Unit swapping between factions

[Mandro]

I've been having a great time editing the released text files from CA using the mod switch program from Lusted and decided I wanted to add Longbowmen to the HRE, since they have no longbow units.

I've read here that at the moment, until the unpacker is released, that wasnt possible. So i decided to edit the EDU and discoved that the slave (mercenary) textures were interchangable between factions ( as far as I tested anyhow). I simply edited the Free Mercenary Longbowmen in the EDU, adding "hre" to ownership and "German" to sound, keeping the same texture skin.
Then I went into the Export_buildings_txt and added the appropiate lines for the Longbowmen giving them both slave and hre ownership under the siege buildings section.

Tested and re-tested, the textures showed up everytime in the battle screen including when I swapped out the Free mercs textures with the Balkan longbowmen texts.( also slave-mercs)

Not sure if the community was aware of this but I thought I wouls share and say a big thankyou to the modders here!

PS I wonder if the other mercenary units ( elephants) could be added this way since I added longbowmen to HRE.....

[KeeCai]

i have just tried this as well, it looks like any of the mercs can be added to any of the faction and if you add them to the building pools they can be recruited in the campain game as well,

good work

[Valakov]

did you get an appropriate unit card? tried this a while ago with the turks and afgan javelinmen, ended up with pesant unit card.

[Mandro]

@ KeeKai - Right on, glad you tested the rest and they indeed are all interchangeable, good news!

@Valkov - Yup I did get an appropiate unit card for every unit tested but I think the "peasant" card is actually the norm for most of the slave-merc faction.

[Valakov]

trying it now with portugal - keeping the english sound set considering england supplied quite a few archers to help them out in a few battles - good find

i.. think what went wrong with the javelinmen is that there are two versions in the edu (just noticed this) one as merc, one as turmid, mayhap that is what the issue with the pesant unit card issue was all about, dunno