's guild in any of your regions to be able to get it
and DistanceCapital > 60 -------------------------------- anywhere)
and not CultureType middle_eastern
and I_TurnNumber >= 102
and I_TurnNumber <= 122

AcquireAncillary marco_polo chance 5

Trigger vasco_de_gama
WhenToTest CharacterTurnEnd
Condition IsGeneral
and DistanceCapital > 40
and FactionBuildingExists >= explorers_guild
and I_TurnNumber >= 205
and I_TurnNumber <= 225

AcquireAncillary vasco_de_gama chance 33

Other than that there is nothing, no more bonus, no trade route to India BS the HQ Explorer's Guild description says.

Don't bother with map info. Recruit a few spies and send them around the world or wherever, no more headache and probably cheaper too.