Empire Mac Mod Guide

[rashby19]

Yeah like i said when i PMed you I've managed to install it all. i am just worried that I've missed something.

Its a lot better and much more realistic with the tech tree and unit recruitment, and i like how everything is much slower rather than units superhumanly sprinting around for miles. I've grasped the tactics pretty quick and have taken the whole of the North america by 1717 as GB, now just Gibraltar and India to go!

Are there any other good mods for ETW mac that are worth trying? I'm going to try enlarged flags and see what happens. Also my game is running a little laggy, is there a way to speed it up?

[The_Athenian]

One of the issues with Empire on most Macs is that our computers weren't designed for gaming like a lot of the customized PCs out there. Now if you have some powerhouse desktop you probably can run this game at higher settings. But for most people, who seem to be playing on MacBooks you may have to tweak your settings toward the low end to get this game to run without too much lag.

Here is my usual set-up:


Shade Model 2

Anisotropic 2x (This is by far the most important set-up, everything else you can mess around with, between medium and low, but always keep this at Anisotropic 2x)


Texture Quality: Low


Particle Quality: Low (sometimes I do Medium)


Unit Detail: Medium


Building Detail: Low


Ship Detail: Medium


Shadows: Off


Unit Size: Medium


Tress: Low


Grass: Off


Water: Low (sometimes Medium)


Sky: Low


I Also turn on Vertical Synchronization, and sometimes Hardware Shadows; depends on the mod.


System Preference -> Energy Saver -> Better Battery Life
(You can set this to High Performance, however this may cause some laggy game play on the campaign map, but it greatly improves gameplay in battles. So it's a trade off, I found the game was just annoyingly laggy in High Performance mode)


Computer: Macbook Pro (2009)
2.66 GHz Intel Core Duo
4 GB RAM
NVIDIA 9400 256 MB
Mac OS X Lion

[The_Athenian]

Ok here is a fun little treat for all you mac gamers:

Stronger Minor Nations Submod
http://www.4shared.com/file/Z8knUKne...rNations.html?

Compatibility: Pretty Much any mod out there, as far as I can tell.

It's just a 3 KB mod, which allows minor city state nations (Genoa, Malta, Hannover an so on) to have unlimited trade routes in one port, it also gives them a little boost to research, and some other economic advantages). This makes these cities very advantageous to capture, but also allows these smaller nations to give the big ones a run for their money. I think it also gives some of the minor nations schools that didn't have them.

Great with any mod that makes smaller nations playable, or to just mix things up a bit when you play as a great power.

(I want to give credit to the modder who developed it, by I have had it sitting around for so long, I'm not sure where I got it from. I'll do a little research and edit this post later)

[Eidgeniesser]

Thanks for organizing this thread, have just finished installing TROM, works fine for me. INstallation instructions were very helpful. My question now is, how to make the unit size larger? Does TROM already come with larger units (200-250) that i have to choose somewhere? Or do i have to do that manually myself? And where would i find the number to change on the mac? Is this also in the startpos.esf?

[The_Athenian]

Hi Eideniesser, welcome,

Glad to hear TROM is working 4 you.

Unit Sizes: Have you tried Menu -> Options -> Graphics -> Unit Size (Should have Medium, Large, Ultra) ?

[Eidgeniesser]

Hi, thanks for the quick reply,

Yes, I switched all graphic options down to low, except that I kept ultra unit size. Was having some lag issues too, with the vanilla already, but I find large units crucial for a good atmosphere of battle.

I was thinking about something (prob a script) were you can change the unit size to be even higher than ultra, like in the Darthmod 200-300 soldiers per unit? Do all the mods for mac only include 160 on ultra unit size? If so its prob just a mac problem.

[The_Athenian]

I play with Medium unit size. I find any larger than that and I get significant lag

[inktvis]

Are generic grenadier units supposed to have 120 men? Or is that somehow broken on my system. They kinda break the balance (as many men, better stats, cost less than elite / guard infantry).

Thanks for pointing towards this mac compatible mod!

[Roberto100]

Hi The_Athenian

I'm returning to the game after some time away with a new machine (running Mavericks). The good news: the graphics look awesome! The bad news: it's crash central.

Are you aware of any issues with running ETW on 10.9? What I've done is copied the exact set-up I was running on my old machine, and typed this under the Advanced tab:

mod "mod_grandcampaigngraphics.pack"; mod "patch_aum_graphics.pack"; mod "trom_battlesounds.pack"; mod "trom_blood_smoke_medium.pack"; mod "trom_core_part_1.pack"; mod "trom_core_part_2.pack"; mod "trom_flags.pack"; mod "trom_loadingscreens.pack"; mod "trom_ornamentum.pack"; mod "trom_text.pack"

Those are all the .pack files with coloured tags beside them in my data folder (I think this was your recommended set-up from a few months back), so I assume that's what I had typed there before (possibly in a different order). Am I missing anything obvious? It's been a while, so my memory's a little hazy on this stuff...

[Roberto100]

Update:

It's definitely a mod issue, as the vanilla game runs fine (beautifully, actually). And the order in which I list the .pack files doesn't seem to make a difference. It's OK until I hit the "end turn" button - then it crashes straight to desktop.

Any idea which files aren't playing ball? Or could you or anyone recommend another set-up that'll definitely work on 10.9 (and with an Intel Iris chipset, if that makes a difference)?

[Trinitarian]

The Rights of Man 1.7 (Mac)

http://www.4shared.com/zip/UOkzAMjIba/TROM_17.html?

This is a link to a .zip of TROM. Mac compatible, includes Ornamentum Pack and AUMgraphics pack.

I cannot for the life of me figure out how to download this mod. It doesn't automatically download, nor can I find a download link that works.

[The_Athenian]

Trinitarian,

I'm not 100% sure, but on 4shared you may have to register before you can download.

Usually there is a button right below the words "TROM 1.7.zip"

Roberto,

Nice to see you back. I have a few macs around, but none of them are upgraded to 10.9 now unfortunately.

I would
1. Check to make sure all the .packs you listed are actually in your data folder. And make sure there aren't any mod .packs in your data folder that you aren't trying to run.
2. Did you put the TROM startpos.lua and .esf in your campaign->main folder?
3. Check to see if you have an overide_data folder, it's usually here: contents->resources->override_data. if there is a campaign->main folder in here, it's contents will override the same files in your data folder.

[Roberto100]

Thanks again! It was the second one - I needed to set up those startpos.lua and .esf files.

What's bizarre is that I copied everything across from my old machine, which means it must have been working before without those files. Unless they were somehow lost in the transfer, which doesn't make sense to me. Oh well!

[Roberto100]

Ah, balls. At end of turn seven (playing as the US) the AI is hanging on the moves for Savoy. I've turned "show CPU moves" off, declared war on Savoy... It looks like I'll have to abandon the game. Hopefully it's just a weird one-off glitch.

I'm using the six-turns-per-year startpos.esf file for the first time - has anyone had any issues with that?

[Roberto100]

Double balls. Same thing again in another US game, only a couple of turns earlier and with the Italian States.

[Trinitarian]

I have all the data packs from TROM in the data folders with no other mods. The download did not have an exe files so I didn't need a wrapper or unarchiver. What is weird, is that I can't tell any difference in the battles other than more realistic smoke from the gunfire. The French uniforms are, for instance, still white (not the historic blue the mod says it honors). I'm moving from playing NTW most recently, so perhaps I'm just not noticing all the changes that ETW with the mod? I do see units like the Walloon Guards, though.

[namcobra123]

Omg The_Athenian Empire Total War came out came out on steam so that means we might get mods

[The_Athenian]

I have all the data packs from TROM in the data folders with no other mods. The download did not have an exe files so I didn't need a wrapper or unarchiver. What is weird, is that I can't tell any difference in the battles other than more realistic smoke from the gunfire. The French uniforms are, for instance, still white (not the historic blue the mod says it honors). I'm moving from playing NTW most recently, so perhaps I'm just not noticing all the changes that ETW with the mod? I do see units like the Walloon Guards, though.

Trinitarian,

Make sure that you have only one of the blood & smoke mods running, and just the one you plan on using in your data folder. The usual download comes with three, light, medium, full. Select only one of these.

Also, try removing the two mods that change the uniforms, you may be getting conflicts which are causing the game to "run home to momma" and give you vanilla skins. The AUM graphics patch, and the TROM Ornamentum packs could be doing this. So play a battle without them, then load one, play a battle, check it out, then play with the other, load a battle check it out. Each time the uniforms should change.

[Trinitarian]

I appreciate the help, Tiro!

I'm also looking into doing the DarthMod, but it's a little daunting will virtually no Mac support (tutorial for install).

[Trinitarian]

I took care of the blood and smoke mods. Here are screenshots of my file setup. I tried taking either file out and the French regular line infantry still have the white uniforms with blue trim. This doesn't bother me so much, but I do wonder what other aspects I'm unaware I'm missing.