Differences between the versions and submods of Broken Crescent
Broken Crescent v.1.0 patched to v.1.05, released in 2008
The original, outstanding and high integrity (bug-free) version of the mod by AlphaDelta, Strelac, GrandViz, Mirage41 and with contributions by the community. The mod was inspired by the movie Kingdom of Heaven, a classic movie about the crusades and the loss of Jerusalem and it features many of the characters from that movie. This original version of Broken Crescent is modded on vanilla M2TW and, therefore, has no boiling oil at gates, no flame throwers, no mangonels, no ambient buildings on battle map. There are only 12 playable factions. All campaign scripts work! Custom battles work! Unit and building costing scheme is consistent with vanilla M2TW and, therefore, understood by the AI. Campaign AI by Strelac and GranViz is an improvement over the vanilla AI and one of the best ever written. It has several unique features such as an area of recruitment system and the Call of the Crusade series of buildings for KoJ. If Jaffa, Acre, Jerusalem or Antioch is lost to a Muslim faction, building a Call of Crusade building represents an appeal to the Pope to launch a crusade in response. This script works! Historical crusades by Frederick Barbarossa, Richard the Lionheart, Louis the king of France or Leopold, a Frankish prince, are launched depending on the time and period. Other scripts include a garrison script and a Hordes Unite event for the non-playable Kypchak faction. There are a total of 21 scripted Mongol stacks. Only downsides, in my opinion are (1) the silly stratmap models for the Makurian and Hindu captains and (b) only 1 campaign difficulty level, although you have the apparent option to choose easy, normal hard or very hard campaign difficulty. Only the diplomacy difficulty changes with these levels, nothing else.
Broken Crescent v.2.3 built up to v.2.3.2, released in 2011-2012
A kingdoms expansion of the original mod led by Wudang Clown. The kingdoms expansion adds stone forts on the strat map in locations where historical forts/castles had existed at this period but where there was no room to place settlements such as castles because of limits by the engine. It has a wonderful stratmap ambience with stratmap music from the Crusades Kingdoms expansion. The Call of the Crusade mechanic still works! BC v.2.3.2 has added some nice new units but removed some of the old units such as militia units, because Wudang Clown did not like their simple skins but without replacing them with units that had better skins. It was a mixed success. It added a few new scripts such as the Beja Migration for Makuria, the Bulgarian Rebellion and the Andronicus Coup, events causing spawning armies to join one side or another during the campaign. It still only has one campaign difficulty level despite claiming to have 4. Single player custom battles do not work and crash the game. The faction selection map had errors because it was not updated for the later versions of the release. There were now 31 scripted Mongol stacks! Costing system for the units and buildings was no longer consistent with vanilla, with units of the KoJ and Makuria specifically having become too expensive, with costing schemes and faction balancing changing over subsequent editions of the kingdoms version. . Some buildings, such as farms, have also become too expensive. Many building chains do not serve any function for most regions and factions, but the human player as well as the AI may unknowingly build them. Old scripts and other files by the original modders were removed. New loading screens replacing the previous ones and new quotes have been contributed by some members of the community, but the contributions are overall not very successful. The Temple of Nativity in Jerusalem is an Islamic building that curiously gives buffs to Islamic factions controlling Jerusalem. There are occasional missing icons, missing skins, silver surfers, missing text, missing images, the missing campaign difficulty levels, the campaign and battle AI can be at times inactive, there is some potentially off-putting religious text and imagery and occasional annoying spelling errors. Some of these were corrected in later versions.
Submod Jizya, Kafirs and Dimmis by ByzantineBoy for BC 2.3.2
This mod introduced improved skins for some of the strat map characters and a very interesting mechanic involving buildings that improved the economy at the expense of reducing public order. The idea was historical decisions by Muslim rulers to tolerate monotheistic faiths such as Judaism or Christianity in exchange for members of the non-Muslim communities paying higher taxes than Muslims.
Partial patches for BC v.2.3.2 (Geoffrey of Villehardouin)
During that time, I had released some fixes for 2.3.2 in occasional patches after the release of BC 2.3.2, in fact I had privately built BC up to v.2.5 restoring back to BC v.1.05 many of the changes made to the export_describe_buildings, campaign script, the battle AI and the campaign AI, restoring the militia units and replacing some of the more unsuccessful quotes with new quotes from scholarly sources, making new regional faction-specific character names for many factions including the Hindu and Islamic factions in the eastern half of the map, correcting spelling errors, missing images, silver surfers, etc, also adding contributions from the community. Among else, this patch added into the game ByzantineBoy's submod Jizya, Kafirs and Dimmis as a standard. It had an integrity issue with multiplayer campaigns because of a script involving the new Nestorian Christianity religion from the Jizya, Kafirs and Dimmis submod, and for this last reason it was never released in a finished form.
Broken Crescent v.2.4.2, released in 2015
This mod was released by ByzantineBoy. I had assumed he would be using my patched 2.3.2 version with the Jizya, Kafirs and Dimmis submod already incorporated into the game but it ended up being his personal project. Among the better new features were great new skins for the characters on the campaign map (strat map) and the addition of Nestorian Christianity from the Jizya, Kafirs and Dimmis submod with new priest portraits. Seven brand new factions have been added: the Kara-Khitai, Kievan Rus, the Volga-Bulgars, Zengids (a faction much asked for by the community), the Eldeguzids, Bahrein and Yemen. There are many great looking new units made by many community contributors, some from other mods such as Rusichi TW and some original units not previously available elsewhere. An interesting new building chain of high tier unit recruitment was introduced for the area outside a faction's Area of Recruitment (AoR). On the downside, the creation of many new buildings disrupted the economy, which made ByzantineBoy invent a somewhat arbitrary costing scheme for buildings and units that does not work well for the AI. There were now 41 scripted Mongol stacks! The inactive campaign AI was replaced by a very passive AI, Lusted's campaign AI. Surprisingly, ByzantineBoy did not add the religious communities from his Jizya, Kafirs and Dimmis submod, potentially because of the runaway economy issue. The map was expanded northward to accommodate some of the new factions, however, this expansion caused many of the scripts from the original game such as the Call of the Crusade script not to work any more. The Bulgarian Rebellion and Hordes Unite scripts are also not working. Some of these scripts were simply deleted from the campaign script but the announcements are still in the mod. Some non-functional scripted stacks are still present and the Call of the Crusade buildings are still available to the KoJ although a crusade is never called because the relevant scripts are missing. The crashes of the old script are probably caused by the editing of the original map when extending the map northward, for example Jaffa was deleted from the map among other settlements that were important, even crucial, for the crusade scripts to work. The historical stone forts of version 2.3.2 were removed. The faction selection map was originally not working, the new movie intros for the new factions were missing, the victory and defeat announcements for the new factions were missing and the mod was missing occasional pictures, text, etc. It was released as a work in progress, somewhat understandably as ByzantineBoy had done nearly all that new work and troubleshooting on his own.
Broken Crescent Bugs and Fixes submod (or Tweaks and Fixes) released in 2016, a patch for BC 2.4.2 (Geoffrey of Villehardouin)
This submod, is a savegame compatible patch for BC 2.4.2 fixing what can be fixed (such stuff that is missing or broken) without requiring that the player starts a new campaign. You will find more information in the link.
Buff and Shine submod v.2.0 for BC v.2.4.2 by Weekend General, released originally in 2016 but developed further in subsequent years.
A huge submod that also introduces many changes to BC v.2.4.2, which by itself had completely changed the earlier incarnation of the mod. Among the new changes are 2 new factions, the Bavandids and the Salghurids, plus replacing the Kievan Rus with the "Principality of Kiev". The most attractive feature in my opinion is a new chain of buildings for the recruitment of tribal units in the areas of the Islamic world, something that had been often asked by the community. It adds the Jizya system from ByzantineBoy's mod back into the game. It fixes various silver surfers etc, adds some new portraits (not always very successful) for priests and generals. The Call of the Crusade mechanic has been reworked. The buildings have been removed from the KoJ settlements but the crusades may still be triggered without a request for Papal assistance by events such as the loss of Jerusalem, Acre, Kerak or Antioch. Some broken scripts from BC v.2.4.2 are working again. Unfortunately, the historical stone forts are missing. This submod added the XAI battle AI in place of the original Strelac/Grandviz battle AI, which is actually one of the best battle AIs made, as long as you use it as a whole (i.e. all the battle AI files from the original mod). Apparently the historical battles work, including 3 new ones, but the custom battles still do not work and crash the game. The Buff and Shine submod gives options to the player to choose certain mechanics, some of which come from the Real Battle/Real Recruitment submod made for feudal Europe which most mod team members in past incarnations of the mod were completely against as being unrepresentative of the region. It is only an option, however, you do not have to go for it. There is an annoying situation with civil unrest whenever your generals or governors leave a settlement with a massive and permanent decrease in public order whenever they do so. It is a very personal submod and there seems relatively little of the original Broken Crescent remaining in this submod.
Broken Crescent Invita submod, a patch for BC 2.4.2 released in 2017 that is not savegame compatible (Geoffrey of Villehardouin)
This is an extension of the Bugs and Fixes submod. However, the Invita submod is non-save compatible as it has additional changes to the campaign script and campaign AI. You will need to start a new campaign with it. It is a standalone submod, i.e. it will not overwrite your other Broken Crescent installations but will appear side-by-side as a separate mod. The historical stone forts have been added back into the mod, with the names of the forts also added. These forts are crucial in some situations such as countering the Mongol threat and can be used equally well by the human player and the AI. Hindu settlements have custom Hindu models on the campaign map rather than Islamic ones. There are many other changes, mostly fixes for bugs and for all kinds of missing stuff (images, text, descriptions, unit or captain skins) as well as restorations of original versions of files that worked better, e.g. the campaign AI of Lusted has been replaced by the original campaign AI by Strelac and GrandViz. There are 4 genuinely different campaign difficulty levels with a rebalancing of all factions so that no AI-controlled faction tends to dominate campaigns. There are new portraits, loading screens, historical quotes, custom stone towers for some factions and some other more cosmetic changes. There is a corrected faction selection screen where the factions are shown with their correct starting positions. Sadly custom battles still crash the game, the Call of the Crusade mechanic still does not work and the Bulgarian Rebellion and other such scripts are still bugged and so the bug fixing is not complete.
I am currently working on a version of BC built from scratch on BC v.1.05, preserving the original game integrity (no bugs!). It will restore the original battle and campaign AI, which are among the best ever made, as well as preserve the functionality of all the original scripts. Newer work by e.g. Wudang, ByzantineBoy and Weekend General will be added when not affecting too much, if at all, the original game mechanics and gameplay.
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Originally Posted by Triomphe
