I posted some basic guides for new modders in different parts of the Mod Workshop. It might be helpful to have an index of them:-
Editing the startpos.esf (the file which the game uses to create the world at the start of the campaign)
- How to remove city forts from the startpos, here
- How to edit the startpos so that cities are fortified at the start of the game, here
- How to remove a trade route from the startpos, here
- How to change which faction is emergent in a region, here
- How to edit a faction description (the description which appears in the faction selection screen), here
Editing units and unit recruitment
- How to unlock a unit, here
- How to create a new unit, here. Also, this discussion on this thread might help people who are learning to make new units.
- How to create a new naval unit, here
- How to mod the AOR (areas of recruitment) of a unit, here
- How to mod unit experience (the benefits of chevrons and how quickly units get chevrons), here
- How to unlock and edit Fourth Rate Frigates, with historical research by Quintus Hortensius Hortalus, here
- How to edit the range of weapons (an example of a mini-mod which you can edit), here
- how to allow a faction to recruit a unit which it normally cannot recruit unless it has a particular type of government (an example of a mini-mod which you can edit), here
- How to change the statistics of ships back to before the 1.4 version of ETW (includes examples of mini-mods which you can edit), here
- How to convert an infantry unit from using swords to using muskets, here
- My guides to editing units, above, use Pack File Manager. You can also use DB Editor to edit units. Hammeredalways provided a guide to using DB Editor and a download link for the tool itself here.
Other editing/modding
- How to activate mods for Empire Total War, here
- How to prevent Britain, France and Spain from taking over their protectorates (so that Louisiana, New Spain and the Thirteen Colonies remain), here
- How to edit the names of units, names of provinces etc (editing the localisation file), here
- How to unpatch Empire Total War (one way to fix siege lag), here
How to recover from save game corruption / if the game keeps crashing
If you continue to edit mod files, putting each new version in your data folder and continuing an existing campaign (rather than starting a new campaign every time you make a small edit) - as I do - then eventually Empire Total War will become 'broken'. The game will crash, no matter what you do. You might find that the game crashes whenever you try to start it, or when you load a saved game, or when you start a battle.
Normally, this would probably mean that there was an error (or unexpected side-effect) caused by the new version of the mod. However, if you remove the new version of the mod, and return to a version which you know does not cause crashes, and if the game crashes anyway, then the game has become 'broken'. I explain how I recover from this problem in the second half of this post, under the heading 'How to recover when the game becomes 'broken'.
My mods for Empire Total War
If you would like to see examples of mods which use some of the methods explained above, there is a list of my mods for Empire Total War here.
Guides for new modders by modding experts
I am a relatively inexperienced modder. You will find tutorials by more experienced modders here in the 'Tools, Tutorials and Resources' part of the Mod Workshop. There are some guides by expert modders, which I find very useful and which are not in the Mod Workshop for Empire Total War, so you might not find them. They are:-
- husserlTW, My Modding Work; this is an essential guide for anyone interested in modding the startpos (especially the 'STARTPOS.ESF analysis and modifications') here
- erasmus777, How to create a mod; this is for Napoleon Total War but it also works for Empire Total War, here
Would you like to provide links to tutorials and information around this forum?
If you find tutorials or useful information on modding around this forum and if you would like to provide a link to them, feel free to post on this thread.
For example:-
- husserlTW explained how to fix the 'Ivory Coast camera bug' (a bug which occurs when we edit the startpos, causing the camera to show the player the Ivory Coast instead of your faction's home regions when you start the game) here.
- argonian68 explained how to add slaves as a commodity here (of course, I'm not endorsing slavery or the treatment of human beings as commodities - and I'm sure that argonian68 isn't either - this is simply a way to represent something in the game which, tragically for the lives of millions of people, existed in the 18th century time period).
These are examples of the valuable information around the forum which can be difficult to find, since there are so many threads.